Essays: Confessions Of An Extinct Canid

Essay originally posted to my personal LiveJournal on December 3rd, 2007

A major facet of my canine identity is my identification with an animal that was both mythic as well as extinct, the Japanese wolf. This canid received mythic status long before its extinction, when its calls where forever snuffed out in a frenzy of diseased madness, fear and rage. The haunting silence that now filled its former mountain range had an almost remorseful feel-- the silence of breath caught in the throat as the antique vase hits the floor and shatters. The old gods where slaughtered on the sacrificial altar of progress, technology and state loyalty. Myths and bones and old folktales. They may be all that's left, and they may be all I have, but they are cherished nonetheless. In a sense I've become a paleontologist piecing together the puzzles of my own history and mythology.

One myth speaks of the Okuri-okami, the 'sending wolf', an almost supernatural being that appears like an apparition on the roads to guide wayward travelers to safety. Seen as a messenger of the gods as well as a god itself, and a good omen besides, this being was honored in small roadside shrines and temples. Though, there was also other tales that spoke of the destructive 'yamainu' or 'mountain dog', a violent and destructive being who had no fear of humans and who's meat was considered poisonous. Earlier still where stories the indigenous Ainu people told of Horkew Kamuy, the 'howling god', at the same time a benevolent being as well as a destructive force of nature, a god over all the other gods of nature.

Science, of course, tells another story. The story of a small and secretive wolf that populated the Honshu mountain range of Japan, along with the slightly larger cousin who inhabited the island of Hokkaido farther north. Gradually, as humans came to populate the Japanese islands, the primitive domestic dogs they brought along where allowed to breed with their wild cousins. The lines between 'wolf' and 'dog', 'domestic' and 'wild' began to blur substantially, as did the boundary between 'beneficial' and destructive. 'God' and 'Demon'. The 'yamainu', the destructive dog-wolf of the mountains that held no fear of humans, unlike the shy and elusive 'okami', seemed suspiciously to resemble the hybrid and feral dogs that seemed to crop up in areas where humans allowed their dogs to run loose and breed freely. In addition, prior to the establishment in Japan of the Linnean classification system, what constituted 'dog' and what constituted 'wolf' was merely a matter of who lived with humans, and who did not.

The coming of Matthew Perry's ships opened up Japan to the West, bringing with them the promise of technology and progress. Trees where cut back to make room for the large and sturdy western horses, as well as beef farming and dairy production. The realm of the gods became less mysterious, and diseases brought by domestic animals quickly infected the wild populations. The hybrid wolves, losing their ground and stricken with desperation and disease, gradually spilled into the tamed and manicured countryside. Disease, mostly rabies from domestic animals, swept through the population. The beneficient and guiding messenger of the gods became the mad-eyed and poison-fanged demon of disease and destruction. The Japanese, learning well from their American tutelage, took to the task of killing their wolves with gusto, and soon all where obliterated in a frenzy of gunfire, flame and madness, with western-style wolf-hunts on horseback and dead livestock stuffed with dynamite. Those animals who weren't shot or blown up died of starvation or disease. By the 1930s no one had seen or heard of the wolves again. Mostly. Every so often someone makes the claim of sighting a wolfish canine that appeared and then disappeared like an apparition. At night, in the more secluded villages that remain nestled into the mountainsides, people still stop and listen for the long and low howl, fearful and breathless. People still whisper. The legend endures. So too does the guilt.

When I stopped to actually piece together the myths and tales of the Japanese wolf with the animal's biological history, it was as if a bomb had gone off in my mind. It explained so many things to me, why I seemed to feel 'dog' as well as 'wolf'. Feral dog, hybrid wolf. Dogwolf, as opposed to 'wolfdog'. It was devastating too initially, as I had hoped that the canine I had found the closest alignment with would be one still alive, one that I'd might be able to see some day. The feeling began to fade with time however, as I began to see pieces of myself in most, if not all dogs and wolves. Coyotes too, as over the years my relationship with that totem has caused me to absorb many of its traits. I am a creature not of shifts but of continuums, sliding subtly across species and subspecies barrier, as flexible and transformative as the canid gene pool itself. My legacy also lived on in many of the world's primitive dog breeds. I was extinct, but I wasn't alone. Nor was I really bitter. There will always be sadness, and a sense of longing. Something that would spawn wild fantasies about going to the mountains of Japan and finding one of my kind still alive. But the feeling seems less when I am around other canines, and within lies the inspiration to become more involved in wolf conservation. A salve perhaps for the deep burning sensation within, like a gunshot wound, that seems to erupt when thinking about the past, of what once was.

Preferably, I live now in the present, and look towards the future. I may be a wolf, but I am a dog as well, and a part of me will never be extinct.