Banzai Akita

Lately I’ve been running hills. I was feeling pretty good about my endurance until I read this book about a man who also runs. Up mountains. To kill bears.

Morie Sawataishi, the subject of Dog Man by Martha Sherrill, engages in these activities to train his prize winning Akitas. Although the book describes Morie’s quest to breed the ultimate Akita, this is no Best in Show. Through chapters named for the dogs he raised over a lifetime from No Name to Shiro, we read about the venture from both Morie and his family’s perspective.

Despite the money to be made selling dogs – first to the American servicemen and then to avid Akita fans - Morie refuses to take money for a dog, preferring to give them away. This causes some raised eyebrows (and voices) in his household, since his wife Kitako, a society girl turned mountain mama, remembers the lean times. Little rice, little meat, and little heat was to be found in their remote village in post-war Japan. Despite the deprivation, the dogs never went hungry.

Later in the book we hear from Morie’s children – a vet, a Vidal Sassoon hair stylist – about Morie’s enthusiasm for all things Akita. And his reticence when it came to his own children.

This is a book about a man who loves dogs. What he loves most about them isn’t their physical appearance or their promise of riches. And he most certainly doesn’t teach them tricks. What he really strives for is a dog with kisho. Funnily enough, it’s this kisho, or life force, that Morie himself embodies in these pages.