Perhaps it’s climate change. Perhaps it was the particularly hot summer and the lack of acorns. Perhaps it’s because of habitat loss… who knows. All I know is Japanese bear attacks have hit a sharp rise, and that’s no good.

Between April and September, 80 people were hurt and four people got killed by bears. On top of that, they’ve had to shoot a lot more bears, because they’re coming into towns, cities, and so on. I’m guessing most of the bears are up in the northern island of Hokkaido (they’re known for bears), but this is still a bit scary for someone like me who has an irrational fear of bears and will be traveling all over Japan next month for TofuguTV.

Watch the video if you want to learn less than you just learned. Basically, I’m just worried about bears. Besides the technique provided in the video, how do you defend yourself against bears? Any tips? Remember, Japanese bears are smaller, several times more efficient, and possibly wearing mech suits. Totally changes everything.

[Source]

The other day, I wrote about “Cat Island, Mississippi” where the American army tried to train dogs to hunt Japanese people by smell. Today, I’m going to tell you about another cat island, except this one is in Japan, and it’s actually covered in cats, not dogs, and the cats only seem trained to find and eat fish, not certain Japanese people.

What Is It?

“Cat Island,” officially known as “Tashiro Island” (田代島), is an island near Ishinomaki City in Miyagi Prefecture… and yes, to answer your one burning question… it’s covered in cats. Check out this Google Maps satellite view of the island.

In all seriousness, though, it can be accessed via ferry. You can get from Ishinomaki (石巻) to Tashirojima (Cat Island). Here’s a big picture of Japan to see what area it’s in.

And if we zoom in, we can see Ishinomaki and Tashirojima and how close they are to each other.

When you go, you take an awesome little ferry, too. Sadly, not cat shaped in any way.

Apparently, cats on this island are way more populous than actual people on this island. There are approximately 100 residents on Cat Island, and most of them are over 70. One person is 37, and everybody else is over 60 years old. That’s a lot of old people, but luckily cats are here to save the day. According to Wikipedia:

In the past, the islanders raised silkworms for silk, and cats were kept in order to keep the mouse population down (because mice are a natural predator of silkworms). Fixed-net fishing was popular on the island after the Edo Period and fishermen from other areas would come and stay on the island overnight. The cats would go to the inns where the fishermen were staying and beg for scraps. Over time, the fishermen developed a fondness for the cats and would observe the cats closely, interpreting their actions as predictions of the weather and fish patterns. One day, when the fishermen were collecting rocks to use with the fixed-nets, a stray rock fell and killed one of the cats. The fishermen, feeling sorry for the loss of the cat, buried it and enshrined it at this location on the island.

The modern people of this island are hoping that they can use the cats (coupled with a decent amount of media attention they’ve been getting) to attract people to visit, then eventually live there. If they don’t, then I’m afraid the island will look like a scene from Jurasic Park 2: Lost World, minus the dinosaurs with a few thousand cats thrown in.

It’s only been a couple years, but I guess it’s kind of working – a lot more tourists make their way to Cat Island to take pictures of cats, feed cats, pet cats, and all kinds of other things you can do with cats.

Basically, if you like cats, this is going to be your little Cat Mecca. Besides the cats themselves, there are other cat themed things you can take part in. For example, there’s a cat shrine:

Also, there’s cat shaped buildings…

and other things as well… Thing is, you can walk this island in a day if you wanted. It’s only about 8 square miles. Don’t go into any dark alleyways, though, you never know what a mob of cats might do to you.

Oh, and of course, dogs are strictly prohibited.

Want to see more? You can watch a CCTV video on Cat Island, here. Also, here’s a map of fun things you can do (in Japanese) while visiting.

Update: Duh, YouTube has a ton of Cat Island videos. Warning. These videos contain cats.

Fisherman feeding the cats

Jack, the cat that made Cat Island Famous (he’s the one with the loppy ear)

Cat shrine

Our visit to Cat Island

P.S. If you’re worried about getting Zerg Rushed by cats, you should follow Tofugu on Twitter, Here.

]]> http://www.tofugu.com/2010/11/09/cat-island-japan/feed/ 143 http://www.tofugu.com/2010/11/08/americas-very-racist-japanese-people-hunting-dogs-of-cat-island-wwii/ http://www.tofugu.com/2010/11/08/americas-very-racist-japanese-people-hunting-dogs-of-cat-island-wwii/#comments Mon, 08 Nov 2010 21:34:33 +0000 koichi http://www.tofugu.com/?p=4423

When it comes to World War 2, there were a lot of funny things going on with Japanese Americans. Land and property were stolen from Japanese Americans, they were put into internment camps (though, not the 157,000 Japanese Americans in Hawaii, including my great great grandmother, who was sending aluminum to Japan to make bombs before the America-Japan conflict started), and now, apparently, there were dogs being trained to sniff out Japanese people. Ironically, they were being trained on Cat Island, a crappy little island just south of Mississippi (and a part of Mississippi too).

Dogs And World War Two

When the US entered the War, it started taking dog donations from civilians. Dogs were used to be sentries, to detect and sniff out mines, and so much more. There was, however, a much more secret dog training mission taking place on Cat Island, where William Prestre (Swiss Refuguee) said he could train dogs to target people of Japanese ancestry based off their smell. According to Prestre, he could train 30,000 dogs that would be released on the beaches of Japanese islands and Zerg rush their inhabitants. Greyhounds would streak across beaches to take out machine gunners (since they’re so speedy), then slower but more terrifying dogs (like Great Danes and Wolfhounds) would wipe the floor with everyone else. Obviously, none of this happened. Thank goodness for the dogs, anyways.

Getting To Cat Island

Cat Island is a little island off of Mississippi that had similar weather and temperature to the Pacific Islands. Apparently, it was also really sulfury, barren, full of alligators and mosquitoes, and a big pain all around. Around 25 people of Japanese ancestry (who were in the U.S. Army) were notified that they would be going on a super secret mission, so secret they couldn’t even tell their friends they were going on it. One of these people, Ray Nosaka, says:

So that morning, they said, “Don’t say anything to your own buddies and don’t goodbye, don’t say anything.” Seven o’clock, we rode the big truck and took us to Wheeler Field [Fort Williams]. And all of us went on a plane.They didn’t tell us where we’re going to go, what we’re going to do.

They got on their plane, stopped off in Tennessee (where they couldn’t get off the plane, because the higher ups didn’t want anyone to see them), then flew to Mississippi where they boarded some coast guard ships which took them to another island near Cat Island called “Ship Island” (seriously, someone should have been commissioned to come up with better island names). At Ship Island, they waited for a while, fished, and didn’t do much. Then, after two weeks, their Major came and told them they would be “training dogs” on  Cat Island. I suppose that’s where the fun starts.

Every day, they’d go by boat from Ship Island to Cat Island, help train the dogs for four hours, then go back home to Ship Island. Besides being attacked by dogs all the time, that’s a pretty sweet gig. Hang out on a tropical island, work 4 hours a day, and drink tons of beer because the water tasted terrible.

We only worked half a day. Half a day, you go back to Ship Island. You go fishing, play guitar and sing a song, things like that, drinking beer. Half a day you work, half a day you’re off. So the hours are very good. That’s why all of us was catching fish. So many fish over there. And now ducks come, shoot the ducks like that. So the life after the four hours we worked is very good.

In fact, at one time we ran out of beer because we cannot drink the water. That thing is so – like rotten eggs. The thing is sulfur, so we cannot drink the water, so we drink up the beer. And, you know, the beer. The thing gone in one week. All gone because we cannot drink the water, we just drink that beer.

So, that begs the question. What were all the secret things they did while they were on the clock, over in Cat Island?

How They (Tried) To Train Dogs To Hunt The Japanese

There were a couple of steps involved in order to try and train dogs to take down Japanese people. The first step was training them to go up to the right people, the second was to learn how to attack, and the third was to play hide and seek.

In the first step, the Japanese Americans would stand there, and the dogs would go up to them. When the dogs went up to them, they’d give the dog some meat and fire a pistol into the air. They did this over and over for four months. I’m guessing the dogs just got good at finding people who had meat on them… yum.

The second step wasn’t as pleasant, unfortunately for the dogs (and the humans involved, too).

And they told us they put a guard over here and we stay like this. And then when the sergeant tell him, “Kill ‘em,” the dog come right up and bite us here, see.  And then finally, the dog got a little more friendly with us. They tied the dog on the fence and they gave me like a whip to hit the dog. I go like this.

Oh, I feel so bad. That’s why I hit like this. I get scolding, tell, “Hit it hard, some more hit” until the thing bleed. That’s why the dog gets mad with you. And they tell ‘em, “Kill him.” I’m like this and, whoa, he bite me all over the place. So I hit the dog until he bled, see. Then he tell me, “Okay, walk ten yards back, turn around and go this way.” The dog was so mad at me because I hit him. Ho, he bite me, bite me like this. And then the sergeant comes, takes him away. And that’s the attack dog.

Lastly, they played hide and seek. They’d go someplace, wait for the dog to come find them, then wait for the dog to go away, then go hide somewhere else. They did all this while batting mosquitoes and avoiding alligators. At least it was only a four hour work day, I guess.

What Happened?

I think you know – the dogs couldn’t tell the difference between Japanese people and other people, and since they were mostly donated dogs from loving families, they’d often just lose interest and become friendly. Our Swiss dog training friend Prestre was fired in Feburary 1943 after a couple of dog shows for the big boys, and the island was converted over to a more traditional dog training island (i.e. no more sniffing out the blood of Japanese people). This went on for a while, but then was eventually closed down in July, 1944 after training approximately 400 dogs.

If you want to read more about Cat Island’s crazy dog training programs, you can read Ray Nosaka’s (one of the 25 Japanese Americans on Cat Island) interview, with the Cat Island parts here and here.

P.S. If you like dogs, you should follow Tofugu on Twitter, Here.

P.P.S. If you like cats, you should subscribe to the Tofugu Newsletter, Here.

Dog trainers of Cat Island

Ship Island is where they’d stay in between trips to Cat Island

Image of Cat Island

Want to read about a more pleasant “Cat Island?” Here’s an island in Japan, populated by cats.

I’m working on another post, but with that comes procrastination, and with that, comes Japanese cat videos. I can’t take credit for this one, though. Viet found this one, then commented about it on Erin’s photo blog, and then Erin showed it to me. This is 100% pure fat Japanese cat gold, though. There are a ton of videos, which I’m about to relay here (some of these don’t allow me to embed, so you’ll have to click through to see them).

Now, even though this cat is sitting on its butt and looks like a grumpy, fat, drunk, old Japanese dude, it’s actually only 5.4kg (just under 12 pounds), which isn’t that heavy. This cat consists of a lot of fur, aparently, as you’ll see in the next video. It’s the shampoo diet!

Dang, this cat looks really sad. What amazes me about this cat is that it puts up with everything. And when I say everything, I really mean everything.

The can’ts name is shiro-buu (白ブー), where 白 means white, and ブー is probably referring to its weight (that’s kind of a guess, let me know if I’m wrong!). Let’s see what else Shiro-buu tolerates.

Not only is Shiro-buu wearing bunny ears, but that’s a little pink wig underneith. Makes me want to get a cat and dress it up, though I imagine most cats aren’t as patient. I guess this cat does have the good life sometimes…

Here we see Shiro-buu underneath the kotatsu (a low table with a futon, and a heat source underneath). That’s a smart (and very warm cat). When he’s not lazing about, he’s sitting about, getting fed by humans.

Or hanging out inside of boxes… I don’t imagine he could get out of that thing on his own…

And, luckily it does get some exercise, sometimes, though it is attached to a leash.

So, there you have it. The product of procrastination. You’ll never see a better cat post here, at least not anytime soon. Back to work for me! If you fancy this post, please give it a tweet or stumble! This cat is oh so stumbly. Here’s the rest of the videos. High quality regularly updated cat goodness.