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at g.co. Hey, it's Michael. Today

0:32

we have something really special for you,

0:35

a blissful break from the news. It's

0:38

a new series from NYT Audio called

0:41

Animal. My colleague,

0:43

Sam Anderson from The Times Magazine,

0:46

traveled the world to have encounters with

0:48

animals, not to

0:50

claim them or to tame them, but

0:53

just to appreciate them. Each

0:55

episode is a journey to get

0:57

closer to a creature that Sam

0:59

loves. For the next

1:01

six weeks, we'll be running this limited series

1:04

every Sunday here on The Daily Feed. But

1:06

if you want to hear all the episodes

1:08

right now, you can search for it wherever

1:10

you get your podcasts. Today,

1:14

episode five. Take

1:16

a listen. From

1:22

the New York Times, this is

1:24

Animal. I'm Sam Anderson. Episode

1:29

five, Wolves. Well,

1:41

we should... This shop closes at

1:43

six. Do you think we'll be back by then?

1:46

Yes, 5.15. Maybe. I

1:50

can't imagine that there would be a

1:53

ton to do. No, I agree. I

1:56

don't think we need to do that much. I mean,

1:58

we just want to make the pilgrimage. the

2:00

statue, yeah? Okay, okay.

2:02

You know about the statue? No. Okay,

2:06

we're going to tell you in the car. Okay.

2:08

And you can tell the driver. Okay. The first

2:10

thing I remember about our trip to the Wolf

2:12

statue is that we almost didn't go. People

2:15

told us not to bother. The

2:18

memorial is out in the middle of

2:20

absolute nowhere on the edge of this

2:22

tiny village in Japan. It

2:24

would take all day to get there and

2:27

probably be a giant anti-climax.

2:31

But I was already in Japan because

2:33

I was working on a story for

2:35

the magazine about Hayao Miyazaki, the animator.

2:38

And since I had come

2:40

this far, I just felt

2:42

like I really needed to do this.

2:46

That's really boring. Bullet

2:49

train from Tokyo to

2:51

Kyoto. Regular

2:54

train from Kyoto to a smaller

2:56

city called Nara, just famous

2:58

for its deer. We

3:01

come out of the train station

3:03

and it's pouring rain. That's

3:05

another reason not to go on the pilgrimage

3:08

because it's just soaking

3:10

rain constantly all day long.

3:13

I'm with Crystal Duham who's

3:16

carrying a gigantic microphone around

3:18

everywhere. And then Samson

3:21

Yi, our incredible

3:23

interpreter. And

3:25

so we step out of the train station into the rain

3:27

and there's this black car waiting for us. And

3:30

out steps our driver who's this 30

3:33

something man, nicely

3:36

dressed. He's wearing like a gray

3:38

suit with a red tie. Samson

3:42

talks to him and says his name is Daisuke,

3:45

Daisuke-san to be polite. And

3:49

Samson climbed into the front of the

3:51

taxi to sit next to Daisuke so

3:54

that he can interpret our conversation. It's

4:00

okay for you to record his stock.

4:04

He may not be able to meet your

4:06

expectations. We

4:08

start heading out of the city on

4:10

this kind of wild,

4:12

windy back road. And

4:15

immediately we're sort of in the middle

4:17

of nowhere and it's still pouring. It's

4:19

foggy. We're passing through woods and

4:22

bamboo. And

4:25

it is really beautiful. It feels like we're

4:27

driving into an old landscape painting. So,

4:33

Samson, let me tell you about the statue since you

4:35

have no idea what we're doing. Yeah,

4:37

I remember asking. Well,

4:40

maybe ask Daisuke-san if he knows anything about

4:42

the Japanese wolf. Can

4:46

you ask Daisuke-san, our

4:48

driver, if he knows anything about

4:50

the Japanese wolf? So

4:52

Samson did and no, he'd

4:55

never heard about it. I

4:57

don't know anything about the wolf, but I

4:59

love animals and I have a chihuahua at

5:01

home. I have a chihuahua. What's

5:04

the name of the chihuahua?

5:06

Chihuahua. Gotaro.

5:10

Gotaro. Boy's

5:12

name. It

5:14

has a boy's name but it's a girl.

5:18

Poor Gotaro. And

5:22

Samson laughed because Gotaro is a

5:24

very male Japanese name. It's like

5:26

apparently like some kind of warrior

5:28

name. He said the Chinese character

5:30

for it means like hard metal.

5:33

And Daisuke

5:36

named this chihuahua the

5:38

most masculine tough name he could think

5:40

of. Because

5:42

chihuahuas are so fierce and have

5:44

such strong personalities. So

5:47

he did that deliberately. And

5:50

the fact that he would connect that to wolves, that

5:52

was the funny thing about him. It's like instantly we

5:54

said wolves and he was like

5:56

oh I love animals and I have a dog. A chihuahua.

6:00

which is on one hand a hilarious

6:02

answer, but on the other

6:04

hand makes perfect sense because

6:07

wolves and dogs, I

6:11

came to learn on this trip, are essentially

6:13

the same thing. I mean we went to

6:15

talk to one of the great dog

6:18

scientists on planet Earth and

6:21

he was telling me that dogs

6:24

are really just wolves that

6:27

have developed over thousands of years

6:29

a very intimate relationship with human

6:31

beings. He's done

6:33

all this incredible research including discovering

6:36

that dogs cry

6:40

when their owners come home after

6:42

a long period away. They have moisture

6:45

in their eyes and

6:48

wolves don't. So that's one

6:50

of the ways they're different. But otherwise they're

6:52

just, it's more a continuum than

6:54

it is a bright line that

6:56

divides them. So Daisuke

6:58

got that right away. He was like, you're asking me

7:01

about wolves? I'm going to talk about my dog. I

7:03

was explaining what we've been doing in the

7:05

last few days. So I'd

7:08

been spending the last few days of

7:10

my trip in Japan learning about wolves.

7:13

And so I started telling Daisuke-san

7:15

the epic saga of the Japanese

7:17

wolf. The basic story

7:19

is there used to be wolves in

7:22

these mountains everywhere all

7:24

over Japan. I

7:27

think of a wolf as an American. I think of

7:29

like a big timber wolf or a gray wolf, like

7:31

a big snarling

7:34

mean dog. Japanese

7:37

wolves were different. They

7:39

were smaller and

7:42

sort of a reddish khaki

7:44

color and cute. Weirdly

7:47

cute for a wolf. Before

7:50

I went on this trip, I read this

7:53

book called The Lost Wolves of Japan by

7:55

a historian named Brett

7:57

Walker. And basically...

8:00

for many thousands of years, wolves

8:03

roamed all over Japan and

8:06

people revered them. They saw

8:08

them as sacred guardians. They

8:11

protected crops. People

8:13

worshiped at wolf shrines and

8:15

they left offerings of rice and beans

8:18

outside of wolf dens. But

8:21

then in the 1700s, there

8:24

was this big rabies outbreak that

8:26

made wolves actually quite dangerous. Wolves

8:29

were killing people. And

8:31

then in the 1800s, there is a

8:33

huge cultural shift in Japan where

8:36

the country started to quote

8:38

unquote modernize. People

8:40

started doing Western style agriculture,

8:42

huge cattle herds. And

8:44

so wolves began to seem

8:47

like pests. They were killing livestock.

8:49

They were encroaching

8:51

on these cities that were growing deeper

8:53

into the wilderness. And

8:56

so Japan decided it was done with

8:58

its wolves. And

9:00

the government sends out

9:02

these hunting parties to systematically

9:05

exterminate the Japanese

9:07

wolf. And they did.

9:09

They used guns, they used poison, they

9:12

used traps. As

9:14

far as we know, the

9:18

last Japanese

9:20

wolf was killed in 1905. And

9:23

it's historically documented and they know where it

9:25

was exactly and they know which wolf it

9:27

was. It was a male wolf

9:29

and it was brought dead and

9:34

sold to a Western man in 1905. They

9:37

say the last known Japanese wolf, it

9:39

was seen kind of skulking

9:42

around this lumber yard in a little remote village.

9:45

And somebody shot it and

9:47

sold it to a Western man who

9:49

was passing through town collecting it. And

9:52

so the statue that we're going to is the which

12:01

turned out to be much more than we were prepared

12:03

for. What

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12:18

whales? My name is Lauren Harrell and I'm a

12:20

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g.co/cloud. All right,

12:51

guys, how would you describe our podcast?

12:53

Matter of opinion. Extremely

12:56

civilized exchange of high minded

12:58

ideas. I swear if somebody

13:00

says dinner party conversation, I'm slapping them.

13:02

It's an airing of grievances, right? Somewhere

13:05

in between, I hope. Maybe the easiest

13:07

way to explain what matter of opinion

13:09

is, is actually to share what our

13:11

listeners have to say about us. Listener

13:13

Tobias said, matter of opinion

13:16

is a great podcast for anyone

13:18

engaged with social issues and politics

13:20

on any level. The

13:23

lighthearted but testy conversations about

13:25

truly divisive topics pique my

13:27

interest. Lighthearted but testy.

13:30

That's totally you, Ross. I'm putting that on

13:32

my headstone. My back is getting a little

13:34

sore from all this padding. From

13:37

New York Times opinion, I'm Michelle Cottle. I'm

13:40

Ross Douthat. I'm Carlos Lozada. I'm Lydia Polgreen.

13:42

And don't just take our work for it.

13:44

Make up your own mind and follow matter

13:46

of opinion wherever you get your podcasts. So

13:53

we are still

13:55

in this car. Maybe

13:57

we're halfway to the trip at this point. got

18:00

home, the Chihuahua's left

18:02

eye was like

18:04

really red and was like

18:06

bulging. We took

18:08

the Chihuahua to the hospital and

18:11

he lost his left eye.

18:22

Even Gotaro is a dog. Gotaro

18:24

is also family and

18:26

I just couldn't forgive him. And

18:32

I told him that we just can't live together

18:35

anymore. And

18:47

we decided to leave. We decided to leave his

18:49

house. I told my wife and

18:51

my children that

18:53

they are free to stay if they want.

19:08

So my wife can stay with his

19:11

parents if he started you if she

19:13

wants but I'm leaving. I'm leaving

19:15

with Gotaro. In

19:30

the end, there are five of us. Me,

19:33

my wife and my two children and Bepchihuahua

19:36

left that house. Now we're

19:38

living away from the

19:40

dad. We

19:53

never see her

19:56

dad ever again after that incident. When

20:00

we fact-checked the story, we talked to

20:02

Daisuke's wife and the vet who treated

20:04

Gotoro for her injuries. And

20:07

they both corroborated what Daisuke told us.

20:10

And we tried to

20:12

reach the father-in-law directly, but

20:14

we weren't able to talk to him. Daisuke

20:17

told us his father-in-law denied hurting

20:20

Gotoro. We

20:22

also found out a couple of other things. First,

20:26

Gotoro actually lost the vision in

20:29

her right eye, not her left.

20:31

It was a detached retina. And

20:34

also that Gotoro was not always

20:37

named Gotoro. Originally, she

20:40

was named Love. That's

20:43

actually the name the vet knew her by. And

20:45

Daisuke says when his father-in-law got

20:48

angry, he would shout the word

20:50

Love over and over. And

20:58

Daisuke decided he didn't want to

21:00

relive that trauma anymore. And

21:03

that's when he thought of this name Gotoro.

21:06

He wanted to give the dog this

21:08

tough warrior name. Sorry,

21:12

the story has

21:14

gotten all serious, he's

21:16

right there. Yeah, that's

21:19

very intense. So, Gotoro

21:22

has no left eye. So

21:56

he's saying how you know how when humans...

22:01

You know how when humans when you

22:03

lose sight, use your sight of one

22:05

eye it can really

22:08

affect your everyday life, but

22:10

then it's not so much for dog because

22:13

For dog of course the dog can see but

22:16

he also rely on his smell a lot more So

22:19

perhaps it doesn't affect the

22:22

dog's life It's

22:24

interesting when he said life When

22:27

he referred to dog he says jinsei which means

22:29

humans life so

22:32

he really think that the dog

22:34

is just like human and The

22:36

fact that he has lost his

22:38

left eye might not have as much of

22:40

an effect to the dog As

22:43

it would it was a person I

22:56

mean Despite

23:08

the fact that the incident

23:10

made me really angry and really

23:13

sad and it was like a huge thing to me

23:16

Perhaps and and I tried

23:18

to think it this way. I tried

23:20

to put it this way perhaps for the dog

23:23

It's almost like a blocked nose You know

23:26

and and maybe it's not that big

23:28

a deal for it I

23:30

tried to think it like that so that

23:33

I can I can keep my

23:35

keeps keep saying And

23:39

it's really you know the dog itself it

23:42

is really healthy and and and

23:44

both always just fine during just fine If

23:54

we have a chance later I can

23:56

show you video of goat at all