Dog and Cat Meat and Fur Trades Japan

The dog and cat meat trade in JAPAN (Asia):

Japan imports dog and cat meat for human consumption.  (Kitada, 2018, Asian Dog Meat Report)

An investigation conducted by the World Dog Alliance in 2018 showed there are over 100 dog meat restaurants in Japan, with an estimated 500 U.S. tons (453 metric tons) being imported into Japan since around 2004.  Five-hundred tons is equivalent to the amount of meat harvested from 100,000 dogs.  World Dog Alliance is urging Japanese legislators to ban human consumption of dog meat in Japan.  (Mak, 2019, Tokyo Dog Meat Investigation)

Most Japanese people do not know about the existence of human dog meat consumption in Japan.  (Kitada, 2018, Asian Dog Meat Report)

China and Vietnam export frozen dog meat to Japan.  Some of the restaurants in Japan that serve dog meat are in Shin-okubo, Ikebukuro, Ueno, Osaka, Nagoya, and Yokohama.  In the documentary film Asian Dog Meat Report, an activist from Koreandogs (.org) visited Japanese restaurants that serve dog meat and asked them to stop serving it.  A restaurant owner in Yokohama got angry at him and said that dog meat is cultural and it was none of the activist’s business to ask him to stop selling the meat.  The activist tried to petition city council members (in an unnamed city) to ban dog meat, saying “dog meat is the by-product of atrocities and crimes committed in the dog meat trade.”  The activist showed the council members videos of a dog being held down with a pole in a boiling cauldron of water, a live dog being thrown into a barrel of boiling water with men holding the top down so the dog could not escape, a dog being hung and blow-torched to death while the public walks by, a dog being beaten to death at a slaughterhouse, and dogs in a small cage being stabbed.  The council members were upset by what they saw and appealed to several lawmakers, with no results.  Meat from microchipped pet dogs is imported into Japan, but Japanese import administration officials state they are not aware that imported dog meat is mixed with pet dogs.  Some people fight dogs against each other in Japan and there are suspicions that these people eat the dogs that lose the fights.  (Kitada, 2018, Asian Dog Meat Report)

Japan instituted the 1973 Act on Welfare and Management of Animals on October 1, 1973, and it was revised in May 2014.  The Act states that no person shall destroy, injure, or inflict cruelty on animals without reason.  (1973 Act on Welfare and Management of Animals, 1973 and 2014) 

(Information on the dog and cat fur trade is pending.)