Hachikō 忠犬ハチ公 Turns 103: A Tribute To The World's Most Loyal Dog
On his heavenly birthday, remembering my visit to Japan’s most beloved dog, and the reunion that gives his story a different ending.
I once traveled to Japan and stood before a bronze statue of a dog. But it wasn't just any dog. I first read about Hachikō in Tom Kelley’s The Ten Faces of Innovation. Later, visiting his statue outside Tokyo’s Shibuya Station, I found myself moved by a life that ended long before I was born.
I wrote about that experience in “Love & Loyalty Unleashed.” Today, on November 10th, the birthday widely celebrated for Hachikō, I find myself returning to him. Born in 1923, he would be 103 this year.
The more I learn about him, the more I want to look beyond the familiar image of the dog who waited. There was affection before the waiting. There were people who cared for him during it. And there's another statue that gives us something the famous one cannot: a reunion.
Before He Became a Legend
Hachikō began life as Hachi, an Akita puppy born near Ōdate in northern Japan. In early 1924, he joined the household of Hidesaburō Ueno, a professor of agricultural engineering at Tokyo Imperial University, now the University of Tokyo. They had only about sixteen months together.
On May 21st, 1925, Ueno died suddenly from a cerebral hemorrhage. Hachi would outlive him by nearly ten years, returning repeatedly to Shibuya Station until his own death on March 8th, 1935.
That imbalance stays with me: such a brief time together, followed by such a long and endearing attachment.
We often hear the story as a daily ritual: the professor takes the train to work, the dog meets him, and then one evening the professor suddenly dies. Hachikō visits the train station every day, for nearly 10 years, waiting for his master's return. Until one day, he is found dead near Shibuya Station.
The University of Tokyo’s historical research offers a more complicated picture. Ueno generally walked to his nearby campus; Hachikō also accompanied him to its gate. The professor used Shibuya Station for other journeys.
The station vigil after Ueno’s death remains central to Hachikō’s history. But the familiar version has smoothed a real life into a tidier story, one perfect for a social media post. For me, the fuller account makes him much more compelling. He was a living dog with habits, relationships, and a world we can only presume.
The People Who Looked After Hachikō
It's easy to imagine Hachikō spending those years entirely alone. But he had caregivers. After changes of home, he came to live with Kikuzaburō Kobayashi, Ueno’s former gardener, near the neighborhood he knew. And his return to Shibuya continued. day after day, Year after year.
In 1932, Hirokichi Saitō, founder of the Japanese Dog Preservation Society, brought his story to a wider audience through a newspaper article. Concern for the aging dog grew, and station staff and others helped care for him.
The story of Hachikō reminds us just how strong the bond between dog and human can be. But we should also remember the people who noticed him, fed him, and made room for him. A story about devotion becomes richer when we recognize the kindness that helped sustain it.
This is one way to honor him today: notice and love an animal whose needs have become easy to overlook.
Hachikō’s story continues to create relationships of its own. In a 2023 Asahi Shimbun article, an Italian admirer named Stephanie Carletti described how her fascination with him led to correspondence with Professor Ueno’s grandson, Kazuto. By the centennial of Hachikō’s birth, she was planning her first visit to Japan, and another generation of the professor’s family was looking forward to meeting her. A dog remembered for waiting had become the reason strangers reached out to one another.
I understand something about that pull. It brought me across the world to Shibuya, too.
A Statue That Had to Come Home Again
Hachikō attended the unveiling of his first Shibuya statue in 1934. Isn't that something? Before he became a memory, he stood beside his own monument.
But the statue I visited was not that original bronze, a distinction I should have made in my earlier essay. The first was surrendered for the wartime metal collection. Its replacement was erected in 1948, made by Takeshi Andō, son of the original sculptor, Teru Andō.
The inscription on the front of the statue reads 忠犬ハチ公 (Chūken Hachikō), meaning:
“Hachikō, the faithful dog.”
忠犬 — loyal or faithful dog
ハチ公 — Hachikō, his name
The characters run vertically, from top to bottom.
Even his monument has a story of loss and return.
And the place associated with a dog’s long wait became a meeting place for people. Friends arrange to find one another beside him. Visitors arrive from across the world. There's something deeply moving and ironic about that transformation.
A place remembered for a separation now helps bring people together.
The Reunion
At the University of Tokyo, another sculpture tells a different part of the story. Unveiled on March 8th, 2015, eighty years after Hachikō’s death, Tsutomu Ueda’s bronze depicts a joyful greeting between the dog and Professor Ueno. Hachikō rises toward him; the professor reaches to welcome him (see photo below).
I have visited the Shibuya statue. This reunion is one I would love to see as well.
The university’s volunteers chose to remember the happiness the two had shared. Their sculpture allows us to imagine the greeting that history denied them (at least here on earth!).
What We Bring to Hachikō
We'll never know what Hachikō understood about Ueno’s absence. Affection, habit, memory, familiar people and places: we cannot untangle them completely from this distance. That uncertainty is part of his mystique.
So is our recognition. Anyone who has been greeted by a dog knows how much feeling can be expressed without a word. Anyone who has lost one knows how a doorway, a walking route, or an empty place beside a chair can hold a presence long after a life has ended.
Hachikō gives that feeling a shape and meaning.
When I think back to my visit, I return to the question his story leaves with us:
How do we care for the beings
who trust us so completely?
We can answer in ordinary ways. Take the walk. Offer patience. Put down the phone when a familiar face looks up. Give the animals in our care a life worthy of their love, loyalty and affection.
Happy birthday, old friend.
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All photographs by Michael Kennedy (unless otherwise noted) / BlueWolfGallery.com
I’m Michael Kennedy, a resident of Olympic Valley, CA (in photo above with Nicola and Boo - our loving, loyal, and affectionate dog). I’m a writer and photographer and I love exploring nature and getting lost along the way. We live in a world that demands our attention and I just want to say thank you for your attention. If you enjoyed this post, please share this with a friend. For more photos and stories visit BlueWolfGallery.com.
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