Beyond Japan Transcript
Series 2, Episode 25: Pets & Animal Cafés with Brittany Rapone
Edited by Oliver Moxham, Host and Producer (27/4/2022)

OM: Oliver Moxham
BR: Brittany Rapone

Copyright © 2022 Oliver Moxham, ℗ 2022 Oliver Moxham. May be freely distributed for education
purposes.
1

OM: Hello and welcome to Beyond Japan, an interdisciplinary podcast that looks at thebroad reach of Japanese Studies from within and beyond Japan. This podcast isbrought to you by the Centre for Japanese Studies at the Sainsbury Institute for the
Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures in collaboration with the University of East Anglia.
I’m your host, Oliver Moxham, Research Project Coordinator at the Sainsbury Instituteand researcher of language and Japanese war heritage.
Today we are joined by Brittany Rapone, PhD candidate at the School of Social
Sciences at Oxford Brookes University, to discuss attitudes towards pets and animal
cafes in Japan. Brittany walks us through the cultural commonality of human-animal
relationships and the “rent-a-pet” model of animal cafes in Japan, providing the iyashi,or “comfort”, of animal interaction at an hourly rate.
We hope you enjoy the show.
***
OM: Okay, good morning, Brittany, thank you for joining me on the podcast today.
BR: Thank you for having me.
OM: So, first of all, I would like to know a bit more about you. Can you tell us about yourarea of expertise and how your interests have brought you there?
BR: Well, as a PhD student in anthropology, I've been brushing up on just generalsociocultural Japanese anthropology, but my previous background was more focused
Copyright © 2022 Oliver Moxham, ℗ 2022 Oliver Moxham. May be freely distributed for education
purposes.
2

on animals and animal conservation. So, my expertise has become where those twoareas would cross in a Venn diagram, I guess.
So, that's why I've been focusing a lot on pet trade and animal cafés in Japan, so I
could combine my expertise on animals related to conservation in addition to thesociocultural issues of Japan.
OM: Great. So, let's provide some context to animals in Japan. Pet ownership is one of
the great constants of human societies, although key elements vary from culture toculture, such as what animals should and shouldn't be pets or what the purposes of petsare. Could you provide us with some of these fundamentals around pets in Japan?
BR: Yes. So, I liked when you talked about it being one of the great constants, because
that's something I realized too, when I was doing some research into it. Just the key
events and the timings have been different around the world, but the progression frompeople mostly just using animals for utilitarian purposes to gradually becoming moreindoor pet family members has sort of happened around the world.
In Japan specifically, though, there's interestingly a few people who do research on pet
funerals and pet cemeteries in Japan. So, you can find [actual] pet cemeteries withtombstones from 1905-1910 and things like that, that a great majority of them and agreat increase in pets was mostly after World War II and [USA] occupation. [As] theeconomy blossomed in Japan, and many things that used to be for the elites, for theupper class, kind of became middle class, common things to own, and one of those
things was pets. It's actually often referred to as a "pet boom", but the more I look at it, I
Copyright © 2022 Oliver Moxham, ℗ 2022 Oliver Moxham. May be freely distributed for education
purposes.
3

don't know if "boom" is actually the correct word. The Japanese government does a lotof surveys every three years, basically on any topic, and they've [been conducted] since1974. They did a general opinion survey on animals and animal protection and things
like that. Even since 1974, when they first did it, to the most recent one in 2010, in
general, when they ask people "do you have a pet?" it's always been around between
30-35% of the population, so that's been pretty stable for a long time.
What I think has changed, though, is what you were talking about, the types of pets thathave become common to keep and how people view pets as part of their family
members. While the rate of people owning pets has stayed pretty constant since 1974,
one interesting thing I noticed was that birds in Japan used to be fairly common pets
according to this survey. [As] time has gone on, that's drastically decreased, whereas
dogs have been the most significant increase in ownership. So, [it's] not necessarily therate of pets changing the past few decades, but perhaps just the type of pets being
commonly kept.
OM: I see. And how does that compare with British or American pet-keeping habits?
BR: So, from what I can tell, it seems that it's fairly similar again to many other parts of
the world, including in the UK and the US, just as the general progression might haveoccurred slightly later, but when you [are] reading about lots of the issues in current day
Japan that has to do with pets and people's concerns that pets are replacing children,that young people prefer pets over starting a family, lots of the same exact topics thatcome up and related to modern day pets in Japan are actually being talked about in the
Copyright © 2022 Oliver Moxham, ℗ 2022 Oliver Moxham. May be freely distributed for education
purposes.
4

US and the UK. Similar with the [COVID-19] pandemic, there was lots of [talk] about lotsof people adopting and buying pets in the US, and then as I came here during the
pandemic to the UK, [I have been] reading about that too as being a big thing, [about] adrastic increase in the amount of adoptions in pets. [While] talking to some Japanese
friends – I haven't been able to see the numbers on this, but just casually talking toJapanese friends – they were speaking of the exact same phenomenon happening inJapan, that as the pandemic increased the "work from home" situation, that there was a
big rise in people getting pets.
OM: Fascinating. So, a defining feature of pets in Japan isn't pet ownership, but a kindof "pet renting" in the form of animal cafés, ranging from cat cafés to owl cafés. How did
this industry start out and how is it distinct from private pet ownership?
BR: Okay, so the pet cafés start with the cat café. That's probably the most well-known.
There's a café in Taiwan that from 1998 took the claim of the first cat café, but fromwhat I understand it was a café in which cats could casually wander in and out as theyplease. [That's] not really what the modern-day cat café is, but that concept sort of grewout of there and went to other countries in East and Southeast Asia – I think actually
first South Korea and then it came to Japan in 2004, I believe [that was when] the firstcat café [opened]. It functions on the model that it's a café in which you can get foodand drinks but there's a bunch of cats that are just lounging about that you can interact
with as you please. They're most common actually in Osaka and Tokyo, but you canfind these throughout Japan and again, these actually can be found throughout East
Copyright © 2022 Oliver Moxham, ℗ 2022 Oliver Moxham. May be freely distributed for education
purposes.
5and Southeast Asia as well, and slowly they have been popping up in the more Westernworld. There's a couple in London, I know there's at least one in Edinburgh. There's acouple that pop up in the US, but they're actually in general different than the Japaneseones, which I can go on to explain that later, but one thing that Japan sort of started was
the non-domesticated exotic [animal café].
So, in addition to cat cafés, there are also rabbit cafés and things like that – again, sortof typical pet animals – but from Japan [came] actually the first owl café and from there
it sort of has exploded into being cafés that have multiple niches. Owl cafés areprobably the most common of the exotic ones but there's also ones that specialize in
reptiles, snakes, [etc.]. There's a lot of them that are just called shōdōbutsu, just "small
animal" cafés that will feature sometimes things that are again still typical pets, such as
gerbils and guinea pigs and things like that, but more and more exotic. [Usually] it'sreferred to in Japanese as mezurashi animals such as meerkats, otters, prairie dogs,[etc.]. The original reason I actually got into this was because my advisor was looking
into slow loris trafficking in Japan and I've seen cafés online with slow lorises. Sugar
gliders are very commonly found, [it's] just like a hodgepodge of these small, cutemammals. So, these exotic cafés can also be found pretty much throughout East andSoutheast Asia. I've heard that South Korea has recently banned these cafés which isinteresting because they have a few raccoon cafés in South Korea. It will be interesting
to see what happens to all those raccoons, but these sort of exotic cafés, while we dohave some of these sort of seedy roadside zoo things in the US, you're not going to findany sort of like exotic animal cafés like you can in East and Southeast Asia.
Copyright © 2022 Oliver Moxham, ℗ 2022 Oliver Moxham. May be freely distributed for education
purposes.
6

I use the word café, but it's also important to note that the café aspect really varies.
Some of them are just like indoor petting zoos, and it's like, "oh, here's a water bottle",
and that's the café aspect, whereas others [have] a full menu, with drinks and things like
that, that you can enjoy while looking at a lizard or something.
OM: Sure. So, I'm intrigued by the different affective levels amongst the clientele. Do
regular visitors develop personal attachments to individual animals, making them a kindof pet substitute, or is it more of like observational practice? What's the level ofengagement with the animals here?
BR: There's been some literature published focusing on cat cafés, some ethnographic
work that shows that basically all types of people go into these cafés, people bythemselves, couples, groups of friends, [etc.]. What these individuals doing this
ethnographic work discovered that really caught their interest was these regulars whocame all the time by themselves and were often middle-aged salary men/women who
were coming in every day after work, and a lot of these people would have favourites.
An interesting aspect too is a lot of people who go to these cafés, when they've done
surveys, actually have cats at home as well. So, it's kind of like a vacation pet. I don't
know if that makes sense. It's interesting to see. When these people who were theregulars, who the ethnographic work was focused on, when they were interviewed tofigure out, "why do you come here?", pretty much with every single person, the conceptof iyashi came up, which is commonly directly translated as "healing" in English, but it's
not necessarily like a physical healing per se. It's like a mental, emotional sort of
Copyright © 2022 Oliver Moxham, ℗ 2022 Oliver Moxham. May be freely distributed for education
purposes.
7

healing. I think also like rejuvenation, renew, relaxing, that sort of stuff all kind of falls
under the bubble of iyashi, anything that regenerates you for the next day, because
these were all people that were really usually stressed in their personal lives. [They] had
really intensive work obligations – lots of them were in customer service – so they hadvery strict sort of social interactions where they constantly have to use keigo (honorificJapanese). A few people on the opposite end of the spectrum were the hikokomori, the"shut-in" people, who were looking to get out but not ready necessarily to jump on out tofull society. So, visiting the cat café with the cats was like a transitionary step for themgetting back out there. So, that's something that I found really interesting.
[However], doing my research, basically, there's been no ethnographic work at all on
these more exotic cafés, such as the owls, the shōdōbutsu, [or] the reptiles. That's what
I'm really interested in and really hoping to get Japan to do because I want to know, arethe motivations the same? Are people going to owl cafés or iyashi, or is it more like anovelty thing? Are there regulars at a lot of pet cafés or is it just more like a one-off sortof thing? These are all unknowns right now and pretty much the only research on exotic
cafés so far has been just numbering them, like seeing how many there are in Japanand watching the progress as they rise over time, but again there hasn't been any sortof ethnographic work. So, the differences between them and the cat cafés I so far don't
know.
OM: I've personally never been to a pet café while in Japan. I was under the impressionthat people went there for the selfies, so I'm surprised to hear a large chunk of the
Copyright © 2022 Oliver Moxham, ℗ 2022 Oliver Moxham. May be freely distributed for education
purposes.
8

clientele go by themselves a personal comfort. Have you visited these sort of places
before yourself?
BR: So, I have actually never been to one before either and I don't know why, I reallylike animals. So, just the previous times I've been in Japan it just wasn't something thatcame up, so I've never been to one of these cafés myself. However, one thing thatmany years ago – maybe 2010, so about a decade ago now - the first time I went toJapan I was with some friends and we were in a mall just exploring and in the mall there
was a pet shop and we decided to go on in and this pet shop was not like anything you
would ever see in a mall in the US. There was a wallaby! It completely blew my mind.
There was a giant tortoise walking around, there was an iguana, and owls. I think thewallabies stuck out to me actually the most out of everything. I just remember being sosurprised that this was just in a mall out and about and I actually forgot about thatmemory for many years until I started doing this research and I remember thinking, "ohyeah, I could have just bought a Wallaby if I wanted to while I was in Japan." It was very
strange. So, I've never been to any of these cafés, but I have been able to witness with
my own eyes some of the interesting pet possibilities that you can get in Japan.
OM: Yeah, definitely. So, the term iyashi, which you referred to before, which can betranslated as "healing", "solace" or "therapy", is a prominent one in the literature around
pet cafés, referring to the comfort patrons receive for the hourly fee. In a nation where
discussion around mental health is relatively limited, could pet cafés be thought of as aspace for self-medication of sorts?
Copyright © 2022 Oliver Moxham, ℗ 2022 Oliver Moxham. May be freely distributed for education
purposes.
9BR: Yes, that's a really good question. So, basically [amongst] the three researchers
who really focused on the cafés, iyashi has been picked up as being a main reason [tovisit] and – I forget which author it was exactly – but she did refer to it sort of as an
informal therapy which I thought was really interesting because if you think about it,even in places where mental health is more openly talked about, the fact of the matter is[that] to receive help can be very difficult and very expensive. An hour in a pet cafe
versus an hour with a therapist, while not comparable at all [in] the experience you will
have, the accessibility to the average person to be able to go to one of these cafés islike I said, if you're in Tokyo and Osaka, they're everywhere and they're fairly cheap andthere's big chains of them. There's little "mom-and-pop shop"-type ones. You can reallyfind anything. You could find the café for you.
The iyashi aspect, though, I think it's also important to notice the iyashi. It's a talking
point when these cat cafés come up, but [with] iyashi services in general, a lot of things
fall into that category. So, while the cat cafés are just one example, the cat cafés would
be considered maybe a type of iyashi service in Japan. But there are many other things
that could be iyashi services, including things like a maid café, or host clubs, or evenlike sex work, getting a massage, getting your nails done, [etc.]. Lots of things that are
in America [would] lots of times [just] be referred to as a "treat yourself" kind of thing,
and that sort of seems to be the general equivalency of it. It's just like a way to treat
yourself, but it seems like a temporary band-aid sort of thing.

Copyright © 2022 Oliver Moxham, ℗ 2022 Oliver Moxham. May be freely distributed for education
purposes.
10

Some of these people, these regulars, from reading these papers, it was actuallyinteresting that they were like, "oh, I would never tell my co-workers I went to a cat
cafe", because they were like middle-aged men and they didn't want people to thinkthey were like cat otaku (fanatics) or something. So, it's interesting that [with] mental
health issues, talking about them can still be very stigmatized or controversial
everywhere, including in Japan. Even this alternative therapy of the cat café for somepeople was also something they didn't really want others to know about.
OM: Fascinating. So, we've covered how pets improve people's well-being, but let's lookat the well-being of the animals in these cafés. Some cafés keep exotic animals,
sometimes smuggled into the country like the slow loris and meerkats, as you
mentioned. What is the general level of care they receive and what kind of legal
protections do they have?
BR: Okay, so starting with the cat cafés, of course, that was one of the things thatpeople, as these became popular in Japan, [were concerned about], the welfare andhealth of the cats and things like that. [However], as they were a new service, too, there[weren't] really any laws to regulate them. In general, in my research, I could only
actually find one café that was ever shut down because of welfare issues. They seemed
more like hoarders than a café and had an insane number of cats in a small amount of
space.
As these cat cafés became more popular, the laws actually had to adapt to them, andthere is animal protection law in Japan that right now is reviewed every five years, and I
Copyright © 2022 Oliver Moxham, ℗ 2022 Oliver Moxham. May be freely distributed for education
purposes.
11

believe around 2010 it was amended to include that the displaying of animals could notoccur past 8 p.m. Apparently it was meant to target pet shops that were inentertainment areas, the kind of a thing where animals were being kept awake late atnight as a display rather than actually being used for looking for homes. It became a big
deal for cat cafés because most cat cafes are actually open until like 10 p.m. They said
it was a problem because apparently a lot of their clientele, these regulars are coming in
between 8 – 10 p.m. at night, and so from the complaints about it, the law is actuallyrevised to exclude cat cafés from the presentation of animals past 8 p.m. which is, I
think, interesting.
In general, though, animal protection laws in Japan are fairly weak, especially comparedto the US, Canada, the UK, [and] lots of Western Europe. While they're better than a lotof places in Southeast Asia in general, they're not that great. So, these cat cafés,people have gone there and sort of gotten a feel of them and been able to make theirown determinations, but again, there's been little to no work done on these exotic ones.
So, the only judgments that can be made right now are from a distance, so I don't wantto say anything like too distinctive, but from a distance, there are lots of obvious issues
that you can see already.
One of the things the law has to do with, all species have individual needs that are
unique to them, and a lot of these cafés just have again a hodgepodge of animals. Even
the owl cafés will have a variety of species, not a single owl, and you kind of wonder
how they are able to really cater to all these unique species that come from all over the
Copyright © 2022 Oliver Moxham, ℗ 2022 Oliver Moxham. May be freely distributed for education
purposes.
12

world, different climates, some nocturnal, some diurnal, some that are meant to live on
their own, some that are meant to live in groups, some that are meant to fly, some thatare terrestrial, are all being kept in an indoor petting zoo, not reflective of what theywould experience in the wild at all. So, again, while I haven't done any ethnographic
work and I can't say first-hand, from what you can tell from a distance is that the welfare
conditions of the animals in these more exotic places is questionable.
OM: I see. Well, thank you for answering all of my questions, Brittany, and good luckwith getting out to Japan to do your ethnographic research. We'll look forward to hearing
what comes from that. Before we finish the episode, can you share with us what otherprojects you're currently working on?
BR: Thank you. So, one of the things I'm working on is actually sort of related to what
you mentioned earlier about what is a pet in different places with the world. For me, thatwas one of the first thoughts I came up with, the idea of again, these cafés, they could
be like a temporary pet. While some people think it's okay to have them in a café andothers think they don't might just have to do with people's different definitions of what isa pet or what is domesticated, what is wild, what is exotic. As I was doing research on it
in English, I didn't realize that what is considered exotic, if you're talking about in theconservation world, if you're talking in the veterinary world or if you're just talking to thegeneral public, is going to be different. So, one of the first things I'm actually interested
in looking at is language and luckily this I can do. I don't need to be in Japan to do someof the work I want to do for this. I just need culturally Japanese people and Oxford is a
Copyright © 2022 Oliver Moxham, ℗ 2022 Oliver Moxham. May be freely distributed for education
purposes.
13

pretty international place, so that'll be great for me. But looking into how Japanesepeople categorize animals or what words they would use to describe these animals, I
figured out these exotic pet shops, they use the word mezurashi a lot, but they also
have the katakana word ekizochiku in Japanese, and there are yasei dōbutsu, "wildanimals". So, what terminology is used in Japanese to define these animals and maybe
what is considered a pet, what isn't, what's considered domesticated, what's nondomesticated? It would be interesting to do some comparative work with people fromthe UK or other countries and if I don't end up being able to go to Japan, that might be aroute I take, doing more comparative stuff.
OM: I see. Well, thank you once again, Brittany, it's been a real pleasure.
BR: Thank you.
***
OM: You can find a link to Brittany’s research profile in the description below. Don’t
forget to subscribe on JapanInNorwich.org or on your preferred podcast provider for
updates on new episodes. Join us for our next episode with Maud Rowell, freelance
journalist and author of Blind Spot: Exploring and Educating on Blindness, to discuss
Infrastructure for the Blind. Maud’s upcoming William Holman project, ‘Where Birds
Don’t Fly’, will see her independently travel the length and breadth of Japan todemonstrate that accessible public infrastructure can benefit us all.
We hope you will join us then. Thank you for listening.
Copyright © 2022 Oliver Moxham, ℗ 2022 Oliver Moxham. May be freely distributed for education
purposes.
14