Exhibition on ties between Helen Keller, Hachiko held in New York

January 25, 2018

New York- An exhibition on rarely known relations between Helen Keller and "Hachiko," a faithful Akita dog in Tokyo that waited for its owner's return home for years after his death, has been held at the Japanese consulate-general in New York.

According to the exhibition's planner, Yumi McDonald, an author living in the United States, Keller (1880-1968) was a big fan of Hachiko and brought back an Akita dog with her when she first visited Japan.

Keller, a US social welfare activist, lost her sight and hearing when she was one year and seven months old due to an illness and also had difficulty speaking.

She kept various kinds of dogs from early childhood to her later years, finding her delight in interactions with animals.

At the time of her first visit to Japan in 1937, Keller, impressed by the story of Hachiko, said to relevant people that she wanted an Akita dog, according to records.

Responding to Keller's wish, the late Ichiro Ogasawara, who was vice president of an Akita dog preservation association in Japan at the time, gave her an Akita puppy, named Kamikazego, as a gift.

But the puppy died two months after moving to the United States.

Ogasawara, who learned of the puppy's death, sent another Akita dog to Keller, this time an adult dog of three years, named Kenzango, in 1939. Keller is said to have spent many years with this Akita dog at her home in Connecticut.

At the exhibition in New York, which will run through Thursday, visitors can look at photographs and letters of those days, as well as a magazine with a photo of Keller smiling and touching the newly-built statue of Hachiko in front of Tokyo's Shibuya Station, the place where the dog waited for its owner. This photo was taken when she visited Japan for the second time in 1948.

These materials will also be put on display at an exhibition in Los Angeles in March and will then be donated to a museum in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward. Jiji Press