First, scroll down for a little mood music (baby boomers, this may be a blast from the past!)
We paraphrase the song title to “The Name Change” because this post is about an Asian breed that was renamed.
It wasn’t the only time a Japanese breed was given a new moniker.
The Hokkaido Inu, for example, was originally called “Ainu Ken” and renamed “Hokkaido” in 1869 by an English zoologist for the region in which where they were found. The Japanese Chin, too, was initially known as the “Japanese spaniel” when it was first recognized by the American Kennel Club in the late 1880s, but renamed because it is not a true spaniel breed.
These examples reflect changes made to better reflect a breed’s origins, or because the original name was misleading.
There is another reason to rename a breed, and that is to avoid confusion. The Shikoku Ken was initially known as the Tosa Ken – logical, given that the breed originated in the Tosa province (now Kochi prefecture). However, the Japanese Mastiff was known to locals as the Tosa Fighting Dog, or ‘Tosa’ for short, and that lead to mistaken identities in casual conversation.
NIPPO, the Japanese Dog Preservation Society established in 1928, did not spearhead the effort to clear up the confusion, but it played a significant role in the process of renaming the Tosa Ken to Shikoku Ken (also logical because the breed originated in the Tosa province of Shikoku island. Around the time that NIPPO was lobbying for the breed to be declared a “Living Natural Monument” of Japan (1937), it was still officially referred to as “Tosa Ken” or “Tosa Inu.” As part of its mission to preserve native Japanese breeds, NIPPO worked on standardizing the nihon ken breeds, and this likely helped solidify the new name of the breed also found in other prefectures of Shikoku. When NIPPO successfully facilitated the breed’s designation as a national monument in June of 1937, it was still under the name “Tosa Ken” or “Tosa Inu,” but within a couple of years, ‘Shikoku Ken’ began to be more widely used, and that is how the breed is known today.
Image: Shikoku by ©Anastasiia Cherniavskaia/Dreamstime