9/26/2009

Japan Probe has posted a video of a very young bear cub being tortured for fun-n-games on Fuji TV this week via Korean TV.
Watch the audience of Japanese talento /celebrities laughing like hyenas at the poor little cub writhing in fear.

Initially I could forgive them since the crew from Korean TV network SBS’s “Animal Farm” didn’t know what was going to happen when they introduced a bear to some lion cubs. However, the video shows that the TV crew came back months later when the bear cub was larger to torment the other zoo animals.

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Sadly I once did much the same thing myself...
Once I put my 1.5kg kitten in outdoor movable pen on my front lawn with my 4kg Flemish Giant rabbits. I was innocently expecting a scene from the above painting, “Peaceable Kingdom” (Edward Hicks, circa 1834, a Quaker painter).

Instead, for the first time ever I heard the huge rabbits SCREAM like the end of the world. Just the smell of predator cat set them off in spasmodic fear of death. My neighbors almost called the police thinking a mass murder of a group of children was in progress.

Continuing the bear vs lion cub “experiment” was cruel but typical of Korean and Japanese TV (and normal for the cruelty of Japanese pet shops).

The Larger Question is…
Why do nominal Buddhists like the Japanese enjoy animal abuse? The only cultural reason I can cook up—crappy armchair anthropology really–is that the Japanese haven’t a long experience raising livestock, so they have fewer societal mores on humane animal treatment For example, most Japanese single-family houses have their dogs tied with 1m chain in a single spot 24/7/365.

Additional references of Japanese animal cruelty:
— 2002 Japan animal cruelty case (Wiki)
—Dragon Gate dojo monkey torture (ASPCA)
—Japanese wrestlers abusing their monkey (3Yen)
—Clothing on dogs in the tropical heat of Tokyo constitutes animal abuse (3Yen)
—Sony’s Silence of the Goats (3Yen)