There is no government department dealing with the welfare of animals. Pet animals like cats and dogs come under the Department of Health & Hygiene. The purpose of this department is to deal with public health matters and this includes the collection and disposal of stray animals. These animals are collected and disposed of in much the same way as public garbage. Dogs are the chief target since they may carry rabies and can bite. 'Professional' dog catchers are sent out to hunt down strays. Sometimes they put out traps or if they can corner a dog they will throw a wire noose around its neck and fling it up into a truck with other dogs. These trucks are seldom air-conditioned, nor are the dogs separated, so many animals end up badly mauled or dead. There are also 'dog posts' in some rural areas. Here unwanted dogs can be 'posted' i.e. shoved down a chute into a container below. Since the contents of the container can't be seen from outside, nobody knows what is inside; possibly old dogs, puppies, cats or kittens. Again one needs little imagination to picture the carnage inside. Some animals never reach the hokensho itself but are sold along the way to either breeders (in the case of nice-looking pure-breds) or to experimental labs. This provides pocket money for the dog catchers.
Over 400,000 dogs and 300,000 cats are gassed in the hokensho of Japan every year.
Over 73,000 pet dogs and 13,500 pet cats are used in laboratory experiments.
Once the dogs have reached the hokensho they seldom leave unless an owner turns up to claim them . Some hokensho now operate Aigo Centres (Love Animal Centres) where puppies are given out for adoption but never adult dogs. They are kept in the hokensho from 3-5 days before being gassed. ( It can take upto 20 or 30 minutes for a dog to die, according to its size. In many hokensho the system is so automated that animals go directly from the gas chambers into the furnace at the press of a button, no one checks if they are dead or not.) Dogs which have bitten someone are kept two weeks (in case the dog develops rabies ) before being gassed. Some hokensho still use decompression or electrocution and until recently bludgeoning dogs to death was prevalent in rural areas. Although veterinarians are employed at the hokensho, they seldom touch animals, let alone check them and certainly never euthanize animals. People employed in catching, killing and disposal of bodies are specially contracted, and are not city or prefecture employees. Nowadays as hokensho become more 'modernized' , the whole system is automated and dogs do not need to be handled at all between entry and death, it is all done by computers and operators only need to press buttons. Easier for the operators but no improvement in conditions for the animals.
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