11 - Animals and Society: An Island in Japan

Summary

Human–Animal Studies is an interdisciplinary field which takes as its subject matter the relationships between humans and other animals. The field is rapidly growing as scholars are recognizing the importance of animals in our own lives, and, increasingly, the ways in which humans shape animal lives. Okunoshima, an island located in the Hiroshima Prefecture in southern Japan, has been host to a large population of feral rabbits for decades. The rabbits of the island have access to limited vegetation and water, and thus rely for their survival on the tourists who feed them. These tourists, who are largely drawn to the island in order to see, touch, and spend time with the rabbits, have altered the rabbits’ lives in ways that have been complicated and unexpected. This chapter will use the case study of the rabbits of Okunoshuma to uncover some of the problematics of the increasingly popular practice of animal tourism, and to shed light on the ways that multispecies ethnography can be useful to sociologists.