Always at your side Hachiko

The movie Always by your side (2009), starring actor Richard Gere and directed by Swede Lasse Hallström, teaches us the great love of a dog for its owner. It is based on a true story about Hachiko, a Japanese dog of the breed. akita who, after the death of his master, was waiting for him for 9 years at the station where his owner took the train every day to go to work.

This story was so moving and had such a social impact among the population that It was decided to create a bronze statue in honor of the faithful dog. Located right at Shibuya station, where the dog waited day after day for his owner. A year later Hachiko died, at the foot of her own statue.

The film is also a remake of a 1987 Japanese film titled Hachikô monogatari and directed by Seijirô Kôyama in which the same story is told, with some slight variations, but preserving the spirit of the real story that gave rise to the film.

Synopsis of Always by your side

A puppy of the breed akita He is sent by his Japanese breeder to the United States on request. But, while transporting the dog, the cage falls off the vehicle and lands on a train station. There, a College professor named Parker Wilson (Richard Gere) finds the lost and slightly injured dog.

Try to help him and find a place to leave him. She talks to the train station controller, but he stops her from keeping him, so He decides to take it home until he finds the owner who claims for it..

The next morning, Professor Parker waits for someone to claim the puppy, but receives no response. Therefore, he takes it with him to work, where Ken Fujiyoshi translates the symbol on the necklace that the lost animal was wearing, which meant “Hachi”, so the professor decides to give him that name. Furthermore, Ken tells the professor that the two are destined to stay together.

Days pass without anyone claiming the puppy and no one can find anyone who wants to adopt him. Professor Parker becomes fond of the pet, but his wife is opposed to keeping him. However, the bond between the dog and the professor continued to grow, so the woman ended up accepting that she should stay with them.

In his attempts to play with the puppy, Parker notices that Hachi refuses to do normal dog things, like chasing a ball.. Perplexed, he comments on this fact to Ken and he tells him that Hachi would only go after that ball for a special reason.

An unbreakable bond

As time passed, the professor and the puppy established a very strong bond. To the extent that, When he had to go to work, Hachi accompanied him to the train station every day. When he saw his owner disappearing into the crowd, he would wait for him at the same station until, returning from work, they would meet again to walk home together.

Parker had tried everything he could to get his pet to stay home while he went to work, but nothing was working. The dog ended up escaping to accompany him to the train station and It would not move from there until its owner finished his workday and returned to the station.

Outcome

The ending of the film begins when Hachi refuses to accompany the teacher, like every day. However, he ends up changing his mind and catches up to him, ball in mouth, just before he gets on the train. It is implied that he wants him not to get on the bus, since he barks very loudly when the teacher ends up leaving.

That same day, while teaching at the university, Professor Parker suffers a heart attack, causing sudden death. Hachi, however, continues to wait for him at the station until a relative takes him back home. Despite this, the next day Hachi escapes and returns to the station to wait for his master and, seeing that he does not arrive, he spends the day and night there.

Hachiko and his loyalty until death

Some time later, Cate Wilson, Professor Parker’s partner, sells the house and moves in with her daughter and dog. But still far from the house where they lived, the dog escapes on the way to the old home. However, seeing that another unknown family lived, He returned to the train station in search of his beloved owner.

There he continues waiting for hours, but when he sees that his master does not appear, he wanders around the area and sleeps under the carriages of an abandoned train. He is surviving thanks to a hot dog vendora friend of the deceased professor, who feeds him.

Years pass and Hachi continues to go to the train station every morning to wait for his owner, and this is how he spends the long days of his life. The professor’s family witnesses how, after many years, Hachi was still waiting for his owner at the usual station, looking old and weak.

Finally, one cold night under the cars of a train, Hachiko dies, dreaming moments before of the presence of its owner at the station. The professor’s daughter tells her 10-year-old son the story of her father and her loyal pet. The child learns what true love and loyalty is and tells it at school in an exercise where they are made to explain who they consider a hero.

Non-human emotions

A film that will not leave animal lovers indifferent, as it is quite moving and dramatic. Hachiko teaches us that love, loyalty and friendship can become infinite, and that not only people are capable of feeling, but the animal world is not exempt from it.

And the emotional world of non-humans can be as complex as our own.. Anthropocentrism and the differences in expression that separate us sometimes give the impression of the opposite. Specifically, dogs have a long history of domestication behind them, so their emotional expression is closely linked to ours.

Protecting animals becomes easier with films like Hachiko. Not only does it show us the history of the most famous dog in Japan, but creates an ode to love, the feeling that transcends species, time and space.

Images courtesy of wikimediacommons and Jared Goralnick

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