A bit of history
This text is a personal and documented exploration of the history of race. It does not aim to reinvent what has already been said, but rather to connect the dots, identify inconsistencies, and open up a nuanced reading based on both tangible and, at times, extrapolated elements, but always with logic, rigor, and correlation.
This chapter is not intended to rewrite what already exists. Even if the versions are not always consistent with each other, I attempt to find points of similarity and trace the American Akita's journey over time, through elements that are sometimes concrete or hypothetical, and sometimes subject to extrapolations that nevertheless seem logical and entirely credible to me.
A little history.
The islands of Japan as we know them today were once part of the Asian continent during the Ice Age, forming a sickle-shaped peninsula surrounding the Inland Sea. At the northern end, this landmass began with the Siberian Peninsula in the southernmost part of the country and ended with present-day Korea. During the Stone Age, nomadic hunters moved between Siberia, Alaska, and Japan across land bridges. The first discoveries of stone tools suggest that individuals lived permanently in what is now Japan over 15,000 years ago. Global warming gave rise to a scattered archipelago, each island unique in its size, topography, and climate. Nature took its toll, and once their formation was complete, these islands were only accessible by sea (raft, boat). This geographic isolation significantly limited population movements and led to a form of separation, thus influencing the evolution and reproduction of canine species. Over time, dogs would have developed functions adapted to the climatic conditions, the geography specific to each region (mountains, plateaus), as well as the needs of the inhabitants of these places. Although the small number of individuals living in these far-flung lands itself contributed to such changes, geographical isolation seems to have primarily led to this singular phenotype known as the Spitz dog. Certainly, genetic analyses of dog breeds tend to designate Spitz as belonging to the group closest to the wolf: they would probably be the oldest type of guard dog and shepherd of the North. When we talk about a Japanese dog, it is a significant part of the culture... (The rest in the book from which this text is excerpted, available in the site's shop).