Symposia on "Living with Pets in
Collective Housing"
Held in Fukuoka, Osaka, Attracting Many People in Construction,
Real Estate, and Management Unions
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We of the Companion
Animal Information and Research Center (CAIRC) have been holding
symposia nationwide on the subject of "Living with Pets in
Collective Housing." The first of these, attended by 320 people,
was held in Tokyo last October. Two more were held this year, one
on September 19 at the Hakata Tokyu Hotel, the other on October
5 at the Osaka Tokyu Hotel. Both drew capacity crowds of roughly
200 people. The Osaka symposium attracted so much attention that
even the standing room was occupied.
In October
CAIRC celebrated the third anniversary of its founding. Over these
three years, we have devoted ourselves to conducting educational
activities about keeping pets and to creating an environment in
which pets can live comfortably as a part of urban life. Recently,
the words "companion animal" have taken root in Japan,
and social awareness of the psychological benefits that pets have
for people has increased. In February 1998, we produced a textbook,
"Living with Dogs and Cats in Collective Housing"; and
when we began distributing it, free of charge, we received numerous
inquiries from real estate-related firms, making us keenly aware
that many companies are looking for an effective approach to building
and managing pets-allowed collective housing.
At present,
the proportion of large-city residents who live in collective housing
exceeds 60%. According to a 1998 survey by the Statistics Bureau
of the Management and Coordination Agency, 37.8% of the nationwide
population lives in collective housing. In Tokyo, however, the figure
is 70.1%; in Osaka it is 66.1%; in Fukuoka, 70.7%. This year, in
a public opinion survey that the Prime Minister's Office conducted
on attitudes towards pets, 58% of the respondents said, "If
certain rules are followed, keeping dogs and cats in collective
housing is fine." This represented a 16-point increase from
the previous survey, conducted in 1990; moreover, people who accept
keeping pets in collective housing now comprise the majority. Concomitantly,
respondents who expressed opposition to keeping pets in collective
housing decreased by 15 points, to 36%. It could thus be said that
a consensus in favor of allowing pets in collective housing is now
in the making. Of course, attitudes towards pets themselves still
vary with the individual. And while pets-allowed collective housing
is increasing, there are still various problems with how to build
and manage such housing. At last year's Tokyo symposium, and at
the symposia held this year as well, many people, especially people
related to construction, real estate and management unions, considered
how to create a society in which people and pets can live together
in harmony.
Speeches and Video Corroborate Pet
Problems in Collective Housing
Approaches to Solutions Traced
190 People Attend in Fukuoka, 200 in Osaka
The Fukuoka
and Osaka symposia each consisted of speeches by four experts knowledgeable
about pet issues and pets-allowed collective housing, a video produced
by CAIRC, and the speakers answering questions from the audience;
both symposia lasted up to four highly informative hours.
Each began
with a greeting from CAIRC president, Yoichi Shoda.
"When there is a living creature nearby with which you can communicate
emotionally," he said, "it conduces to a sense of peace
and tranquility. In my work at the Zoological Park Society, I go to
the Ueno Zoological Gardens, where I recently saw an interesting scene.
A gorilla was holding something small in its hand and staring at it
intently. When I looked through my binoculars, I saw that it was a
wood louse. The gorilla put the wood louse on its lips, hid it in
the hair on its head, playing with it. And as I watched, I thought
that gorillas also enjoy having a small living creature nearby. People
are different from gorillas, but for us, too, having a living creature,
even a tiny one, in our presence can be important. And when that living
being is a companion animal, like a dog or a cat, with which we can
communicate emotionally, its significance can be limitlessly large,
I think. I'm thus placing great hopes in the efforts of those of you
who are engaged in one way or another in the field of pets-allowed
collective housing."
The keynote
speech, "The Healthy Society that Animals Will Bring About —
the Benefits and the Problems," was given by Professor Mitsuaki
Ota of Azabu University. At the time of the Kobe Earthquake, Professor
Ota was living in Sakai City, Osaka Prefecture, and thus personally
experienced the shaking. Subsequently, through the aftermath of the
earthquake, he also researched the relationship between people and
animals from various angles. Following the earthquake, many people
lent their efforts to helping animals. "According to a survey
conducted in Kobe," Professor Ota explained, "there were
not a few victims who obtained the power to live from being able to
help animals, or because they had an animal. Victims often derived
a certain peace of mind from living with a pet." He also spoke
about the relationship between people and animals through the subjects
as the history of animal domestication, the role that pets play in
human health, and his own research on the ability of animals to predict
earthquakes from his standpoint of animal behavior study.
The 20-minute
video produced by CAIRC was shown next. It focused on the "hardware"
and "software" in Japan's first public-managed pets-allowed
collective housing built in the recovery from the Kobe Earthquake,
and in some of the newest pets-allowed collective housing; it also
included interviews with housing residents. Together with Professor
Ota's speech, it conveyed a sense of people's growing awareness of
the psychological support that a loved companion animal can provide
to its owner.
The next speech,
"Living with Pets in Collective Housing as Viewed in Terms of
the Architecture," was presented by Ms. Tomoko Kanemaki. Ms.
Kanemaki is an architect active in the area of pets-allowed collective
housing and also a pet owner who lives in collective housing. Her
speech was thus rich in detail about such things as the common areas
in pets-allowed collective housing and the facilities provided inside
the individual units. Recently, as a means of explaining pets-allowed
collective housing, a foot bath is often mentioned as an example of
the facilities provided. "But when you ask the residents,"
she said, "you find that they do not often use it. Also, when
it rains, they might wash their dogs' feet, but then they'll often
go ahead and track up the lobby themselves with their dirty shoes.
"If a
foot bath is going to be provided, it should be located where people
take off their shoes — in the entry hall to their individual units.
Moreover, facilities for living with pets are, in the last analysis,
added value; they are not indispensable. And recently there's been
a tendency to install too many facilities. When facilities are installed,
maintenance fees go up. As most facilities are for dogs, only some
of the tenants use them. However, all of the tenants have to pay for
their maintenance, and that can be a source of trouble. In short,
facilities are no guarantee that people and pets will be able to live
together. It is more important, I believe, to develop the necessary
'software' than to provide 'hardware.'"
Ms. Kanemaki
thus urged that "software" — ideas, attitudes, rules, organizations
— that will enable people and pets to live together in collective
housing be developed without delay.
Prohibiting Pets from Collective Housing Means Excluding Pets from
Cities
The next speech,
"Creating Community in Collective Housing — Establishing Pet
Clubs and Keeping Animals," was given by Fumio Imoto, director
of the Imoto Veterinary Hospital. Director Imoto is himself a founding
member of the pet-owners' club in the collective housing where he
lives. He began his speech by outlining the current situation at pets-allowed
collective housing. In this connection, he cited a newspaper article
about the management union of a condominium complex that changed the
rules prohibiting pets, deciding to allow pets on certain conditions,
such as the payment of 1,000 yen per month per pet as "rent,"
and also an article about the survey, by the Prime Minister's Office,
indicating that people who approve of keeping pets in collective housing
now comprise the majority. Based on these articles, he explained that
the creation of a consensus in favor of allowing pets in collective
housing is progressing, that more than 80% of young people have positive
feelings towards pets, that people's values with regard to pets are
changing. Then, based on his own experience, he talked about the need
to establish pet owners' clubs and the way that such clubs should
be run.
"Certain
experts," he said, "have analyzed the course that people's
feelings follow when trouble occurs with a neighbor. According to
their findings, when people feel pain in certain situations, they
will attribute responsibility for it to a particular person and seek
to demand relief from that person; and if that demand is not to be
met, anger will arise. For example, if a person feels that a dog's
barking is loud but is unable to identify the dog's owner, he will
tend to become angry at dog owners in general, considering them all
to be irresponsible and reprehensible. However, if there is a pet
owners' club, it can receive the complaint. That alone is often enough
to change people's feelings. It also enables the complaint to be dealt
with promptly. In the complex where I live, there were about 10 pet-related
complaints a year before our club was founded. In the year following
its founding, there were two complaints. And since then there have
been none. In the six years since the club's founding, we have also
succeeded in creating a sense of community through steady activities,
such as cleaning up the excrement both on and around the complex's
property and enlisting the complex's residents as a whole to change
the green belt adjacent to the complex into a nature filled place
by, for instance, planting bamboo trees. These activities have won
the trust of residents, and been highly regarded by them, and are
also, I think, linked to the absence of complaints during these past
years. Pet problems are, in the last analysis, related to pets, but
to solve them it is often necessary to promote communication and trust
between the people involved, and for that, I believe, the kind of
support provided by a pet owners' clubs can be enormously helpful.
In conclusion, I would like to ask those of you in construction companies
to build the kind of collective housing that people will want to live
in for their entire lives, and those of you in real estate companies
to sell such housing, and those of you in management companies to
support such housing. In short, I'd like to ask you to try to create
the kind of collective housing where people will want to live permanently."
The final
speech, "Legal Problems with Keeping Pets in Collective Housing,"
was given by Masumi Yoshida, former professor in the Law Department
of Doshisha University. Before retiring this fall, Professor Yoshida
taught and specialized in warranty law, real estate law, condominium
law and pet law. In the near future he intends to start a new career
as a lawyer specializing in pet law.
"Formerly,"
he said, "the words 'apartment house' connoted a temporary residence.
Nowadays, however, the words 'collective housing' imply a base and
center for one's entire life. Considering that collective housing
is a place where one might live for 50 years, creating collective
housing where people can live together with pets could probably be
called an important matter. Compared to Europe and the United States,
Japan has a great deal of collective housing whose rules prohibit
pets. However, in Article 2 of 1999-revised law related to protecting
and managing animals, positive consideration was given to the rights
of people to keep pets. That is, given the significance of collective
housing in today's cities, prohibiting pets from collective housing
in effect excludes pets from cities. It is also a violation of the
purport of Article 2 of said law. Being able to keep a pet is a subject
that is likely to become increasingly important as time progresses;
if we just give it a little thought, we should be able to find a way
to deal with it."
Professor
Yoshida also spoke about pet issues in collective housing as a lawyer.
"Ideally," he said, "the idea of self-rule by residents
should be followed. However, it takes time, after moving in, to settle
down and establish relations with the other residents, so, realistically,
it's indispensable to create management rules so as to provide guidance
and bridge the gaps in the meantime." Here he mentioned the newspaper
article about being allowed to keep pets for an administrative expense
of 1,000 yen per pet. "That is something that I think is acceptable
as a temporary measure. But administrative expenses are determined
based on the amount of area occupied. The number of people occupying
the area is irrelevant. For the same amount of area, a family of two
pays the same administrative expenses as a family of five. Why should
it be necessary to pay separately for each pet? In addition, children
use the common areas of collective housing more than pets do. In other
words, I think this is a temporary measure conceived to win over people
who have misgivings about living in the same building where pets are
kept. Looking at it legally, this is by no means a reasonable approach.
It might be necessary temporarily, but it is not a fundamental solution
to the problem. I'd like you to understand that."
The Speakers Concurred on the View:
"Improving 'Software' Is Task for the Future"
After the
speeches, the speakers formed a panel and answered questions from
the audience for more than 40 minutes. In both symposia, the questions
were numerous and varied, and revealed the thoughts and hopes, of
companies related to construction, real estate and management unions,
about the construction and management of pets-allowed collective housing.
One member
of the audience at the Fukuoka symposium was Norio Sugimoto, president
of the NPO Fukuoka Condominium Management Unions Confederation, one
of the organizations supporting the symposium. "In Fukuoka, too,"
he said, "pet issues and the need for pets-allowed collective
housing have been increasing. So when I first heard about this symposium,
I thought it would be a timely and useful event. And now that I've
heard the speeches, which covered such a wide range of topics, I've
learned a great deal of valuable information. Recently someone living
in an apartment building where pets are not allowed asked me, 'A questionnaire
about keeping pets was distributed — what was that about?' Perhaps
it was an indirect effect of this symposium. Given the flow of things
in today's world, prohibiting the keeping of pets in collective housing
is not the right thing. Eventually, when a consensus is reached and
keeping pets in collective housing is accepted, living in collective
housing will be, I think, that much more enjoyable and satisfying."
At each symposium,
the audience members expressed their thoughts and feelings about the
event through a questionnaire. From a construction industry member
at the Fukuoka symposium, there was this comment: "I thought
that increasing the 'hardware,' the facilities, would lead to an improvement
of behavior, but now I realize that, with hardware, you just have
to make it suitable to the characteristics of the animals, that the
real problem is the 'software.'" The video was also regarded
highly, as indicated by this comment from a construction industry
member at the Osaka symposium: "Watching the video, I realized
that, efforts have been promoted by the government in this area, and
got a good idea of the direction in the future. From the role that
pets played in providing psychological care following the Kobe Earthquake,
and from hearing the opinion, from one of the earthquake victims interviewed
in the video, that "a pet is a family member," I was also
able to confirm my belief in the importance of allowing pets in collective
housing." We were very pleased with these and the many other
positive responses that we received. However, there was also this
opinion, from a person in property management at the Fukuoka symposium:
"I would have liked there to be more concrete examples."
The main purpose of these symposia was to provide a broad range of
information about living with pets in collective housing, but in certain
respects, they did not go into extensive details. However, as a task
for the future, we intend to delve deeply into specific issues of
high demands and to provide concrete advice about them by holding
seminars and through other means.
We hope that
the symposia will prove useful for the audience members from construction
companies, real estate companies, management companies and management
unions in their future endeavors in building and administering collective
housing. For our part, we of the Companion Animal Information and
Research Center look forward to continuing to carry out diverse efforts
aimed at promoting the harmonious coexistence of people and pets.
* These symposia were held with the support of the following organizations:
NPO Fukuoka Condominium Management Unions Confederation, the Condominium
Management Center, the Japan Veterinary Medical Association, the Osaka
Prefecture Veterinary Medical Association, the Osaka City Veterinary
Medical Association, the Fukuoka Prefecture Veterinary Medical Association,
the Japan Society of Humane Care of Animals, and the Council for Animal
Rearing in Collective Housing.
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