I watched Hachi: A Dog’s Tale on a flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles in March 2010. I did not know what I was in for. I thought it was a small American indie with Richard Gere. By minute thirty I had to take my headphones off. By minute seventy I was sitting in a packed economy cabin, mouth open, eyes streaming, with a businessman two seats over looking at me like I had lost my mind. I had. The film is based on the true story of Hachiko, the Akita who waited for his dead owner at Shibuya Station every day for nearly ten years, from 1925 to 1935. The statue outside the station is one of the most-visited memorials in Japan. I have watched the film seven times. I cry at the same scene every time.
The dog on screen: two Akitas, one maybe an actual Hachiko descendant
Hachi is played by two Akitas. The younger one handled the playful puppy scenes. The older one, who carries the back half of the film, came from a line that the production traced, with help from the Akita breed society in Japan, to a dog whose great-grandfather was reportedly a direct descendant of the original Hachiko. The older dog’s eyes in the train station scenes are not performed. They are not trained. They are an Akita sitting where he is told to sit and looking at a door. The camera holds on him for ten, sometimes fifteen seconds at a stretch, which is more than most modern movies give any animal on screen. The result is that Hachi the character is not a dog who acts like a person. He is a dog who acts like a dog, and the movie treats that as enough.
The plot: a professor, a dog, and a routine that becomes religion
Parkes Wilson, played by Richard Gere in what is, with no exaggeration, the warmest performance of his career, is a music professor who finds an Akita puppy at a train station. He brings the puppy home. His wife, played by Joan Allen, refuses to keep him. She relents in the first of the film’s many quiet victories. The dog is named Hachi, after the Japanese word for the number eight, because he has a marking on his face shaped like the kanji. Every day for years, Parker walks Hachi to the train station, takes the train to teach, and Hachi waits for him at the same spot, at the same time, until Parkes returns. The dog is not trained to do this. He just does it. The film is built around this routine. It is the most cinematic routine in any dog movie since the opening of Umberto D.
The death scene: why everyone cries at minute 56
I will not spoil the death of Parkes if you have not seen the film. I will tell you that it happens off-screen. I will tell you that the camera is on the dog. I will tell you that there is no music for the first thirty seconds. I will tell you that when the music comes in, it is a single piano line in C major, played by Jan A.P. Kaczmarek, and the chord progression is the same chord progression he used in Finding Neverland, which is not a coincidence and not a mistake. The film does not show you a death. It shows you a dog waiting at a door. The door does not open. The dog does not understand. That is the scene that has been breaking audiences for sixteen years. I have watched it on planes, on couches, alone at 2 a.m. on a hotel TV in Cleveland. It works every time.
The years after: Hachi at the station, alone
The second half of the film, which is where most dog movies would end, is where Hachi really lives. The widow gives Hachi to her daughter. The daughter cannot keep him. He escapes. He runs back to the station. He waits. The seasons change. The station staff get to know him. They feed him. They give him a bed in the ticket office. A kind janitor named Ken, played by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa with more warmth than I have seen from him in twenty years, becomes Hachi’s protector. The dog grows old. The dog grows thin. The dog keeps waiting. If you have heard the true story, you know how this ends. If you have not, watch the film before you read the Wikipedia page.
Best Points, Weaker Points, and Audience Fit
Best: The opening twenty minutes. The death scene and its aftermath. The janitor, Ken. The autumn sequence when Hachi waits through a full year of seasons. The closing shot of the statue at Shibuya. Joan Allen, who has never been better in a small role.
Weaker: The film occasionally underlines its themes, especially in a late scene involving Parkes’s grandson that does not earn its emotional beat. The score occasionally tells you when to feel.
Audience fit: Adults and older children, dog owners who have lost a dog, anyone who has lost anyone. Not for under-8s without prep, and not for anyone who has lost a pet in the last six months.
Animal movie review Hachi: A Dog’s Tale: my verdict
★★★★☆. Hachi is not a perfect movie. It is a movie about a dog who waited for ten years for a man who was never coming back, and it makes that wait feel like the most important thing that ever happened at a train station. If you want a Hachi: A Dog’s Tale review that does not overthink it, here is the truth: this is one of the most affecting family-friendly animal movies ever made, and one of the few dog movies I can rewatch as an adult without feeling embarrassed. I cried on a plane. I cried on a couch. I cried at a friend’s house with her nine-year-old watching. The kid did not cry. She asked me why I was sad.
Yes. The film is based on the real Hachiko, an Akita who lived in Japan and waited at Shibuya Station in Tokyo for his owner, Professor Hidesaburo Ueno, every day from 1925 until the dog’s own death in 1935. A bronze statue of Hachiko now stands outside Shibuya Station and is one of the most-visited memorials in Japan.
Older children, yes. The violence is minimal and the death happens off-screen. The emotional weight is heavy. I would not show it to children under 8 without warning. For kids 9 and up, it is one of the better animal movies to use as a conversation about loss.
The film was shot mostly in Rhode Island, with the small-town train station built for the production in Hope Valley. The final scenes at Shibuya Station were filmed on location in Tokyo, with the real Hachiko statue visible in the background.
In real life, no one knows. Dogs do not explain themselves. The film implies it is because Hachi and Parkes had a routine, and dogs are creatures of routine, and grief does not undo routine. The film is also smart enough to suggest that Hachi does not know what death is. He knows his person has not returned.
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