The Hanako Story: Part 1 — Tokyo
Thanks to the contributions of supporters around the world, elephant welfare expert Carol Buckley and I were able to make it to Japan to meet with her zoo. We both arrived safely in Tokyo on Friday, March 4. On Saturday, we had our first meeting with Hanako’s zoo. Below are some detailed accounts on how the first couple of days of our trip unfolded.
Day One, Friday March 4
After arriving at Haneda Airport in Tokyo at 5:30pm, I took the 2-hour train ride into the city to our hotel, which is located near Hanako’s zoo.
After check-in, I went over to the elevator and sort of just rushed inside as soon as the doors opened. (You know how it is when you just want to dump your luggage and grab a hot shower after a long plane ride, right?) Well, in my rushed attempt, I almost bumped into a woman who was already inside when the doors opened. Who was the woman? None other than Carol Buckley! (She was going out to get some water at the convenience store.)
What a crazy coincidence! We hugged and introduced each other and I knew we were already off to a good start.
Day Two, Saturday March 5 (First visit to, and meeting with the zoo)
It was my birthday this day—the day we went to the zoo to meet Hanako and the staff! What a birthday to remember. I woke up to a message from a dear friend Nadia (and one of the amazing admins of the Help Hanako Facebook page) who had actually baked me the cutest birthday cake — all the way in Germany! It was a sweet (literally) surprise that made my day — before it had hardly even started.
At around 9am, Carol and I set out from our hotel toward Kichijoji train station, which is where Hanako’s zoo (Inokashira Park Zoo) is located. It was nice day, so we decided to walk. As we got closer and closer, I began to get both excited and nervous to see Hanako. This was the moment that months of campaigning and planning was all leading up to! We met up with our interpreters, got acquainted and started to head over.
Upon arrival to the zoo, we went straight over to Hanako’s enclosure. When Carol first saw Hanako from a distance, she actually had a very similar impression to me the first time I saw her — she just stood there, like a figurine in her barren cement prison. In Carol’s own words:
“The first thing we saw was a crowd of people gathered in front of a concrete wall. But it is what we didn’t see that was attracting the crowd. Hanako stands nearly stone still and literally blends in with the wall of her enclosure.”
From there Carol got to work, examining Hanako from all angles, taking photos and video and checking out her enclosures and the space around them — both outdoor and indoor.
As you can hear in this video, (sorry for the poor quality—I only had my phone!) she told me that her key repetitive motions — which includes “playing” with her plastic straw, doing the same thing with it over and over: wrapping it around her trunk then flipping it up side by side — were simply Hanako just going through the motions, totally bored, disengaged and essentially half asleep and “not present” — like a zombie. Let’s remember she’s been in the exact same place, doing the exact same thing day after day, alone, for over 60 years. Carol said other captive elephants will sway, rock and exhibit other neurotic repetitive behaviors, but for Hanako, this were her own method of coping. It was hard to hear.
Meanwhile, the twitching that Carol refers to several time turned out to be shivering after more careful observation and our subsequent meeting with the zoo. Given that Hanako is meant to live naturally in a much warmer Asian climate, the weather in early March in Japan was simply too cold for her. Her advanced age also means that her body temperature is naturally going to be lower. Carol addressed this issue in her final report, in which she also outlined various suggestions on how the zoo can help make Hanako warmer, including putting in infrared heaters, turning of wind fans and closing off (or adding plastic wind protection) to the big door of her indoor enclosure.
So then, after this, we then went to our scheduled first meeting with the zoo staff. In presence for this initial meeting was Mr. Hori, the Zoo Director and Curator, along with the zoo’s Chief vet and a couple of key administrators.
The meeting itself actually went really well. They weren’t unfriendly, and in fact very patient, polite and totally open to Carol asking many questions around Hanako’s health, routines, history and much more. In her own words:
“Zoo personal were gracious and helpful. They provided information willingly. We are confident that our initial meeting has set a tone of collaboration which will definitely benefit Hanako.
Right now what I can tell you is that today Hanako appeared quite comfortable with her three keepers and that she receives a highly nutritious, well balanced diet.”
After this meeting, we went back out to see Hanako’s daily 3:30pm transition from her outdoor enclosure to her indoor one. This was an important moment as Carol could see how Hanako interacted with her caretakers.
Now, it was at this point in the day that according to Carol, Hanako suddenly left her disengaged, catatonic state and came alive. She seemed excited to go inside, and once let in, started making these loud breathing or huffing sounds. It was almost… exciting. I could tell her eyes were much more open and alert and she was finally moving around, with more energy.
Want to know why? Watch the video and listen to what Carol has to say.
However, here is something that really got me. After watching this 3:30pm routine, Carol said that the reason Hanako came alive was not primarily because she knew she was going to be fed but because she knew this was HER valued time to spend intimately with her caretakers, whom she loves. For her, these caretakers are her family, and this is the small 10 minutes of each day that she gets to have contact with them. Remember, for elephants (especially females) companionship is EVERYTHING and in the wild Hanako would have lived out her life, every day in a tight-knit family, with her mom and grandma and aunts and kids and nieces and nephews.
One of the female caretakers fed her through her bars and Hanako ate out of her hand so gently. The other caretaker, a man (the one Hanako loves the most, according to Carol) brushed her with a rake, cleaned her feet and Hanako was rubbed up against him through the bars, making ‘happy noises’ (the loud out breaths). She was saying, according to Carol, “Yes please! More more…”
Then, however, the session ended so quickly, and Hanako was left totally alone again, to spend the night in her indoor cage…until the whole thing starts again tomorrow morning. This just totally broke my heart. Here is an elephant that is being called violent, temperamental and difficult to handle by the zoo. And yet, what an elephant welfare expert — who has been rescuing, caring for and working with elephants for over 40 years — sees is instead an expressive, emotional being who is purely delighted to be close to, and handled by her caretakers: her only family. It’s the only a small part of her day for which Hanako feels content. So much so, she breaks out of her statue form and comes alive again for that very short period of time.
The messed up part is, when Carol later spoke to Hanako’s caretakers, they seemed kind of bewildered when hearing from her how happy and expressive Hanako was being around them. The one caretaker who she (according to Carol) loves the most, seemed shocked when we told him how much Hanako is drawn to him. It is possible they don’t even know how to read her behavior…at all?!
So of course, one of the immediate and significant improvements that can be made for Hanako is for these caretakers to simply give her more of this up-close attention she loves and craves. You see that recommendation made in Carol’s final report we delivered to the zoo, and she also stressed it to them very strongly in our second meeting with them. What a simple little act that can make such a big difference to Hanako day to day. It’s a small, but significant change that could make her life so much better: right now.
Anyway, if I keep going this will turn into a novel, not a blog post. So I will stop here. For now.
Stay tuned for the next post (in a few days time) in which I’ll talk in depth about our quest (in between our two days meeting with the zoo) to track down a rumored elephant sanctuary in Japan.
For Hanako,
Ulara
