Taka-chan and I A Dog's Journey to Japan by Runcible

A tale of adventure, loyalty, daring escapes, friendship, and honor, Taka-chan and I has it all. One day, Runcible, a Weimeraner, digs a hole from his home on Cape Cod all the way to Japan. There he meets Taka-chan, a little girl imprisoned by a seadragon who is angry that fishermen like Taka-chan's father no longer make offerings to him. Runcible is determined to free Taka-chan and gladly takes up the dragon's challenge to find the most loyal creature in Japan. Soon Taka-chan and Runcible embark on a trip to Tokyo, where they question everyone they meet, human and animal, to discover the identity of this most loyal being. Taka-chan and I is in the tradition of The Red Balloon, books that perfectly marry elements of photography and stories that are as thrilling as they are poignant.

Betty Jean Lifton discovered a passion for Japanese culture and folklore while living in Japan with her husband, the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton, in the early 1960s. Out of that interest came many children’s books, including Kap the Kappa, Joji and the Dragon, The Rice-cake Rabbit, and The Dwarf Pine Tree. After the publication of Taka-chan and I, Lifton and Eikoh Hosoe collaborated on three more books: A Dog’s Guide to Tokyo, A Place Called Hiroshima, and Return to Hiroshima. In 1975 she published Twice Born: Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter, which marked the start of her second career as an adoption writer, counselor, and adoptee-rights advocate. She died in 2010, after many years living in New York City, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Wellfleet, Cape Cod.

Eikoh Hosoe is one of Japan’s preemenant photographers. His work can be found in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Georges Pompidou Center, the Smithsonian, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among other museums. In 2010 and 2011 Theatre of Memory, a retrospective exhibit of Hosoe’s dance photography, was shown at the Japan Foundation, Cologne and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Runcible was the youngest in a litter of eleven Weimaraner puppies. He was born in Framingham, Massachusetts, and at the age of seven weeks was adopted by Betty Jean Lifton. It was from Mrs. Lifton that Runcible developed his nose for literature. He began digging up the material for this book during a two-year stay in Japan. Runcible is a firm believer in international understanding. “The world would be a better place if more dogs would travel,” he says.
      
Runcible and Eikoh Hosoe met one day when the photographer was walking on a lonely beach in Japan. Mr. Hosoe couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw a dog coming right out of the ground, but before Runcible’s departure from Japan the two had a long talk and Runcible told Mr. Hosoe about his adventure.