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Throughout Tofu Cute history, we’ve stocked a lot of different types of dog plushies. A tremendous amount, in fact. At this very moment, we have a few really cool types, including the KoroKoro Wan-Ko Dog Small Plush, Funwari Maru Shiba San Bowtie Small Plush and even several types of classic AMUSE Mameshiba. One thing that these three series have in common (besides just being adorable) is that they all contain at least one plush that is imitating the real life dog breed from Japan known to many as the Shiba Inu. You may be familiar with the shiba inu from their appearances in popular memes, or perhaps you’ve seen them in a Japanese TV show, or maybe you’re even lucky enough to know a Shiba yourself.
Without a doubt, Shiba Inus have become a lot more popular in the last decade or so both in reality and depictions in western popular culture, but there’s still a lot of misinformation and even confusion surrounding them, due to their relative rarity in many parts of the world. if you’re clicking on this article, you may be interested to know a bit more about the humble dog breed yourself: If you’ve ever wondered where Shibas come from or why so many people admire them, then you’ll find all those answers and more in this article. I’ll even share some anecdotes about my very own Shiba pal, Tako, who I’ve gotten to dogsit for a lot recently.
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In order to explain the origins of the Shiba, we first need to understand the word shiba, which is a compound word meaning ‘Brushwood’, referring to the environment in which these dogs used to run wild in. Shibas are part of a wider group of 6 species that are considered native to various regions of Japan, such as the Shikoku Inu and Akita Inu (from Shikoku and Akita, respectively) amongst others. They are much smaller than these other 5 breeds, boasting a lightweight but muscular build beneath a luxurious double coat of fur. Nobody knows quite exactly how long shibas have been around, although artistic depictions of similar looking dogs in Japan seem to date as far back as 14,000 BC.
Shibas stayed local to Japan for a fairly long time, and during the second world war were almost nearing extinction due to food shortages in the country. Thanks to the efforts of many, however, Shibas were protected and are now the most populous breed in Japan and are beloved by dog fans all over the world.
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Shibas are characterised by their fiercely independent nature, and can be a lot harder to train than many other types of dogs. Whilst they are prone to being sometimes a bit selfish or stubborn, this doesn’t mean that they can’t also be loving dogs. As long as they’re socialised early on, they’re likely to grow up to be very friendly and loyal companions.
In terms of aesthetics, Shibas generally come in a few colourations. The most common colour is the beige and white type that you might be familiar with, but they also come in black with light brown patches, white, black and white and even a particularly rare sesame brown colour. If you’re feeling particularly poetic, the colour of a shiba can be described as though they’re a piece of toast ranging from completely untoasted bread to a burnt slice. I like this method, and believe it should be applied at some sort of institutional level.
Other than their stubborn but friendly demeanour and colours, they also have very fluffy circular tails, triangular ears and wide dark eyes. They’re obviously very very cute.
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I’ve had the benefit of meeting a few shibas in my time, and I can confirm that much of the conventional wisdom of them being more like a cat than a dog in some ways rings true. I know this shiba (pictured to the right) named Tako (short for Takumi) who is particularly unique in terms of dogs I’ve known throughout my life. Tako loves to roll around on the ground at the most random, inconvenient times and despite being pretty small, loves to bark at dogs that are much bigger than them. Despite their eccentricities, though, I still love them.
Of course, every shiba is going to be different, and your experiences may vary. In many ways they’re what you’d expect from a dog of this size: fluffy, often energetic and sometimes lazy, and unfailingly loyal. My experiences with Tako have taught me first and foremost that Shibas are wildly unpredictable.
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There’s no denying that Shibas have made their way into our hearts through a variety of avenues in popular culture. I for one became a fan of the dog breed through exposure to them online - you’ll find many internet famous Shiba Inus all over the globe such as Maru or Tofu-chan or Ryuji, all of whom have gained a remarkable amount of fame just from being themselves online. Shibas pop up often in anime and Japanese movies, and form the basis for a number of cute mascot characters and character goods, like the Shibanban series which you can find at ARTBOX.
Perhaps the world’s biggest exposure to shibas was through the now iconic ‘doge’ meme, where a slightly goofy looking shiba was used as a meme image template for comic misspellings of words and phrases. Writing it out like this makes it sound like absolute nonsense, and it is, but I’m sure we all found it funny at the time even if it doesn’t quite have the same appeal now. Part of the charm of the original meme was that the dog was so cute, and shibas certainly haven’t been absent from later popular memes, either. In 2019, the iconic shiba ‘cheems’ (real name Ball-Tze) made their meme debut by looking particularly sneaky in a photo taken at a weird profile angle.
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That’s all for today’s discussion of Shiba Inus, but we’ll be back on the Tofu Cute blog soon with more product reviews and deep dives into cutesy culture. If you have a Shiba Inu, be sure to let us know on our social media channels - we’d love to see pictures of them. If you don’t know any Shibas, I hope you get to meet one eventually!
All images creative commons attribution from WikiMedia, plus one image from @BallTze on Instagram! |
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Throughout Tofu Cute history, we’ve stocked a lot of different types of dog plushies. A tremendous amount, in fact. At this very moment, we have a few really cool types, including the KoroKoro Wan-Ko Dog Small Plush, Funwari Maru Shiba San Bowtie Small Plush and even several types of classic AMUSE Mameshiba. One thing that these three series have in common (besides just being adorable) is that they all contain at least one plush that is imitating the real life dog breed from Japan known to many as the Shiba Inu. You may be familiar with the shiba inu from their appearances in popular memes, or perhaps you’ve seen them in a Japanese TV show, or maybe you’re even lucky enough to know a Shiba yourself.
Without a doubt, Shiba Inus have become a lot more popular in the last decade or so both in reality and depictions in western popular culture, but there’s still a lot of misinformation and even confusion surrounding them, due to their relative rarity in many parts of the world. if you’re clicking on this article, you may be interested to know a bit more about the humble dog breed yourself: If you’ve ever wondered where Shibas come from or why so many people admire them, then you’ll find all those answers and more in this article. I’ll even share some anecdotes about my very own Shiba pal, Tako, who I’ve gotten to dogsit for a lot recently.
|
|
|
In order to explain the origins of the Shiba, we first need to understand the word shiba, which is a compound word meaning ‘Brushwood’, referring to the environment in which these dogs used to run wild in. Shibas are part of a wider group of 6 species that are considered native to various regions of Japan, such as the Shikoku Inu and Akita Inu (from Shikoku and Akita, respectively) amongst others. They are much smaller than these other 5 breeds, boasting a lightweight but muscular build beneath a luxurious double coat of fur. Nobody knows quite exactly how long shibas have been around, although artistic depictions of similar looking dogs in Japan seem to date as far back as 14,000 BC.
Shibas stayed local to Japan for a fairly long time, and during the second world war were almost nearing extinction due to food shortages in the country. Thanks to the efforts of many, however, Shibas were protected and are now the most populous breed in Japan and are beloved by dog fans all over the world.
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Shibas are characterised by their fiercely independent nature, and can be a lot harder to train than many other types of dogs. Whilst they are prone to being sometimes a bit selfish or stubborn, this doesn’t mean that they can’t also be loving dogs. As long as they’re socialised early on, they’re likely to grow up to be very friendly and loyal companions.
In terms of aesthetics, Shibas generally come in a few colourations. The most common colour is the beige and white type that you might be familiar with, but they also come in black with light brown patches, white, black and white and even a particularly rare sesame brown colour. If you’re feeling particularly poetic, the colour of a shiba can be described as though they’re a piece of toast ranging from completely untoasted bread to a burnt slice. I like this method, and believe it should be applied at some sort of institutional level.
Other than their stubborn but friendly demeanour and colours, they also have very fluffy circular tails, triangular ears and wide dark eyes. They’re obviously very very cute.
|
|
|
I’ve had the benefit of meeting a few shibas in my time, and I can confirm that much of the conventional wisdom of them being more like a cat than a dog in some ways rings true. I know this shiba (pictured to the right) named Tako (short for Takumi) who is particularly unique in terms of dogs I’ve known throughout my life. Tako loves to roll around on the ground at the most random, inconvenient times and despite being pretty small, loves to bark at dogs that are much bigger than them. Despite their eccentricities, though, I still love them.
Of course, every shiba is going to be different, and your experiences may vary. In many ways they’re what you’d expect from a dog of this size: fluffy, often energetic and sometimes lazy, and unfailingly loyal. My experiences with Tako have taught me first and foremost that Shibas are wildly unpredictable.
|
There’s no denying that Shibas have made their way into our hearts through a variety of avenues in popular culture. I for one became a fan of the dog breed through exposure to them online - you’ll find many internet famous Shiba Inus all over the globe such as Maru or Tofu-chan or Ryuji, all of whom have gained a remarkable amount of fame just from being themselves online. Shibas pop up often in anime and Japanese movies, and form the basis for a number of cute mascot characters and character goods, like the Shibanban series which you can find at ARTBOX.
Perhaps the world’s biggest exposure to shibas was through the now iconic ‘doge’ meme, where a slightly goofy looking shiba was used as a meme image template for comic misspellings of words and phrases. Writing it out like this makes it sound like absolute nonsense, and it is, but I’m sure we all found it funny at the time even if it doesn’t quite have the same appeal now. Part of the charm of the original meme was that the dog was so cute, and shibas certainly haven’t been absent from later popular memes, either. In 2019, the iconic shiba ‘cheems’ (real name Ball-Tze) made their meme debut by looking particularly sneaky in a photo taken at a weird profile angle.
|
|
That’s all for today’s discussion of Shiba Inus, but we’ll be back on the Tofu Cute blog soon with more product reviews and deep dives into cutesy culture. If you have a Shiba Inu, be sure to let us know on our social media channels - we’d love to see pictures of them. If you don’t know any Shibas, I hope you get to meet one eventually!
All images creative commons attribution from WikiMedia, plus one image from @BallTze on Instagram! |
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