Portraits In Faith: Mamoru Oshii

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Dogs & God

“Human beings need something we can worship better than ourselves. We want to be connected with something other than human beings. This means that we want to worship something.

I love dogs and have some unexplainable feelings toward them. I feel something extraordinary [with dogs] that human beings do not have. Living my life with dogs, spending time with dogs, side-by-side. That is the goal of my life. The things you can not fulfill within yourself in life, I feel that dogs can do the job for us. In one word I would say I worship dogs like people worship God. Dogs are my religion.

For a long time, I did not understand why I was so attracted to dogs. From childhood, some people adore cats and dogs. Maybe I am one of those types of people. If you only associate with other human beings, I think we all make ourselves utterly unhappy beings. Human history is a good example of it. We have only thought of ourselves—if you look back.

Since we have mastered language, we became unhappy beings. The words say everything about us. What we were most obsessed to express in words was about ourselves. Then what we found was nothing after all. We confused ourselves even more. The power of words itself is lost as well.

It is essential to be associated with animals, like dogs or cats; or someone religious. It is like praying and asking for guidance from God in your daily life.

I have my work in Tokyo, and I am away from my dog. When I get home, I return to myself. It is not only my wife and her support, it is also my dog and cat, and they are good to me. It is different from facing other human beings. Actually, if we could accomplish that between ourselves, like other animals do, maybe that is ideal. Maybe it’s something we humans lost long ago, skills we can not retrieve back. The human history that we cared about ourselves only made us all unhappy beings. Perhaps it is not too late. We should face dogs, live with them side-by-side. I feel that is the only way that we can save ourselves, to be as we are meant to be as human beings. To me, there is no certain sacred place. When I am tucked in bed with my dog at night, that is my sacred place.

You can not hold God tightly. You can not hold Buddha or a Buddhist altar close. Dogs are more like living God. They are warm and smell nice. And they want you to hold them.

Getting back to true me, away from evaluating myself on business success or personal achievement [means] getting back to myself being a simple dog owner. I always keep that in my mind. Rather than keeping it in mind, that is my happiness and goal of life.

Looking into dogs’ eyes, being with dogs, you gain something more than being with other human beings. When I look into dogs’ eyes, I become myself, true me. I get back the true value of myself. Not too small, not too big, [not] out of proportion. I feel that dogs know that naturally. I want people to look into dogs’ eyes.”