Also know as the Nippon Terrier, the Nihon Terrier, the Mikado Terrier or the Oyuki (Snowy) Terrier, this breed was created as a companion animal rather than as a working terrier.
When Europeans first started serious trading with Japan in the 18th century, they sometimes took their small dogs with them. Some of these remained in the Far East and were interbred with other local dogs to create new breeds. Among those early canine imports were Smooth Fox Terriers, brought to the port of Nagasaki by Dutch sailors during the Edo period. These were used to develop a Japanese Terrier that was essentially a pet animal, rather than a working dog. Its main centres were Yokohama and Kobe. In Kobe it was sometimes es referred to as the Kobe Terrier.
For many years this little terrier progressed from generation to generation without any serious attempt to control its type. Then, in 1916, in the Nada district near Kobe, the founding father of the modern breed, a male called Kuro, was born. He was the result of crosses between the ancestral terriers, an English Toy Terrier and a Toy Bull Terrier. From his offspring a new, improved terrier breed was developed and, in the 1930s, Japanese enthusiasts in the region of Osaka began a breeding programme with the aim of producing a fixed, pure-breeding line. The result was an athletic, elegantly slim little dog with a short white coat bearing dark markings, and with a black head and neck. The slightly arched shape of its slender body suggests that among its ancestors were whippet-like animals of some kind, most probably Italian Greyhounds.
The Japanese Terrier is still a rare breed and, sadly, its numbers are on the decline, but local canine conservationists are said to be coming to its rescue. It is still almost unknown outside its native country, although in the 1990s a few examples did arrive in Europe, thanks to the efforts of French and Italian breeders.
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