In late 1970s
Japan, somebody though it would be a good idea to make a cartoon adaptation of a 1963 American children's book called
Rascal the Raccoon-- a tale of a boy and his, well, his
raccoon, found as a helpless baby and raised for a year through various of the boy's adventures. At the end of the book, the boy realizes that his raccoon has become a wild animal, as it begins to express its natural invasiveness and aggressiveness. So, ultimately, the boy canoes the critter downstream to release it to a new life in its native wilds.
The cartoon,
Araiguma Rasukaru (a literal translation of the book title) was naturally a bit more cartoonish in its ideation of these events. The raccoon became a bit more of an anthropomorphic ally to the boy, doing things like turning book pages for him to read and such. The Japanese ate it up, they loved the cuteness of the cartoon animal, and hence sprung a brief national vogue for the importation of raccoons -- which had never existed in the wild in Japan -- as pets, no doubt with the image that they would serve as faithful and happy little companions, like dogs even, but with that extra benefit of prehensile limbs with which to help out with grasping tasks. In all, some 1,500 raccoons were imported. But it didn't take to long for the Japanese families who brought home these darling pets to learn the lesson of the book, and ultimately of the cartoon series. Raccoons are not pets, not domesticated, nor instantly domesticatable.
Now this is not to suggest that it would be impossible to engage in a program of raccoon
domestication through, for example, a century or so of careful
breeding aimed at selecting those animals which avoid those wild traits of aggressive behavior, and generally getting into and overturning and making a mess of everything. Such an effort has been done as a scientific experiment with
foxes in
Russia, where, over fifty years from the program's start, cuddly foxes who behave like dogs have been obtained. But no such effort has yet been made with the raccoon.
And so, when the Japanese people understood that their pet raccoon could no longer live in their home, they followed the example of the book and the cartoon, taking their raccoons to wild places-- in Japan, naturally-- and setting them free. Most often those places in Japan where wilderness still reigns are home to, or in close proximity to, a Buddhist temple. And so, for added blessings, the importers of these animals would take their raccoon and leave it at the temple door, or on the temple steps, or elsewhere on the temple grounds.
And that is why to this day, over 40 Japanese prefectures have Buddhist temples which are
infested with raccoons.
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For THE IRON NODER CHALLENGE 5: THE FERROUS FRONTIER