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Visit to Japan 2007

Visit to Japan, Tokyo, 2007
A little bit of pigeon history ; 1876 - 1st actual pigeon race was held, only from 30 KM. Nara - Tokyo 1937 - 1st race of 1000 KM succeeded. 1st imported pigeons came end of 19th century and beginning of 20th century. 1964 - Olympic Games in Japan ; they released a lot of pigeons in the opening ceremony ; that was a very good promotion for the pigeon sport in Japan. 1981 - Pigeon Olympiad in Japan
Map of Japan ; Japan has 47 prefectures ( provinces )...
Uguisudani ; the metro station close to the hotel where I stayed. Uguisudani is also close to the building of the JRPA, Japanese Racing Pigeon Association.
Hotel Pine Hill, the hotel Mr Izuhara reserved for me.
The building of the Japanese racing pigeon association. About 13 people work full time for the racing pigeon association. They have 15,000 members and among them about 10,000 practise the pigeon sport ; so 5,000 people are just member because they pay the yearly fee. There is also a smaller pigeon association, named the Japan Postduiven Association. They have about 5,000 members.
The office where all people work. JRPA sells about 1,000,000 pigeon rings per year. Pigeon racers breed averagely between 60-100 youngsters.
Mr Izuhara reminded me of the fact that he visited our loft in Knesselare 12 years ago and he made a big report in the monthly magazine of the JRPA.
A magazine from 1941...one of the oldest in Japan... Pigeons were in the beginning of the 20th century used mainly by the army to send messages. Afterwards the rich people started to buy the pigeons from the army and started to organise races. In 1947 the JRPA was founded. By the way ; there are no weekly pigeon magazines in Japan ! Only 2 monthly magazines...
Visit to Japan, Tokyo, April 2007
Visit to Japan, Tokyo, April 2007
Visit to Japan, Tokyo, April 2007
A picture in the office of JRPA. Most of the people dont speak english, actually Mr Izuhara is the only one speaking English fluently.
A view of the office of JRPA. 13 people work for the JRPA in totally ( this is not including the board of directors ) 2 people are taking care of the pigeons ( on the top of the building they have an own pigeon loft ; they sell cheaper pigeons to Japanese fanciers ) 2 people are hired for financial matters. 2 people for other various matters of service 1 head of the office 4 people are working for the magazine 1 man is hired for the pigeon medicine business
The first evening we went out for dinner with Mr Izuhara and one of his colleagues. This colleague still needed to go home after dinner and that takes about 2 hours with the train.
The cartoons that were published in Japan about 30 years ago, the central person in the cartoon is a young boy that starts racing pigeon. It was a very famous cartoon all over Japan and was a very important influence for young boys to start racing pigeons. Also for Mr Izuhara, who is a fanatic reader, it was the most important reason to become interested in pigeon racing.
The cartoon inside... By the way ; in Japan there are 2 racing seasons...in spring and in autumn. In the spring season : only yearlings are raced. ( no youngsters, and very few 2 or 3 year old pigeons because after one year racing not many yearlins survive...) In the autumn season : beginning of october ; youngsters that are bred between february and may.
Mr. Sasaki ( president of the JRPA ). About 4-5 vets in Japan are specialised in pigeons. There is given a lot of antibiotics to the pigeons. ( even not only when they are ill...) There is no control of use of doping !
The reception of the Karaoke Bar of a very famous pigeon collector Mr Takayama. Today we made an appointment with him in Yokohama, a town where over 3,500,000 people live.
Picture with Mr. Takayama on the left side. Mr Takayama (61 years old)is one of the most famous champion pigeons collectors in Japan.
On the left, the first international Barcelona 1999 raced by J. Torreman, the Netherlands. 20-25 years ago the Japanese economy boomed and there were a lot of rich people who could afford to buy extremely expensive pigeons. But since the crash of the economy a decade ago, fewer people can afford to buy very expensive pigeons. Of course there is still a number of rich people who can afford to buy expensive pigeons, but there used to be a lot more.
5th international Barcelona on a 1300 KM race.
1st nat Bergerac 2006 in the Netherlands.
14th international Barcelona from Herman Brinkman.
On the right the 2nd international Barcelona 1999.
2nd international Barcelona 2000 against 26.612 pigeons ; only 6 m/m slower than the first one and this pigeon needed to race 100 KM more than the 1st international.
3rd international Barcelona, raced by Peter Elverman. The pigeon is called Romeo. Romeo is already father of 2nd international Barcelona.
Orhan, a famous pigeon of Bruggeman brothers.
4th nat Sint Vincent against 40,969 pigeons ; 2 weeks later the same pigeon won 1st national Dax 18,750 pigeons.
Daughter Fieneke 5000
Brother of Fieneke 5000
The racing loft of Mr Takayama.
In 2004 Mr Takayama won the 3rd and 4th price from a 1100 KM race ; one of the performances where is most proud of. In 1996 he also won 2nd price on the 500 KM race against 12.000 pigeons and with the same pigeon he won in 1997 the 1st price on t 500 KM race.
In the past extreme long distance races were the most popular in Japan ; gradually people got more interested in one day long distance races here. ( Japanese have difficulties to wait so long for pigeons...- in general Japanese dont have a lot of patience for anything ; when you order food in a restaurant, averagely you only want to wait a few minutes ; trains are running every few minutes and are in 99,9 % of the time exactly on time...etc..)
Mr Takayama owns 3 brothers and 1 direct daughter of Fieneke 5000.
Mr Takayama invited us for dinner in the evening together with Mr Izuhara and another pigeon fancier from the region. Mr Takayama was very interested in PIPA and wanted to know everything about the website and the history from the website. For the Japanese Pigeon Racing Association Magazine also many information is used from the PIPA website.
Nikolaas G - 07/06/2009