The Japan Times: Two startling facts seem to justify Shukan Economist's description of Japan's pet market as "twisted." One is the market's sheer volume — an astonishing ¥1 trillion a year. The second is that there are more dogs and cats in this country (an estimated 23 million as of 2007) than there are children under 15.

If that suggests a human and highly urban society incongruously overrun with domestic animals, there's more in the same vein. Proliferating pet hotels, cafes, health clubs, gourmet food, clothing, jewelry and, last but hardly least, funerals invite doubts as to whether pets are rising or humans falling on the evolutionary scale.

For better or for worse, pets are no longer mere pets — they are members of the family, entitled to the very best. This is a recent and abrupt reversal of the traditional Japanese attitude which, free of the Judeo-Christian thinking that gave man "dominion" over the beasts, was similarly immune to pagan reverence for them. Animals as living creatures were given their due, but no more.

Shukan Economist traces modern Japan's first of two pet booms to the economic bubble of the 1980s. The nouveau riche of the day craved golden retrievers and other large breeds as status symbols. The bubble broke and the boom went bust. It revived around 2000, with three main differences: the dogs of choice are now the smallest imaginable; their owners are economically average; and, unlike its transitory predecessor, this boom could be here to stay.

Its immediate spark seems to have been a TV commercial featuring a Chihuahua. The dog was adorable. Suddenly everyone had to have one. Lately, miniature dachshunds have surpassed Chihuahuas in popularity. As of last year, according to the Japan Kennel Club's count of Japan's top three breeds, dachshunds outnumbered Chihuahuas 88,615 to 82,658, with toy poodles third at 78,725.

The tininess and cuteness of the dogs, the care lavished on them, and the correspondence of their numerical growth with the decline in the number of babies suggest a kind of substitution at work. Are little dogs the babies of the 21st century?...