From: Dog In Review, Volume 3, Issue 7, July 1999, by Bo Bengtson
The email address is info@dogsinreview.com and website is dogsinreview.com

Effective immediately, the Japan Kennel Club is prohibiting imported dogs with foreign titles from participating in the majority of its shows. The ban is expected to affect the lively trade in imported champions, particularly from the U.S., which make up a high percentage of the top winners at Japanese show. Last year reportedly eight of the Top Ten show dogs in Japan were AKC champions imported from the United States.

One reason given for the new regulation is that the JKC wishes to encourage Japanese breeders to produce top quality home-bred stock instead of, as has often been the case in the past, buy a ready-made show dog from abroad.  (The American Kennel Club, at a time when British imports seemed to monopolize the top awards in the U.S., instigated awards limited to American-bred dogs, and at least one breed club still limits entries at its national specialty show to U.S. born dogs.)

Those hardest hit by the new regulation - apart from a handful of exhibitors currently campaigning AKC champions for Top Dog ratings in Japan - will be the Japanese dealers who import large numbers of champions from various countries - primarily the United States but also Canada, Australia, and to a lesser degree Great Britain, Scandinavia and central Europe - for re-sale to customers in Japan. With the lack of a common language and sometimes complicated import regulations, it has long been necessary for most Japanese dog fanciers to resort to a middleman who can help with the practicalities when they wish to import a dog from abroad.

Buying and selling purebred show dogs has become a lucrative profession for a few dealers; one company lists imported dogs for sale in several pages of advertisements every month in the Japanese press.

Responsible breeders who want to know where their dogs end up prefer to deal with the buyer directly. In recent years, better communication with overseas dog fanciers has led to a greater number of one-on-one relationships between buyer and seller, with satisfactory results for all concerned.

The biggest dog show this year in Japan, the Japan Kennel Club's 50th anniversary FCI Asian International Dog Show, held in Tokyo on March 27-28, is one of the few shows where imported champions can participate. Over 200 AKC champions were entered, and one of them, the Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Am. & Jap. Ch. Lorjen It's A Guy Thing, now owned by Norimoto Murase, won Best in Show under international all-rounder judge Rainer Vuorinen from Finland. See also report in DR May issue, p.58, and photographs in this issue, courtesy of Mari Nakashima.

(Photos not included in this reprint)