August 26th, 2018 
Charles Solomon 
Based on a best-selling Chinese children’s book, Tibetan Dog (2011) was produced at Japan’s Madhouse studio in a rare Chinese-Japanese deal.
Since his parents separated, Tenzin (Tatsuomi Hamada) has grown up in the city of Xi’an in Shaanxi province with his mother. He learned to play the flute from her and had an unremarkable urban childhood. When she dies, the adolescent Tenzin is sent to join his father Lhakpa (Toshio Kakei), who lives in a yurt on the remote Tibetan plateau. A distant man but a caring physician, Lhakpa has shown little interest in his son.
Tenzin is understandably upset with his new living arrangements. He believes his father left his mother to die. The bed is uncomfortable. There are no stores or restaurants nearby, and a yurt is essentially a tent. The food seems weird and unpalatable: Dried mutton washed down with tea flavored with yak butter. He has to be shown by a family friend how to wear the unfamiliar Tibetan robes and coats. His father, who welcomes his son with all the enthusiasm he’d show for a case of cholera, assigns him to herd sheep.
Having grown up in a city of 12 million people, Tenzin has no idea how to handle the recalcitrant sheep. The Tibetan plateau is a harsh, unforgiving terrain, populated with wolves, bears, snow leopards and other predators: Tenzin is clearly in over his head. The sheep wander off, making them even more vulnerable to attack.
As he struggles with his father’s flock, Tenzin is saved by the arrival of an enormous golden Tibetan mastiff who knows how to make the sheep behave. (Tibetan mastiffs, which were the subject of a recent pet craze in China, are huge: the males weigh 100-160 lbs. They’re herding dogs, bred to protect sheep.) Tenzin quickly bonds with the dog he names “Doji.” Although he slowly befriends Norbu (Houko Kuwashima), the grandson of an herbalist/snake oil peddler in a nearby village, Doji is Tenzin’s real companion.
Life grows more complicated when sheep–and men—are found slain by a mysterious predator. Neither bears nor leopards will kill something and not eat it, so either a wolf or a dog must be the culprit. A bandit chieftain blames Doji for the killing spree and demands the right to shoot the dog.
To save his pet, Tenzin and Norbu take Doji and head for the high mountains. They learn from some friendly nomads that the real killer is a monstrous creature named Rakshasa (a type of demon in Hindu mythology). The audience never quite sees Rakshasa, just his fangs, claws and glowing red eyes emerging from a mountain of dark fur. Doji dies protecting Tenzin and Norbu from the monster, but in an ending that recalls Disney’s Old Yeller, it turns out he sired a littler of puppies before he went out to meet his doom. Tenzin will raise them, although someone more knowledgeable will need to train them.
Naoto Unoue’s screenplay has a few major holes: The audience never learns exactly what Rakshasa is. (Bear? Yeti? Demon?) The rapprochement scenes between Tenzin and his father, whose attitude softens after getting a good talking–to from the woman he’s training as his assistant, feel boilerplate. Although the background paintings never reach level of the Ghibli artists’ work, they provide a handsome evocation of Tibet’s mountainous vistas. Director Masayuki Kojima keeps the story moving.
After it premiered at Annecy in 2011, Tibetan Dog opened in China, but no one went to it. The film earned mere 1.35 million Yuan, about $209,000 at the time, against a reported budget of 60 million Yuan (about $9.3 million). Its subsequent release in Japan also failed to attract much attention.
The box office failure is regrettable. Tibetan Dog may not be a great movie, but it is a perfectly acceptable family film—and more entertaining than many bigger budget American and European offerings.
The Tibetan Dog
Maiden Japan: $29.98 1 disc, Blu-ray
In Japanese, with English subtitles
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