Hachiko Statue

Hachiko was an Akita dog, born in November 1923 in Odate, Akita Prefecture, who belonged to Hidesaburo Ueno, a professor of agricultural engineering at Tokyo Imperial University living in Shibuya. Each day, Hachiko greeted Ueno at Shibuya Station when he returned from work.

On May 21, 1925, Ueno died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage while at work and never returned to the station. Hachiko kept coming back to Shibuya Station every day to wait for him, continuing for roughly nine to ten years until his own death in March 1935.

The story spread nationally and turned Hachiko into one of Japan's most widely recognized symbols of loyalty, a reputation reinforced internationally by the 2009 Hollywood film "Hachi: A Dog's Tale." In September 2023, Shibuya City and Odate City, Hachiko's hometown, jointly marked his 100th birth anniversary through the HACHI100 Project, underscoring the story's continued civic significance.

No, the statue standing at Hachiko Plaza today is not the original. A first bronze statue, sculpted by Teru Ando, was erected at Shibuya Station in April 1934, with Hachiko himself present at the unveiling. That original statue was removed and melted down as part of a wartime metal collection drive by 1944.

In 1948, the Society for Recreating the Hachiko Statue commissioned Teru Ando's own son, Takeshi Ando, to sculpt a replacement. It was unveiled in August 1948, and that 1948 statue, now over 75 years old in its own right, is the one visitors see today.

The statue stands in Hachiko Plaza (Shibuya Hachiko-mae Hiroba), a compact open square directly outside Shibuya Station's Hachiko Exit. Once you exit the station through the Hachiko Exit, the statue is immediately visible, usually surrounded by a small crowd taking photos.

Shibuya Crossing sits just beyond the plaza, a few steps further from the statue. Most visitors treat the statue as the first stop before walking straight into the crossing, since the two are essentially the same location from a walking-distance standpoint.

This section covers an active construction project and is current as of 2026-08-24, not a permanent description. Shibuya Station is in the middle of a large, multi-year redevelopment scheduled to continue into 2027, and it has changed some of what's around the Hachiko Statue, though not the statue itself, which has not moved.

The Hachiko ticket gate, a station gate rather than the statue, was relocated approximately 60 meters as part of renovations beginning around January 2025, and it shifted again on March 1, 2026, moving further south along the same wall; the number of usable toll gates was reduced from 17 to 14 during the relocation. JR East describes the March 2026 gate position as temporary, for a currently undetermined duration, while renovations continue.

The Hachiko Family mosaic mural, a ceramic relief created by artist Ryutaro Kitahara in March 1990 depicting Hachiko with roughly 20 Akita dogs, has been permanently removed as part of this redevelopment; JR East determined it could not be safely relocated. It is no longer on display near the exit.

The nearby Moyai Statue, a separate, unrelated stone statue sometimes confused with the Hachiko Statue by name recognition alone, was removed from its original spot in January 2025 and reinstalled behind the Shibuya Fukuras complex on January 22, 2025, as a temporary relocation. Whether it eventually returns to a plaza near the station is not yet decided.

Practical takeaway: budget a few extra minutes to navigate the current gate position if you're arriving through Shibuya Station, and don't be surprised if the mural you may have seen in older photos or the Moyai statue in its old spot aren't there. The Hachiko Statue itself is exactly where it has always been.