I also thought surgery might be involved. All those stories about plastic surgery going wrong and making “cat women.” So I imagined the doctors making a large muzzle or snout for him.

But no. It’s just a costume. But it’s very realistic. It must take forever to get anywhere though, walking around on all fours.

One particularly annoying group of people I’ve just discovered are the self-styled “journalists” and even “investigative journalists,” supposed “First Amendment” “Auditors” of today, who buy a steadicam, and take it upon themselves to wander around, intrude into and poke their noses into all sorts of public buildings–government offices, police precincts, prisons, hospitals, etc. supposedly to “audit” their adherence to the Constitution, but really to provoke reactions to their chutzpah and pushiness which they can video, put up on the Internet, get clicks from, make money off of, and gain some “fame.”

These are hardly “aristocrats” but rather–from how they speak–likely unemployed members of the dese, dems, and dose crowd.

Here’s aristocratic eccentricity you might enjoy (and yes, made possible by modern technology)– a Brit who rejoices in the name of Zack MacLeod Pinsent, who dresses in the style of a Regency gentleman every single day:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b01S7EBQztk

–Snow on Pine

I would throw in prosperity.

It’s been a rocky road, true, and we are always beset by problems and fears; nonetheless, humanity is as rich as it ever has been and individuals have the wherewithal to actualize their fantasies.

Plus we have technology to help out. Imagine what a dog costume as nice as the above would have cost 100 years ago. If it could have been as nice.

I see much of the strangeness in the modern world as aristocratic eccentricity gone mainstream.

I knew some US missionaries to Japan many years ago… Came home after about 15 or so years pretty exhausted.

RE: Christian influence in Japan

Christianity entered Japan with the arrival of Fr. Francis Xavier of the Society of Jesus in 1549, during Japan’s Warring States Period (1467-1578), and soon several important Daimyo i.e. powerful regional lords, become baptized, they protected missionaries and their activities and, in return, received profits from trading with the West, and, over time, Christian missionaries eventually managed to make an estimated 300,000 converts, many among the samurai class.

In 1585 some Daimyo sent a mission which included four young Japanese Christians to Rome, where they met with Pope Gregory XIII.

In 1587 powerful warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi issued an anti-Christian edict limiting propagation of Christianity and ordering foreign missionaries out of the country. In 1597 Hideyoshi executes 6 foreign missionaries and 26 converts in Nagasaki.

Later, in 1612, the Tokugawa Shogunate also issued it’s own anti-Christian edict forbidding propagation, and ordering the destruction of churches, and in 1638 the Shogunate prohibited Christianity and expelled all foreigners, as Japan entered a 250 year period of strict isolation from foreign influences.*

According to the 2023 CIA World Factbook 1.5% of Japan’s population are Christians, Shinto 70.5%, Buddhism 67.2% (you can be both of these Japanese religions at the same time), with 5.9% other.

* See https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Christianity_in_Japan