NEUROTICALLY pampered dogs are a daily sight in Tokyo these days, and of all the breeds none is more popular, or more horrid, than the chihuahua. They are bad enough in their natural state, mincing along behind their owners with that infuriating jiggly walk. Dress them up, as many Tokyo pet lovers do, in dog coats, dog hats and dog sunglasses and they become even more loathsome. So it is satisfying to report the shame that has been heaped upon the chihuahua, which has gone from being an icon of simpering cuteness to a symbol of thuggishness and usury.

The story begins with a series of commercials that became one of the most popular in Japan’s television history. In episodic, Nescafé Gold Blend-style, they tell the story of a middle-aged man whose life is transformed by his love for a white chihuahua. The creature is named Qoo-chan, after “kuu”, the Japanese word for the noise that chihuahuas make. In the course of the ads, he purchases the hound, fits him out in a morning suit, and adopts his mate and litter of pups. All of these expenses are made possible by the company behind the ads, a “consumer loans” firm called Aiful.

Qoo-chan triggered a wave of chihuahua-buying and a spike in business for Aiful who plastered their mascot on posters and credit cards — until last month, when it became clear that the company is less of a chihuahua than a growling, slavering rottweiler.

Having borrowed money at staggeringly high interest rates, customers who fell behind in their repayments were finding themselves harassed over the phone by debt collectors. How much is that doggy in the window, the famous old song goes. In the case of a chihuahua bought with an Aiful loan, the answer turns out to be about 750 quid, at up to 29.2 per cent interest a year.

“Consumer loans provider”, it became clear, is dangerously close to being a euphemism for loan shark. The publicity has reflected horribly on Aiful, of course, but it has had an unexpected side-effect — the bottom has fallen out of the chihuahua market.

The price of a Qoo-chan has dropped by £100 a pooch. Chihuahua owners report being treated with coldness and suspicion when they walk their pets. A few years ago, the fad dog was the Siberian husky, which lost its novelty value after a few months. A Japanese friend of mine remembers visiting her local dog pound, where abandoned huskies sat miserably in cages awaiting their visit to the extermination chamber.

Is this the fate that awaits Qoo-chan and his breed in the aftermath of chihuahuagate? I can almost hear the cries of the hideous pariah chihuahuas, scavenging Tokyo in packs in the rags of their designer outfits: Kuu! Kuu! Kuu!

• I MAY NEED the services of a guard chihuahua myself after the impressive reaction to my column last week about Ryunosuke Kita, a Japanese blogger who has been calling for my public execution. Mr Kita, you recall, painstakingly translates articles from British newspapers into Japanese, accompanied by character analysis of their authors. In my case, these include the observation that I am “a rotten devil foreign reporter”, a “low-class foreigner”, as well as being “the private parts of The Times”.

  Mr Kita quickly posted my article about him online and within hours, I was the object of what Japanese internet users refer to as a “matsuri”. The word means a Shinto festival, a holiday occasion when the local community turns out to dance and carouse. In an internet matsuri, a community of netizens bombard a website — in this case, my Times Online weblog — with anonymous expressions of vituperation.

  Some were in extremely salty Japanese, but many contributors made admirable efforts to vent their fury towards me in English, with mixed results. “Are not you of a bite of the journalist to general person’s Brogar?”, asked one disgruntled reader, a question that, frankly, floored me. “Though the British heard it is humorous in the gentleman,” said another, “when the Japanese sees your sentences, everyone shocks.”

  One netizen signed off a list of criticisms with the spine-chilling Japanese oath, “Pu pu pu pu!”. But the most terrible indictment of all came from a man who identified himself as a lifelong fan of British music of the 1960s. So incensed was he by my reporting that he has vowed never to listen to the Beatles or the Rolling Stones again.

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