While the sentencing took place in 2017, the conversation surrounding the case did not disappear. In the years following 2017, including 2021, animal rights activists continued to cite the case of Makoto Oya in their fight to:

: Oya used steel traps to catch the cats before drenching them in boiling water and burning them with a gas torch.

: Social media posts by animal rights activists using his case to campaign for harsher penalties for animal abuse.

In the vast, churning ocean of the 2021 internet—dominated by TikTok transitions, Instagram Reels, and YouTube’s relentless push for the six-second retention hook—the work of a shadowy figure known only as Makoto Oya stood as a radical anomaly. While the global pandemic had driven content consumption to a fever pitch, Oya’s series of cat videos, uploaded sporadically across now-mostly-deleted platforms, offered a philosophical counterpoint: a rejection of anthropomorphism, a mastery of negative space, and a meditation on the nature of digital attention itself. To watch a Makoto Oya cat video from 2021 is not to be entertained; it is to be asked a question about how we look.

In December 2017, District Judge Yasunobu Hosoya sentenced Oya to one year and 10 months in prison, but . This meant that Oya would not serve time in prison as long as he complied with the terms of his suspension, a decision that caused considerable outrage among animal rights groups. Why the Case Remains Significant

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This ephemerality is the final layer of the project. In creating cat videos that were designed to be lost, Oya inverted the logic of the permanent digital archive. He argued, through action, that not every moment needs to be monetized, reposted, or immortalized. The cats in his frame are not influencers; they are strays. The videos are not content; they are encounters. When the video is deleted, the encounter ends. There is no rerun.

Makoto Oya is a former tax accountant from Saitama, Japan, who gained notoriety for recording and uploading videos of himself torturing stray cats . While his initial arrest and sentencing occurred in late 2017, the case remains a focal point for animal rights activism in Japan and has seen continued discussion and relevance through 2021 and beyond due to ongoing efforts to strengthen animal cruelty laws. Case Overview

Between March 2016 and April 2017, Oya committed a series of horrific acts against stray cats. He would lure cats into steel traps baited with food, then subject them to immense suffering, including drenching them in boiling water and burning them with a gas torch. Over this period, he is believed to have abused at least 13 cats. Nine of them died from their injuries.

In late 2017, the Tokyo District Court handed down a sentence that sparked debate over the leniency of animal cruelty laws in Japan: : One year and ten months in prison.

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Makoto Oya was convicted in 2017 for torturing and killing at least 13 cats, sparking international outrage and leading to significant legal reforms in Japan. Although the acts occurred earlier, the case resurfaced in 2021 as the four-year suspended sentence neared completion and following the enactment of stricter animal welfare laws. Read a summary of the court details at Facebook .

In a 2021 context of doomscrolling and anxious productivity, such videos offered a phenomenological counter-training. To watch Oya’s cat sleep for ten minutes is to practice non-instrumental attention —a skill nearly lost in the gig economy of eyeballs.

The case of Makoto Oya became a catalyst for change in Japan. Animal rights activists and the general public were outraged by the suspended sentence, leading to a massive petition that gathered hundreds of thousands of signatures. This public pressure contributed to a landmark amendment of Japan’s in 2019 (which took effect in 2020), significantly increasing the penalties for animal abuse and killing.

Why are Japanese torturing cats and posting the videos online?

Before we analyze the 2021 boom, let’s meet the creator. Makoto Oya is a Japanese filmmaker and cinematographer known for his high-definition, ASMR-focused nature documentaries. Unlike typical "cute cat compilations," Oya treats felines like wild gods of domesticity.