In July 1935, one of Ernest Thompson Seton’s animal stories, “Lobo; the King of Currumpaw，” was published in Dôbutsu Bungaku (Animal literature) Magazine. This work was the Japanese readers' introduction to Seton. His works were collected into book form as Dôbutsu-ki, and gained great popularity in wartime Japan.

　However, the acceptance ot Seton’s works was quite different in the U.S. Even though Seton’s works widely circulated among urban American readers at the beginning of 20^th century, his reputation was seriously damaged by two significant events: the “Nature Fakers”controversy and the decline of the Nature-Study movement. Today, most of Seton's publications have gone out of print and he has often been called “America's forgotten artist-naturalist.”

　In this paper, I will compare the receiption of Seton’s animal stories in Japan and America, and determine why they were so favorably accepted in one country and not the other. I will argue that the social placement of Dôbutsu-ki was also closely related to the trend of Japanese wartime education in the 1930's, specifically in regards to the pedagogical argument concerning 'science study' and the governmental censorship of children’s readings. Also, there existed the unreasonable premise that animal stories should be categorized as children’s literature. In this paper, I will also investigate the world-wide contexts existing behind this premise.