When it comes to Japan a lot of those go to the "animal themed cafes"
Asian Barred Owlet: Native to Southeast Asia (ie NOT Japan)
Ferruginous Pygmy Owl: Native to parts of southern USA, Mexico and greater central and south America (also not Japan)
Tropical Screech Owl: South American (not Japan)
Pallid Scops Owl: middle east to Central Asia
Idian Scops Owl: South Asia, ie mostly India
Southern Boobook: Australian (therefore definitely illegally smuggled out)
Burrowing Owl: America
Chaco Owl: Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay
Spectacled Owl: Central and South America
Tawny Owl: Europe
White Faced Scopes Owl: African
Mottled Owl: Central and South America
Spotted Eagle Owl: Africa
Spotted little Owl: Parts of America
Barn Owl: Very common, but not Japan
Albino Barn Owl: same as above
Brown Wood Owl: China and India
None of these owls are native to Japan. Owls are nocturnal of course, being in broad daylight and subjected to these greasy fucking humans twiddling their hands, that's just atrocious. Owls are also quite dirty, they hunt animals that are considered dirty like rats, carrying many pathogens. They're quite literally the rats and bats of avian. I don't get why anyone's allowed to touch the bird, don't most birds form an oil layer on their feathers to protect themselves? There's patrons handling the animals without protection, get scratched and they might just be the patient zero of a new avian virus, call it fukushima-nagasaki-notenough-24. I would like to assume that in order to hold an animal like this, you'd wear protection and a proper falconer handles the bird. Similar to how eagles or even bigger domestic birds like cockatoos gets handled in zoos.
Owls
Order: Strigiformes Family: Strigidae
The owls are small to large solitary nocturnal birds of prey. They have large forward-facing eyes and ears, a hawk-like beak and a conspicuous circle of feathers around each eye called a facial disk.
Collared scops-owl, Otus lettia (A)
Japanese scops-owl, Otus semitorques
Ryūkyū scops-owl, Otus elegans
Oriental scops-owl, Otus sunia
Eurasian eagle-owl, Bubo bubo (A)
Snowy owl, Bubo scandiacus (A)
Blakiston's fish-owl, Ketupa blakistoni
Ural owl, Strix uralensis
Long-eared owl, Asio otus
Short-eared owl, Asio flammeus
Boreal owl, Aegolius funereus
Northern boobook, Ninox japonica
Looking up opinions regarding these cafes, I discovered one that had some other animals too, like one lone capybara (gigantic aquatic rat) which are very social animals. If you isolate one out, they'll probably just die to depression.
Truly despicable. To not sound like gay bleeding heart liberal, I'll just queue up some cat videos instead.