Why are there multiple topic markers (は) in this sentence?


To be clear, my level of Japanese is about as elementary as it gets, so it's
possible that this question is simply beyond my understanding. Still worth an
ask, though!

I was looking at the Wiktionary entry for the particle や when I had difficulty
understanding the second of the example sentences:

> 最近 **は** 犬や猫を飼っている人 **は** 多い
>
> (saikin **wa** inu ya neko o katte iru hito **wa** ōi)
>
> recently, many people are raising [animals like] dogs and/or cats

As I've shown in bold, the topic marker は occurs multiple times in the
sentence. If the second one were instead the subject marker が, then that would
align more with what I've learned in my Japanese 101 class, as well as with
what I've read about elsewhere online. But the fact that it is は puzzles me to
no end. It doesn't seem to be contrastive in any way, and the sentence being
so short only makes the use of two topic markers even more confusing to me.

Of course, it's possible that the volunteer Wiktionary editor made a mistake
when originally devising the sentence, but if not, my question is this: What
is the reason for this second は? If it can indeed be changed instead to が,
what nuance does that add or subtract?

Thanks in advance for any insight! And just as a reminder, I'm not even
halfway through the first Genki textbook yet, so maybe don't go _too_ deep
with the Japanese in your answers ^^;




The only good explanation I've ever read of this is in Susumu Kuno's "The
Structure of the Japanese Language". There are really (at least) two functions
of "wa". In this case, both are probably _contrastive_ (there's an implicit
comparison being made: " **nowadays** , ...[, whereas **in the past** , ...]"
and " **people who raise cats and dogs** [rather than **people who don't**
]]"). This is distinct from the _thematic_ use of "wa", which is probably what
you normally think of when you say "topic marker".

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yccet.jpg)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/yccet.jpg)

