In more than one image from 1900s Japan, they look hungover
, we told our daughter, to get her a maneki-neko: the good luck or beckoning cat. She is almost three. She would stay home with my mother, her grandmother. There is a maneki-neko that lives at the till of a manicure shop near our house, and she likes to stop and greet it. Japanese folklore has cats for many things, and we were grateful for this one. Before we left, we wrote letters outlining our progress towards this goal.
I wrote the school exams, and later, when I would come home from university – yet another thing cats don’t have to do – Spike would leave dead birds under my bed. Naturally, I believed him to be superior to all other cats.My university flatmate once got our cat so stoned that he watched a petal fall from a vase of poppies and, seconds after it had already touched the table, reached out his paw to bat at it.
There is a mythical Japanese cat for this, too: nekomata, or “cat monster”, a large, shapeshifting cat that lives in the mountains and eats wild beasts, men and dogs. It also has two tails, which it uses to bewitch people. It can perform necromancy, raising the dead and controlling them with a dance of its paws and tails.The nekomata is a cat monster with a forked tail and a taste for human flesh.
In the 1600s people began to tell stories about bakeneko the “changed cat”. Davisson explains that this may have happened because lamps burned fish oil, which attracted cats, whose shadows were enlarged and animated by the flames. Davisson again: “They smoked pipes. Played dice. And got up to all kinds of trouble that every hard-working farmer wished they could indulge in.”
Australia Latest News, Australia Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
G7 summit live: world leaders gather in Italy with Ukraine and Israel-Gaza wars on the agendaThe US, Japan, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and Britain are gathering in Italy’s Puglia region
Read more »
Five women launch lawsuit in Tokyo for right to undergo voluntary sterilisation in JapanWomen in Japan face a $4,800 fine if they have a sterilisation procedure without their spouse's consent, but there is now a fight to have that changed.
Read more »
Peak Japan: why foreign tourists are going mad for Mount FujiA developer in Japan just built a 10-storey apartment block in Tokyo but then decided to tear it down. What is going on?
Read more »
Waves of change: Japan’s female fishers fill the gap in a struggling industryAlthough women are helping to address a desperate labour shortage, they face resistance in a sector dominated by men
Read more »
Earthquakes shake Japan’s Ishikawa region just months after last quake in January7NEWS brings you the latest local news from Australia and around the world. Stay up to date with all of the breaking sport, politics, entertainment, finance, weather and business headlines. Today's news, live updates & all the latest breaking stories from 7NEWS.
Read more »
Toyota, Honda, Mazda and Yamaha admit safety testing errors in Japan spanning a decadeToyota — the world's biggest car manufacturer by volume — has admitted incorrect testing airbag inflation and crash damage, with probes also underway into fuel efficiency and emissions data.
Read more »