Maneki-neko

In the silk country north of Edo, in what is now Gunma, farmers pasted paper cats to the walls of their rearing rooms. The sheds were kept hot for the worms, close and humid and loud with the papery rustle of thousands of caterpillars working through mulberry leaves, and a whole year of income sat in trays that a single mouse could ruin overnight. Real cats were expensive and inclined to wander. A painted one cost almost nothing and stayed where it was put. Four generations of the Iwamatsu family, minor nobility of Nitta district with a famous samurai ancestor and not much else to trade on, made a living supplying them, and Iwamatsu Michizumi, who died in 1854, was known for his cats as far away as the capital.

That is where the beckoning cat starts, and it is nowhere near where people look for it. Before it was a charm for money it was a working charm against vermin, and cats were spoken of as the gods of the silkworm because of what they did to mice. When sericulture thinned out, the image did not go with it. It moved indoors to the counter, where the mice had become metaphorical and the thing worth drawing in was custom.

The object itself surfaces late and all at once. The Bukō nenpyō, a running chronicle of Edo, records it in the entry for 1852, and in that same year Utagawa Hiroshige drew a stall at Sensō-ji hung with them: the marushime-neko, lean and watchful, far more animal than doll. Those cats hold no coin. They wear a bell and nothing else. Every temple legend that explains where the maneki-neko came from is set two centuries before any cat anyone can actually point to. The stories came to the object, not the other way round.

Four places claim it. At Gōtoku-ji in Setagaya, a Sōtō temple poor enough to be coming apart at the edges, a cat sat at the gate and beckoned to Ii Naotaka, lord of Hikone, as he rode home from falconry. He turned in. The temple’s own account has thunder breaking a moment later and hard rain coming down on the stretch of road he had just left; another telling drops a great tree on the spot instead. Either way he went in for shelter, stayed for the talk, and afterwards made the place his clan’s temple. Gōtoku-ji was rebuilt in 1633 on Ii money and has not been poor since. The Shōfuku-den was raised in the cat’s memory, with a standing Shōfuku Kannon inside it.

Jishō-in, now in Shinjuku, tells a harder story. In 1477 Ōta Dōkan, who would go on to build the first castle at Edo, lost his bearings in the fighting at Egota and Numabukuro against the Toshima. A cat found him and led him to the temple, and he came through the night alive. He kept the animal until it died, buried it himself, and had a Jizō made in its shape. The Neko-Jizō is still there, kept hidden and brought out at Setsubun.

Saihō-ji in Suginami holds a cat named Tama, who belonged to a Yoshiwara courtesan called Usugumo. Tama would not leave her side, not even as far as the privy, and the master of the house lost his temper and struck the cat’s head off. The head flew the length of the room and closed its teeth on a snake that had been coiled there waiting for her. What the master thought he was doing changes from telling to telling. Usugumo buried Tama at the temple, and a regular of hers had a cat carved in wood to stop her grieving.

At Imado, up by the river in Asakusa, an old woman too poor to feed her cat let it go. It came back that same night, in one version through a dream and in another simply there in the room with her, and told her to make its likeness. She worked the local grey clay, carried the finished cats to Sensō-ji, and sold every one. Imado potters had been turning out clay figures for generations, which makes this the only one of the four stories that also accounts for where the physical thing came from.

Nobody knows which of them, if any, is true. The cat is easier to read than its origins. It sits square on its haunches, heavy at the base, one forepaw up beside the head with the pad turned outward and the toes folded down. Westerners see a wave and get it precisely backwards. The gesture is not goodbye. It is come here, and it is exactly how a person calls someone over in Japan. Round the neck runs a red collar with a small bell, and that is not decoration either: in the Edo period a cat was a luxury animal, often kept on a cord so it could not stray, and belled so its owner could hear where it had got to. The figurine is a record of how people really kept cats.

Which paw is up matters. The right is generally said to pull in money and is often read as male, the left to pull in people and read as female, which is why shopkeepers who can afford to hedge keep one of each. A cat with both paws raised divides opinion. Some take it for double the effect, others for a greed that curdles into nothing, and a fair number see in it only the posture of a man giving up. Height counts as well, on the straightforward logic that a paw held higher reaches luck that is further off.

Colour has its own grammar, though less of it is old than owners assume. The calico is standard, white blotched with black and orange, and a male calico is rare enough that the rarity by itself was the charm. Black turns away sickness and misfortune, except in Kyoto, where black brings customers instead. Red guards against smallpox and measles, on the older reasoning that the god of smallpox will not come near the colour. Gold for money, pink for love, purple for examinations, green for talent, silver for long life, orange for working life: all of those were handed out within living memory, and they have the tidy look of a chart rather than a belief.

The coin is newer than it appears. Edo clay charms set foxes and mice on top of koban, cats occasionally too, sitting on the gold rather than gripping it, and somewhere in the handover the cat picked it up. The Nippon Maneki-neko Club favour a different route and trace the coin back to the gold bell at the collar, pointing at old figures where a coin hangs exactly where a bell ought to be. Meiji settled the question in practice: plaster moulds made the cat cheap and national, and the bell gave way to money. The koban is usually stamped with a sum in ryō that no coin ever carried.

Gōtoku-ji’s cats still hold nothing, and the temple says plainly why. The cat brings the opening and the connection; what becomes of it afterwards is the visitor’s own work.

By the time outsiders began writing the cat down, it was not merely displayed but worshipped. Lafcadio Hearn, in 1894, found one in every house where geisha lodged, clay usually, porcelain most often, gold rarely, standing in the alcove with sweetmeats and rice bread and wine set before it, incense smouldering, a lamp kept burning. He called it the genius loci and said it brought the patronage of the rich. William George Aston, writing on Shinto in 1905, listed what merchants paid respect to and put the beckoning cat in alongside Ebisu, the big-headed luck doll Fukusuke, and a cow lying down under rugs. The Encyclopædia of Religion and Ethics in 1910 filed it under charms and amulets, a child’s toy used amuletically, kept to draw custom to a shop. Within fifty years of its first appearance in the record there was a lamp burning in front of it.

The face arrived later than any of that. In the 1950s makers in Aichi took the proportions of a local doll, the Okkawa ningyō, and grafted them onto the cat; the head swelled until it matched the body and the eyes opened wide. It has not gone back. From there the cat travelled, into Hong Kong and Taiwan tea houses through the twentieth century, onto altars that had previously held Guan Yu, and outward through the world’s Chinatowns until a good half of the people who own one take it for Chinese.

What it does is narrow and entirely of this world. It does not heal, curse, prophesy or defend. It attracts, and it attracts without discrimination: customers toward a door, coins toward a till, attention toward whatever happens to be behind it. Japanese practice allows a person to ask outright for material things, and the maneki-neko is that request rendered in clay, with no apology and no spiritual cover story laid over the top.

Its limits follow from exactly that. The gesture is the whole function, so the cat has to be seen; shut it in a back room or turn it to the wall and it is a lump of glaze. It cannot sort what it calls in, which is why the older habit is to carry a fulfilled cat back to the temple rather than leave it beckoning on a shelf forever, and why the yard at Gōtoku-ji now holds them in their thousands, ranked in rows on the racks, every paw still up. And it breaks. A shop cat that survives forty years of steam and grease and knocked elbows is unusual. The broken ones are not mended. They are replaced, set down in the same spot, paw raised, still calling.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a maneki-neko?

A maneki-neko is a Japanese figurine of a seated cat with one forepaw raised in a beckoning gesture, kept to draw customers, money and good fortune toward whatever it faces. It is usually a calico with a red collar and a small bell, and most figures made since the Meiji era also hold an oval gold koban coin. The object first appears in the record in 1852, in the Edo chronicle Bukō nenpyō and in a Hiroshige print of a stall at Sensō-ji.

Does the left or the right paw mean something different?

Yes. A raised right paw is generally said to draw in money and is often read as male, while a raised left paw draws in people and is read as female, so shopkeepers sometimes keep one of each. A cat with both paws up is read differently by different owners: some as double the benefit, others as greed that comes to nothing, others again as the posture of giving up. A paw held higher is believed to reach luck that is further away.

Why do some maneki-neko hold a gold coin and others do not?

The koban coin is a relatively recent addition and was not part of the earliest figures, which wore only a bell. Edo clay charms placed foxes and mice on top of koban, and the cat appears to have picked the coin up from that habit, though the Nippon Maneki-neko Club trace it instead to a gold bell worn at the collar. The cats sold at Gōtoku-ji still hold no coin, because the temple teaches that the cat supplies the opportunity and the connection rather than the money itself.

What is the legend of the Gōtoku-ji cat?

Gōtoku-ji in Setagaya tells of a cat that sat at its gate and beckoned to Ii Naotaka, lord of Hikone, as he rode home from falconry. He went in, and moments later a storm broke over the road he had just left, though another version of the tale has a large tree fall on the spot instead. In gratitude Naotaka made the struggling temple his clan’s own, and it was rebuilt in 1633 with his backing; the Shōfuku-den was later raised in the cat’s memory.

Was the maneki-neko always a charm for money?

No. Its ancestry lies in Edo-period sericulture, where farmers in the silk districts north of Edo pasted painted cats inside their silkworm sheds to frighten off the mice that ate the worms, with the Iwamatsu family of Nitta supplying them over four generations. Cats were spoken of in that context as the gods of the silkworm. Only as silk farming declined did the cat’s image move to the shop counter and take on the commercial luck it is known for now.

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