Bakeneko

The bakeneko (化け猫, "changed cat") is a type of Japanese yōkai, or supernatural entity; more specifically, it is a kaibyō, or supernatural cat. It is often confused with the nekomata, another cat-like yōkai. The distinction between them is often ambiguous, but the largest difference is that the nekomata has two tails, while the bakeneko has only one.
There are legends of bakeneko in various parts of Japan, but the tale of the Nabeshima Bakeneko Disturbance in Saga Prefecture is especially famous.
The reason that cats are seen as yōkai in Japanese mythology is attributed to many of their characteristics: for example, the pupils of their eyes change shape depending on the time of day, their fur can seem to cause sparks when they are petted (due to static electricity), they sometimes lick blood, they can walk without making a sound, their wild nature that remains despite the gentleness they can show, they are difficult to control (unlike dogs), their sharp claws and teeth, nocturnal habits, and their speed and agility.
Many other animals appear as yōkai in old tales and display similar attributes: the deep tenacity of snakes, the ability of foxes (kitsune) to shapeshift into women, and the brutality of bake-danuki in eating humans depicted in the Kachi-kachi Yama folktale from the Edo period. However, cats figure in a great number of tales and superstitions because they live with humans yet retain their wild essence and air of mystery.
One folk belief about the bakeneko is that they lick lamp oil. In the Edo period encyclopedia Wakan Sansai Zue, it is said that a cat licking this oil is an omen of an impending strange event. People in the early modern period used cheap fish oils in lamps, e.g. sardine oil; that could explain cats wanting to lick them. Also, at that time the Japanese diet was based on grains and vegetables, and while the leftovers were fed to the cats, as carnivores, the cats would have lacked for protein and fat and therefore been even more attracted to lamp oils. Moreover, the sight of a cat standing on its hind legs to reach a lamp, its face lit with anticipation, could have seemed eerie and unnatural, like a yōkai. The stealing of household objects is commonly associated with many Japanese ghosts, and thus the disappearance of lamp oil when a cat was present helped to associate the cat with the supernatural.
The mysterious air that cats possess was associated with prostitutes who worked in Edo-period red-light districts. This was the origin of a popular character in kusazōshi (among other publications), the bakeneko yūjo.
As with the nekomata, another cat-like yōkai which is said to evolve from a cat whose tail split into two when it grew old, there are folk beliefs across Japan about aged cats turning into bakeneko. There are tales of cats that became bakeneko after being raised for twelve years in Ibaraki Prefecture and Nagano Prefecture, and for thirteen years in Kunigami District, Okinawa Prefecture. In Yamagata District, Hiroshima Prefecture, it is said that a cat raised for seven years or longer will kill the one that raised it. There are also many regions where, due to this superstition, people decided in advance for how many years they would raise a cat. Depending on the area, there are stories in which cats that were brutally killed by humans would become bakeneko and curse that human. Bakeneko stories are not only about aged cats, but also sometimes about revenge against cruel humans.
The abilities attributed to bakeneko are various, including shapeshifting into humans, wearing a towel or napkin on the head and dancing, speaking human words, cursing humans, manipulating dead people, possessing humans, and lurking in the mountains and taking wolves with them to attack travelers. As an unusual example, on Aji island, Oshika District, Miyagi Prefecture and in the Oki Islands, Shimane Prefecture, there is a story of a cat that shapeshifted into a human and wanted to engage in sumo.
The legend that cats could speak may have arisen from misinterpreting the cat's meowing as human language; for this reason some would say that the cat is not a type of yōkai. In 1992 (Heisei 4), in the Yomiuri newspaper, there was an article that argued that when people thought they had heard a cat speak, upon listening a second time, they realized that it was simply the cat's meowing and that it was only coincidence that it resembled a human word.
In the Edo period (1603–1867), there was a folk belief that cats with long tails like snakes could bewitch people. Cats with long tails were disliked, and there was a custom of cutting their tails. It is speculated that this is the reason that there are so many cats in Japan with short tails now, natural selection having favored those with short tails.
Folk beliefs that cats can cause strange phenomena are not limited to Japan. For example, in Jinhua, Zhejiang, in China, it is said that a cat that had been raised by humans for three years would start bewitching them. Because cats with white tails are said to be especially good at this, refraining from raising them became customary. Since their ability to bewitch humans is said to come from taking in the spiritual energy of the Moon, it is said that when a cat looks up at the Moon, it should be killed on the spot, whether its tail has been cut or not.
One famous bakeneko story is about a man named Takasu Genbei, whose mother's personality changed completely after his pet cat went missing for many years. His mother avoided the company of friends and family and would take her meals alone in her room. When the family peeked in on her, they saw a cat-like monster in the mother's clothes, chewing on animal carcasses. Takasu, still skeptical, slew what looked like his mother, and after one day his mother's body turned back into his pet cat that had been missing. Takasu then tore up the floorboards of his mother's room to find her skeleton hidden there, her bones gnawed clean of all flesh.
There is a bakeneko legend that takes place in the time of Nabeshima Mitsushige, the second daimyō of the Saga Domain, Hizen Province. Mitsushige's retainer Ryūzōji Matashichirō, who served as the daimyō's opponent in the game of Go, displeased Mitsushige and was put to the sword. Ryūzōji's mother, while recounting her sorrows to her cat, committed suicide. The cat licked the mother's blood, became a bakeneko, went into the castle, and tormented Mitsushige every night until his loyal retainer Komori Hanzaemon finally killed it and saved the Nabeshima family.
Historically, the Ryūzōji clan was older than the Nabeshima clan in Hizen. After Ryūzōji Takanobu's death, his assistant Nabeshima Naoshige held the real power, and after the sudden death of Takanobu's grandchild Takafusa, his father Masaie also committed suicide. Afterwards, since the remnants of the Ryūzōji clan created disturbances in the public order near the Saga castle, Naoshige, in order to pacify the spirits of the Ryūzōji, built Tenyū-ji (now in Tafuse, Saga). This has been considered the origin of the disturbance and it is thought that the bakeneko was an expression of the Ryūzōji's grudge in the form of a cat. Also, the inheritance of power from the Ryūzōji clan to the Nabeshima clan was not an issue, but because of Takanobu's death, and Nabeshima Katsushige's son's sudden death, some point out that this kaidan (ghost story) arose from a dramatization of this series of events.
This legend was turned into a shibai (play). In the Kaei period (1848–1854), it was first performed in Nakamura-za as Hana Sagano Nekoma Ishibumi Shi (史). The "Sagano" in the title is a place in Tokyo Prefecture, but it was actually a pun on the word saga. This work became very popular throughout the country, but a complaint from the Saga domain brought the performances to a quick stop. However, since the machi-bugyō (a samurai official of the shogunate) who filed the complaint for the performances to be stopped was Nabeshima Naotaka of the Nabeshima clan, the gossip about the bakeneko disturbance spread even more.
After that, the tale was widely circulated in society in the kōdan Saga no Yozakura (佐賀の夜桜) and the historical record book Saga Kaibyōden (佐賀怪猫伝). In the kōdan (a style of traditional oral Japanese storytelling), because Ryūzōji's widow told of her sorrow to the cat, it became a bakeneko, and killed and ate Komori Hanzaemon's mother and wife. It then shapeshifted and appeared in their forms, and cast a curse upon the family. In the historical record book, this was completely unrelated to the Ryūzōji event, however, and a foreign type of cat, which had been abused by Nabeshima's feudal lord Komori Handayū, sought revenge and killed and ate the lord's favorite concubine, shapeshifted into her form, and caused harm to the family. It was Itō Sōda who exterminated it.
In the beginning of the Shōwa period (1926–1989), kaidan films such as Saga Kaibyōden (伝) and Kaidan Saga Yashiki (敷) became quite popular. Actresses like Takako Irie and Sumiko Suzuki played the part of the bakeneko and became well known as "bakeneko actresses."
Cats as yōkai in literature date back to the Kamakura period (1185–1333). In the collection of setsuwa (oral tradition of folktales before the 14th century), the Kokon Chomonjū, from this period, there can be seen statements pointing out cats that do strange and suspicious things, noting that "these are perhaps ones that have turned into demons." Old stories about bakeneko from that time period are often associated with temples, but it is thought that the reason for this is that when Buddhism came to Japan, in order to protect the sutras (sacred texts) from being chewed on by rats, cats were brought along too.
During the Edo period (1603–1867), tales about bakeneko began to appear in essays and kaidan collections in various areas. Tales of cats transforming into humans and talking can be seen in publications like the Tōen Shosetsu (説), the Mimibukuro (嚢), the Shin Chomonjū (集), and the Seiban Kaidan Jikki (記). Similarly, tales of dancing cats can be seen in the Kasshi Yawa (話), and the Owari Ryōiki (記). In the fourth volume of "Mimibukuro", it is stated that any cat anywhere that lives for ten years would begin to speak as a human, and that cats born from the union of a fox and a cat would begin speaking even before ten years had passed. According to tales of cats that transform, aged cats would very often shapeshift into old women. The Edo period was the golden age for kaidan about bakeneko, and with shibai like the "Nabeshima Bakeneko Disturbance" being performed, these became even more famous.
In Makidani, Yamasaki, Shisō District, Harima Province (now within Shisō, Hyōgo Prefecture), a tale was passed down about a person in Karakawa who was a bakeneko. The same kind of tale was also found in Taniguchi, Fukusaki village, Jinsai District, of the same province, where it is said that in Kongōjō-ji, a bakeneko who troubled a villager was killed by someone from the temple. This bakeneko was protected from arrows and bullets by a chagama's lid and an iron pot. These, like the legend of Susanoo's extermination of Yamata no Orochi, have a commonality in that the local old families of the area played a role.
In 1909, articles about cats that broke into dance in tenement houses in the Honjo neighbourhood of Tokyo were published in newspapers such as the Sports Hochi, the Yorozu Chōhō, and the Yamato Shimbun.
Bakeneko have appeared in Japanese films—including more specifically the subgenre of horror films known as "monster cat" or "ghost cat" films (kaibyō eiga or bake neko mono), a subgenre derived primarily from the repertoire of kabuki theatre. In such films, the bakeneko is often depicted as a vengeful spirit that manifests itself in the form of a cat-like woman.