Bakeneko and nekomata (cat yōkai)
Bakeneko and nekomata are the cats of Japanese folklore that change shape or bewitch people: an old cat turned yōkai, or a cat with a long tail. In the Nabeshima legend a cat with two tails takes the form of a lord’s favourite.
Meaning
Bakeneko means a cat that changes shape: the Nihon Kokugo Daijiten defines it as a cat that disguises itself as a person, or a cat with that power. Shogakukan’s Digital Daijisen Plus calls the nekomata a cat monster told of all over Japan and the subject of many ghost-story collections and yōkai picture scrolls: in some tellings a pet cat that has grown old and turned yōkai, in others a huge beast that lives in the mountains. Chamberlain wrote in 1905 that some Japanese cut a long-tailed kitten’s tail short, partly because of the belief in cats with one or several long tails that bewitch people as foxes and badgers do; he found the custom confined to certain provinces. Cats also bring luck: Joly records that three-coloured cats (mike-neko) are lucky to sailors, who believe they keep ghosts away, and the maneki-neko is, in his words, the beckoning, bewitching kitten.
Origin and history
The two kinds the dictionary names are already argued over in the Tsurezuregusa of the fourteenth-century priest Kenkō. In section 89, in William Porter’s 1914 translation, one view Kenkō reports is that goblin cats that devour men live deep in the mountains; the other, that even where there are no mountains an ordinary cat can grow into one. Kenkō’s story that follows is a joke: a priest walking home alone at night after a verse-capping party is leapt on by what he takes for the goblin cat, falls headlong into the stream and shouts for help, and it turns out to be his own dog, who had recognised its master in the dark.
The cat of Nabeshima
Joly retells the story of the cat of Nabeshima. A large cat killed O Toyo, the favourite of a daimyō of Hizen, buried her in the garden and took her shape, and the prince’s life ebbed away day by day while the guards set to watch him fell asleep at the same hour every night. A loyal soldier, Itō Sōda, too low in rank to watch in the daimyō’s room, was let in, and kept awake by driving his short sword into his thigh as sleep came. When he attacked the false O Toyo she turned into a huge cat with two tails and escaped, to be caught later in the mountains.
Long tails
The two tails matter. Joly explains that Japanese cats have stumps instead of tails, so a long-tailed cat is credited with supernatural powers. Lafcadio Hearn, landing at Kaka-ura, saw a cat sitting on the stern of a boat and noted that by Japanese belief it might not be a real cat at all but an o-bake or a nekomata, a goblin cat, because it had a long tail. Joly records one more belief: a cat left with a dead body will make the corpse get up and dance.
A nickname
Chamberlain noted that in his day singing girls were nicknamed cats, because they bewitched men with their artful ways like the magic cats of folklore. The ordinary household cat of Japan and its other meanings are on the cat page.
Read next
- Next in Yōkai and creatures of Japanese folkloreJorōgumo (spider woman)The jorōgumo is a spider yōkai: a spider that can turn into a woman, or a spider-woman who controls small spiders. It is also the Japanese name of a real spider, the joro spider now spreading in the United States.
- The cat that changes shape beside the cat in other traditionsCat symbolismAncient Egyptians held the cat sacred to the goddess Bast; in Norse myth two cats draw the goddess Freyja's car; in the British witch lore John Brand collected, the cat was the witch's familiar. The black cat crossing your path is unlucky in American and English superstition, and lucky in Scotland and Japan.
See also
Lucky cat (maneki-neko), Kitsune (fox), Tanuki (raccoon dog), Tengu, Kappa, Oni (and the oni mask).
Sources
- Henri L. Joly, Legend in Japanese Art (1908), Henri L. Joly, Legend in Japanese Art: A Description of Historical Episodes, Legendary Characters, Folk-lore, Myths, Religious Symbolism Illustrated in the Arts of Old Japan, London: John Lane, 1908, John Lane (Internet Archive, University of Toronto copy), entry 104, Cats
- Basil Hall Chamberlain, Things Japanese (1905), Basil Hall Chamberlain, Things Japanese: Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected with Japan, fifth edition, London: John Murray, 1905, John Murray (Internet Archive, University of Toronto copy), “Cats”, p. 85
- Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, first series (1894), Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, first series, Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1894 (Project Gutenberg ebook 8130), Project Gutenberg, chapter 9, “From Hoki to Oki”, section 8
- 猫又 (Kotobank: Digital Daijisen Plus), Kotobank, “猫又”: Shogakukan, Digital Daijisen Plus, Shogakukan (via Kotobank), Digital Daijisen Plus
- 化猫 (Kotobank: Nihon Kokugo Daijiten), Kotobank, “化猫”: Shogakukan, Seisenban Nihon Kokugo Daijiten, Shogakukan (via Kotobank), Nihon Kokugo Daijiten
- Yoshida Kenkō, Tsurezuregusa, tr. William N. Porter (1914), William N. Porter, The Miscellany of a Japanese Priest: Being a Translation of Tsure-zure Gusa, London: Humphrey Milford, 1914, Humphrey Milford (Internet Archive), section 89, “The Goblin Cat”, pp. 72–73
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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