Tanuki (raccoon dog)
The tanuki, the Japanese raccoon dog, is a shape-shifter in folklore that drums on its belly, disguises itself as a monk and plays tricks on travellers. Since the 1950s its pottery figure, in a hat and holding a sake flask, has stood at shop doors for luck.
Meaning
The tanuki is a real animal, the raccoon dog, which older English books, Joly’s and Chamberlain’s among them, call the badger. Folklore credits it with magical powers. Henri Joly, in 1908, called it a peculiarly mischievous goblin that takes all sorts of disguises to waylay, deceive or annoy wayfarers: wrapped in a kimono it begs like an itinerant monk, it waylays people at night across the paddy fields, and it makes fishermen pull up empty nets and laughs at them. Chamberlain ranked its magic below the fox’s. Its best-known form today is the pottery figure from Shigaraki, which the Japan Tourism Agency calls a symbol of good luck.
Origin and history
The National Diet Library tells the tanuki’s best-known folktale, Bunbuku chagama. A priest called Shukaku at Morin-ji temple loved his kettle, which never ran out of hot water however much was poured, until it came out that Shukaku himself was a tanuki who had turned himself into a man, and he had to leave the temple. In Toriyama Sekien’s picture the tea kettle is the tanuki; in Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s, the monk is. Joly lists the lucky tea kettle and Kachi-kachi yama, the hare’s revenge, as the classic tanuki stories, and notes that the shogun Ieyasu was irreverently nicknamed “the Old Badger”.
The belly drum
In Joly’s account the tanuki stands at the roadside on its hind legs, swells its belly and strikes it with its forepaws like a drum: tanuki no hara tsuzumi, the tanuki’s belly drum. Joly is frank that the swollen part is really the scrotum, which art enlarges to eight mats wide, wraps round the tanuki as a kimono or uses to smother a hunter. He also describes it wrapped in lotus leaves, a lotus flower for a hat, carrying a bill for sake in one paw. The fox, Joly adds, plays the same belly-drum trick.
The Shigaraki figure
Shigaraki is one of Japan’s Six Ancient Kilns, with more than 800 years of pottery. The Japan Tourism Agency says a Shigaraki potter, Fujiwara Tetsuzō, made the first tanuki figure in the early 1950s, as part of the town’s welcome for Emperor Shōwa on his official visit, and the figures have since become one of Japan’s signature products. The best-known version, called hassō-engi, wears a hat and holds a sake flask. Because the word tanuki also suggests “surpassing others”, the agency says, many owners place one at the door of their shop or restaurant for prosperity.
Trickster in the tales, lucky charm at the door
The two tanuki are different things. The tanuki of the Edo-period tales and of Sekien’s book is a goblin that cheats travellers and fishermen; the cheerful figure with the sake flask is a twentieth-century pottery design. In Chamberlain’s day the animal’s name was also a nickname: the jesters who kept a party going were called badgers, as certain women were called foxes.
Read next
- Next in Yōkai and creatures of Japanese folkloreBakeneko 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.
- The same shape in Adinkra symbolsBese SakaBese Saka, a bunch of kola nuts, is the adinkra symbol of affluence, abundance and unity.
See also
Kitsune (fox), Jorōgumo (spider woman), Tengu, Kappa, Oni (and the oni mask), Yuki-onna (snow woman).
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 56, Badger (Tanuki)
- TORIYAMA Sekien’s Illustrated Night Parade of the Demon Horde (NDL Image Bank), National Diet Library, NDL Image Bank, Columns: “TORIYAMA Sekien’s Illustrated Night Parade of the Demon Horde”, National Diet Library, Japan, “Bake-danuki (Enchanted raccoon dog)”
- Tanuki Figures of Shigaraki (Japan Tourism Agency), Japan Tourism Agency, multilingual commentary database, R6-00387: “Tanuki Figures of Shigaraki”, Japan Tourism Agency, English text
- 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, and “Demoniacal Possession”, p. 115
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles or curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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