Cats in History

My specialty is Edo art. In addition to the book "Neko to Kuniyoshi" (Cats and Kuniyoshi), I have also published a modern Japanese version of "Oborozuki Neko no Soshi" (The Story of the Hazy Moon Cat) by Santo Kyozan, which was illustrated by Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797–1861), titled "Okoma's Great Adventure: Oborozuki Neko no Soshi." Looking at the paintings, I am often surprised to find that cats in the Edo period were exactly the same as they are today.

I personally love cats, including the way they do unsightly things or get into mischief; I find them adorable. I used to think that this complex way of perceiving "cuteness" was unique to modern people, but looking at Kuniyoshi's cats, I realized that's not the case. Even though nearly 200 years have passed since Kuniyoshi's time, they are the same, and I feel a sense of kinship.

In modern Japan, the internet is overflowing with photos and videos focusing on the humorous side of cats, so Kuniyoshi's paintings probably resonate well with the modern era. That's why they are popular.

However, looking at it historically, it wasn't always an era where the cuteness of such naughty cats was celebrated. During the Showa period, for example, there were many paintings of quiet cats sitting politely, and I think the evaluation of cats has changed quite a bit depending on the era.

As you mentioned, Kuniyoshi's cat paintings are extremely popular now, and I hear that "Neko to Kuniyoshi" is being sold abroad and is well-received. We held two Kuniyoshi exhibitions at the Fuchu Art Museum, and many people came specifically for the cat section, and they were delighted when we made merchandise. The customer base is clearly different from the usual crowd.

When you look at Kuniyoshi's paintings, there are pictures of cats with smooth fur that look very gentle, which anyone would find "cute," but there are also pictures that cutely depict them as animals full of mischief.

It's a bit different from people who like Maruyama Okyo's paintings of puppies. As Mr. Manabe said, I feel there is an aspect that transcends time and truly resonates with modern cat lovers.

I feel that the type of cuteness in the puppies Okyo paints and the cats Kuniyoshi paints is quite different.

That's true. Okyo's puppies are for a "general audience," so to speak; their forms are perfectly balanced, and looking at them makes one feel cheerful. On the other hand, the naughtiness of the cats Kuniyoshi paints is like enjoying the way they are trying their hardest but being clumsy, right in the palm of your hand.

Kuniyoshi mostly paints adult cats rather than kittens, doesn't he?

That's right. In the case of dogs, it's the puppies that make for a good picture, but for cats, it's the adult cats. Stray dogs are scary, aren't they? In the past, dogs weren't seen as clean animals, and adult dogs weren't considered cute. But puppies are cute. Conversely, I think there's a difference in that cats remain beautiful even when they grow up.

Also, kittens are often in these unrecognizable, messy shapes like balls of yarn. I think it might be difficult to paint that in a way that looks cute.

However, the image I had of cat paintings from the Edo period was more of "Bakeneko" (monster cats), giving a strong "scary" impression. Kuniyoshi's cute and funny ones felt surprising. Which one is more prevalent in Edo painting as a whole?

As a ukiyo-e artist, Kuniyoshi had a very wide range of work and was a central figure. However, cats were just one part of Kuniyoshi's repertoire. In the world of ukiyo-e during the Edo period, it was mostly just Kuniyoshi and his disciples who painted many cats; there probably weren't that many others.

It seems the image of the Bakeneko was indeed strong during the Edo period. For example, in old Kabuki, they are almost always depicted as Bakeneko or eerie beings.

So, I think there's an aspect where Kuniyoshi painted cute cats that defied those expectations, and that's why people found them interesting.

Speaking of Bakeneko in Kabuki, it was a signature role for Onoe Kikugoro III. Kikugoro would play a Bakeneko in various plays, and ukiyo-e would be released each time. So, as a result, when we look at ukiyo-e today, I feel the image of Kikugoro's Bakeneko has left a strong impression.

Also, cats have an association with geisha. In the Edo period, there are quite a few stories where a customer wakes up after enjoying time with a geisha, only to find that the geisha was actually a cat who has revealed its true form and is eating the food.

By the early Meiji period, bureaucrats who were former samurai from the end of the Edo period were quite active in their pursuit of women. This was criticized in the media, where geisha were called "cats" and bureaucrats, because they grew mustaches, were called "catfish." Many satirical drawings of cats and catfish appeared in newspapers.

Artists like Kawanabe Kyosai painted those, didn't they?

For example, was there a difference in how cats were accepted in different regions like Edo, Kyoto, and Nagasaki?

As far as I know, there is no evidence that Kuniyoshi's work was sold in the Kamigata (Kyoto/Osaka) region. There were ukiyo-e artists there, of course, but there are almost no paintings of cats.

That's a bit surprising. Were there any popular cat patterns in the Edo period? Kuniyoshi hardly ever painted black cats, did he?

Black cats are rare. Tigers (tabbies) are also rare. In Kuniyoshi's paintings, black and white spotted cats are common.

Was that Kuniyoshi's personal preference?

I wonder (laughs). If you look at "Oborozuki Neko no Soshi," there are various patterns like calico, brown tabby, white, and gray.

So there wasn't much status associated with the pattern. Black cats have an eerie image, but was there a rule that Bakeneko paintings always had a certain pattern?

For some reason, calico-like patterns are common.

In many European countries, a black cat crossing your path is considered unlucky, but in Britain, they say it's lucky. Are there cultural differences regarding cats?

Black is mysterious, isn't it? Even in Japan, there are views of crows as both unlucky and auspicious. There is a sense of something special. However, from a painterly perspective, black cats don't seem very suitable for ukiyo-e as a "picture."

Overall, in the Edo period, dogs were probably considered more valuable. However, they were rarely kept in specific homes as pets; they were generally called "town dogs" or "village dogs" and received food from various houses.

Even dogs that were kept probably wandered around. They didn't have collars or anything.

Do the cats in Kuniyoshi's paintings wear collars?

Some do. In Santo Kyozan's work, there was a description of how a red crepe collar looked beautiful against the black and white of the cat.

Does that mean it was a sign of ownership?

Yes. And their food bowls were abalone shells, weren't they? I think there was that kind of dedication and way of doting on them as pets.

As pets, cats might actually be older than dogs.

The spread of so-called lapdogs or pet dogs didn't happen until the end of the Taisho period. Until then, dogs had some kind of role, and hunting dogs from the West in particular were highly valued.

It seems cats were very few in number in the past, and until the Middle Ages, they were often kept tied with strings. In the early Edo period, a ban on keeping them tied up was issued, and as a result, their numbers increased. In historical documents up to the Middle Ages, there are many descriptions of them being treated with care, but as their numbers grew and they were no longer rare, it seems their treatment became more casual in some ways.

In rural areas, cats were often kept for catching mice in places that practiced sericulture. Of course, geisha also frequently kept cats as pets. In terms of being pets, cats are often depicted with geisha in paintings, suggesting a high rate of female ownership, but the actual reality is not well known.

There is an image that keeping a cat is feminine, isn't there?

Yes. The image of "cats and women" as a set has continued for a long time. However, many women also disliked cats. In other words, when doing housework, cats would steal things, leading to a dislike of them. People are divided into extremes of those who like cats and those who hate them. Today, many people like them, but in the past, it seems quite a few people hated them.

The evaluation is quite broad, and I think it has changed significantly throughout history.

What happened to the evaluation of cats when the Meiji period began?

Politically, things changed drastically with the Meiji Restoration, but culturally, especially in the first half of the Meiji period, there was strong continuity from the Edo period, so the relationship between people and cats didn't change that much.

For dogs, hunting dogs like pointers and setters were imported during the Meiji Restoration. That caused their status to skyrocket, but for cats, were there cases of Western cats being imported or certain breeds becoming popular after the Meiji period?

No, there was almost none of that before the war. There were some politicians who kept Siamese cats, but they were a tiny minority. It was after the war that people from the occupation forces brought Siamese cats with them, and from there they spread into Japanese society.

The reason dogs were imported and kept was for social status in addition to practical aspects like hunting. If you took one for a walk, people would respect you, thinking, "Oh, that person has a fine dog."

There are examples of that in paintings as well. There was a master of animal painting named Hashimoto Kansetsu (1883–1945) who painted Borzois and Greyhounds, and the paintings are just gorgeously opulent. Looking at those, I really feel that Western dogs were a status symbol.

Cats can't help with hunting, but the one thing they are said to be useful for is catching mice, and many people have kept them for that purpose since the Edo period. Especially after the opening of the country, various infectious diseases came in from overseas. Then, when Robert Koch visited Japan in 1908, his disciple Kitasato Shibasaburo asked for advice on rodent control to prevent the plague. Koch said that "extermination by cats is effective," so there was a period when the whole nation campaigned to "keep cats."

However, can that really be called a rise in the status of cats? After all, cats were only valued for the purpose of catching mice. In fact, once it was discovered that rat poison was more effective, that movement stopped immediately. It was a very transient thing.

Cats get into mischief and cause problems. Even so, did everyone keep them because their cuteness made up for it?

There are many ways of doting on them. As depicted in Mr. Shimura's "Kumagusu and Cats," there are quite a few differences between how cats were doted on in the past versus now. There's a description of Kumagusu kicking out a cat that came home dirty.

For both dogs and cats, there was a strict hierarchy between animals and humans, and the fundamental idea was that animals aren't something to be treated with that much importance. That's why people who loved animals often did things that would be considered abuse from a modern perspective.

I understand that very well. My grandparents were born in the Meiji era, and while they weren't abusing animals by any means, from my perspective, I sometimes thought they handled them very roughly.

Kumagusu was a very mercurial person, so his attitude toward cats was truly unstable. While he would dote on them and sleep with them in his futon, if a stray cat came to his house and caused trouble, he would set out poisoned bait to kill it.

It seems there were many people in the past who would cherish their own cats but not care about the cats walking around the neighborhood.

That part is a bit incomprehensible to modern people, but perhaps it was like an extension of their own property.

Does that mean Kumagusu had a particular obsession with cats among all animals?

I think that's fair to say. Kumagusu kept many different animals—dogs, pigeons, newts, frogs, turtles, and he even had scorpions sent from the continent—but he didn't give names to most of them.

Only the cats were given names like "Choboroku" or "Choko," and they appeared frequently in his diary. Whether or not one gives a name might be a dividing line. On the other hand, Soseki's cat didn't have a name.

That's right. "I am a cat. As yet I have no name."

But that's only possible because there's only one. When a cat first came to my parents' house, they gave it a name, but eventually, everyone just started calling it "Neko-chan."

In the past, there were quite a few cats that had multiple names. Since it was common for them to go in and out of the house, they would get fed in various places and be given different names at each home. Now that indoor keeping has become the norm, you don't see that much anymore.

One of my cats disappeared for about three months once. One day, while my mother was walking around the neighborhood, she saw a house and thought, "Wait, that's our cat!" The cat approached her looking a bit awkward, as if to say "Oh..." But it was fatter than when it was at our house (laughs).

It must have been well-nourished (laughs). They certainly are shrewd.

Cats appearing in Edo-period stories are anthropomorphized and act like humans. Of course, Soseki's cat is also anthropomorphized, but basically, it doesn't exceed the status of a cat kept by humans—meaning it doesn't transform into a monster or take up arms to fight.

In that sense, I think a characteristic of the modern era is that cats began to be established as cats—beings different from humans, as animals. The monster cats (bake-neko) of the Edo period were basically extensions of humans. I think that changed as we entered the modern period.

Cats in the Edo period were certainly heavily character-driven. As you said, modern cats are more naturalistic, or rather, the cat's existence as it is is generally respected.

Are there modern ways of depicting cats in painting as well?

For example, there is a Western-style painter named Rinjiro Hasegawa who was an incredible cat lover. The paintings of sleeping cats that Rinjiro drew are cute, but they are on a different level from Kuniyoshi's cats; they show cats exactly as they are.

I think it's a matter of modern reality, but additionally, looking at Rinjiro's work, it's as if he's saying, "I love cats." I feel that expressing oneself as a cat lover is something that emerged in the modern era.

Certainly, expressing that you are a cat lover is a kind of social message. Posting cat photos on social media is the same thing, of course.

That's true. Tadanori Yokoo has been drawing cats for a long time, and you can really feel his emotions through them.

Did the way cats are depicted in Western literature influence the cats in modern Japanese novels?

I think it had a considerable influence. You might be more familiar with this, Ms. Shimura, but it is said that Soseki was quite influenced by British literature featuring cats as protagonists.

Initially, Western depictions of cats entered through the world of children's literature in the mid-Meiji period. While the cats depicted there were somewhat anthropomorphized, many were basically drawn as cats in their natural state, and such depictions entered general novels significantly toward the end of the Meiji period.

I wonder when our modern attitude toward cats actually began in Japan. I'm curious whether it's something traditional or something imported.

I saw the cats drawn by Kumagusu for the first time in your book, Ms. Shimura. What struck me was that many of them—though not all—had human-like faces.

At the time, I wondered if that was an influence from the animals depicted as satire in Europe.

Exactly what kind of influence Kumagusu was under when he drew cats is a pending issue even among us Kumagusu researchers, but unfortunately, we don't know.

As you pointed out, Kumagusu's drawings are not realistic. They clearly contain human emotions and expressions. One reason for this is that the drawings Kumagusu put effort into were often created to be given to others.

He would project his own impoverished circumstances or his lack of recognition by the world onto the cats and give them to people who acted as patrons to receive some assistance or a fee. So, in a sense, there is an aspect where Kumagusu is drawing himself within the cats.

However, Kumagusu also often drew cats in the margins of his diaries, and there are some mysterious drawings where you wonder why a cat is even there (laughs), but those cats live very freely.

At one point, there was a proposal at the Minakata Kumagusu Museum to keep a cat inside the building, but it was ultimately impossible.

Why not make a cat the director? Or at least an honorary director (laughs).

The Pet Food Association conducts an annual survey on the number of pets kept, and in 2017, the number of cats surpassed dogs. While the popularity of cats is rising, I wonder when the turning point was for them to be doted on as they are now.

Basically, I think it gradually became that way after the period of high economic growth. There are various factors, but the biggest one is that people became wealthier and had more leeway, and at the same time, the family structure itself transformed.

As nuclear families progressed and the number of couples-only households increased, more people began to dote on cats like children. I think such changes in the state of society are also involved.

Nowadays, even people living alone keep cats.

Cats are probably easy to keep, after all. In the case of dogs, you have to take them for walks, and if they are large, they are often kept outside. But cats can be kept inside the house, so they fit the trend of increasing apartment living.

I think veterinarians and others have been recommending it, but keeping cats entirely indoors has become widespread, hasn't it?

Especially in cities, because of traffic accidents.

A cat I used to have was one that started coming to our house in Aizu-Wakamatsu. When I had to move to Tokyo, I consulted a vet who said, "It's okay. This cat can adapt," so I kept it inside.

At one point, it finally used the litter box. After that, it didn't want to go outside at all. It's a strange thing. So, being kept indoors isn't painful for a cat.

Cats are quite timid, so they don't really like going to unknown places. Of course, cats have personalities, so I think it varies from cat to cat.

Also, I'm curious about how people obtain cats. In my house, it was always a pattern of a stray eventually settling in, but in the past, cats with pedigrees were highly prized. However, I've heard that the number of people going to pet shops to buy them has actually been decreasing recently.

Is it decreasing?

Yes, I hear there are many adoptions. Animal shelters and the protection groups connected to them are working hard, and the adoption of cats that would otherwise be put down seems to be spreading quite a bit.

That's a much more heartening story.

The history of buying cats at pet shops isn't actually that long. Apparently, specialized dealers for dogs and birds have existed since the Edo period, but for cats—except for a period of plague countermeasures—there were no specialty shops for a long time, and they finally appeared around the period of high economic growth.

Previously, when celebrities kept cats, many chose Western breeds like Siamese or Persian cats, but recently, rescue cats have come into the spotlight. For example, Yuriko Ishida's cats are popular on Instagram, and they are rescue cats. I think the ratio of people buying from pet shops has dropped considerably.

One reason cats are hard to sell at pet shops is that it's difficult to establish breeds. If you keep them outside, they fall in love and mix on their own (laughs). If they have a pedigree, they can be sold for a high price, but you can't put a price on a mix.

Of course, there are breeders and cat associations that establish purebred lineages for each breed and sell them with pedigrees.

Another big difference from dogs is that there are almost no stray dogs wandering around now. There are still quite a few stray cats, so that's another difference. You can just pick them up.

I heard the cat on the cover of your book ("Cats in Modern and Contemporary History") is a community cat from Waseda University.

That's right. It's a cat cared for by a community cat circle at the university. Doesn't Keio have one?

I haven't heard of one at Mita, but there is an unofficial group called "Cat Circle Hiyoneko" at Hiyoshi.

It seems they are appearing at many different universities now. The one created at Waseda seems to be the earliest among universities.

I wonder when the movement to care for cats as a community started.

The name "community cat" (chiiki-neko) itself probably spread around the 90s, but I think groups actually doing it existed a bit before that. It's said that Isogo Ward in Yokohama was the first where the local government got involved, and because that was successful, it seems to have spread.

How does the local government get involved?

In a community, there are people who like cats and people who hate them, which often leads to trouble. So the local government steps in to hold briefing sessions and build a consensus, saying, "We will make sure they are spayed or neutered, and we will clean up after feeding them," so the community accepts the presence of the cats for their remaining lifetime.

So it's just for their remaining lifetime. There are still quite a lot of cat haters even now.

I think the number has decreased compared to the past, but there are still quite a few.

Beyond actual damage like breaking or scratching things, many people still dislike cats based on a vague image; my father and brother are somewhat like that. They find it unpleasant, like they're being looked down upon by the cat. Dogs are always looking up at you, right? They're loyal to humans.

Apparently, they feel a bit of creepiness in a cat's gaze. That might be connected to the idea of monster cats.

These days, it's probably becoming harder for cat haters to express their feelings openly.

The attitude of "I like my cat but I'll kick someone else's" is gradually disappearing on the surface, but in reality, there are still quite a few people who abandon cats or keep them in a selfish way.

Since the social cat boom has heated up and abandoning cats or culling them has come under heavy criticism, the atmosphere has become such that you can't openly abandon a cat or treat it roughly while saying you hate it.

A problem that has been emerging recently is cases where even people who love cats end up keeping too many, leading to a state of hoarding collapse. Those people don't hate cats, but as a result, they are making the cats suffer.

I hear that in areas where community cats are cared for, unknown cats are often added before you know it. People find out through the internet or other means and come from far away to abandon them.

There was an area in Tanabe City, Wakayama, where this was a problem before, but they were able to manage it by cooperating with civic groups relatively early on. I don't think it has anything to do with Kumagusu's love of cats, though.

If community cats are basically only for their remaining lifetime, is the goal to eliminate cats that are outside?

Ultimately, that is the goal.

Meaning they will all be spayed or neutered.

That's right. It seems to be quite effective in central Tokyo. Furthermore, this is carried out thoroughly in places like London. They appear often in Kumagusu's diaries, and they seem to have been there until the 1990s, but now you don't see stray cats at all even when walking through the city. The administration has completely managed them and eliminated stray cats. So, as a cat lover, walking through London is boring (laughs).

Nowadays, in every European country, it's rare to see stray cats in cities. In the past, there used to be a huge number of stray cats in places like Italy, but now even in Rome, you don't see them much except in places managed by cat protection groups.

While it can't be helped if we want to avoid accidents and abuse, when looking at society as a whole, I also have a feeling of whether a city full of nothing but concrete where even cats can't walk is really a good thing.

It might not be unhappy for a cat to stay inside the house for its entire life, but for us humans, there is also a desire to see them walking on top of a wall. But in the end, that is just a human desire, isn't it?

That's true.

Cat cafes, cat islands, and so on—many cat-related landmarks are being created now, but I think that is a result of cats becoming less common in our immediate surroundings. If there were plenty of stray cats, you could interact with them without going to a cat cafe.

Cat cafes are certainly increasing in Japan, and now there are many cat cafes in Europe as well; it feels like they are spreading across the world.

When we were making the book "Kumagusu and Cats," we had a meeting at a cat cafe in Ikebukuro. It was my first time going to a cat cafe, and they came swarming around me, so it was fun. The fees are quite high, though.

Cats have short lives, and the hardest part is that they always die sooner than humans. Their lifespan is said to be about 15 years. After the cat we kept died, my family was so sad that we couldn't even get another one. I am very interested in how people face the death of a cat.

For me, it was harder than when my parents died. I thought I couldn't keep one anymore, and I haven't kept one since. I turned 60 recently, and I find myself thinking that if I were to get a kitten now, I might die before it does.

I wonder why people keep cats when it is that painful.

Why is it so painful when a cat dies? I actually lost weight.

When my first cat died, I really couldn't stop crying. I had never cried even when a relative died, so I kept wondering why. It seems Haruo Sato also couldn't stop crying when his pet cat died and thought about why that was.

Sato wrote that if it were a human, you would know they are a different personality when they speak, but in the case of a cat, you have to infer what it is thinking. In a sense, when you look at the cat, you become the cat. Because you have become a part of it and are thinking from the cat's perspective, when it is gone, it feels as sad as if a part of yourself has been lost. I thought that made a lot of sense.

It was painful when my dog died too, but the cat was still harder. I loved them both equally, but the feeling when they died was different.

We also kept a dog, but I felt like there was more of a sense of distance, or a sense of hierarchy, with the dog. Do you still have a cat in the Manabe household?

Yes. We have one. Initially, we started keeping a purebred Russian Blue, a cat that doesn't meow much, but it died at age 8. At that time, I thought I never wanted to keep one again, but I happened to encounter a cat of the same breed born on the day it died. I thought, "Could this be a reincarnation?" and so I started keeping one again. It will be 13 soon.

There are stories about cats being reincarnated. People say things like "a cat has nine lives." You don't hear that much in the case of dogs.

That's true.

I wonder why such things are said. There is also the work "The Cat Who Lived a Million Times."

Come to think of it, there are no cats at Mita, are there? A few years ago, a student in the Faculty of Letters, Major in Archaeology and Ethnology wrote a graduation thesis on the theme of cats, and they also said, "I've never seen one at Mita." How many cats are there at Waseda besides this one?

About three. But the number has been gradually decreasing. Apparently, there was a time when it went down to just one; it has increased a little again now, but basically, it seems to be on a downward trend.

When I was a graduate student at Kyoto University, there were once three kittens abandoned in a box next to the research building. Abandoning cats at a university might be a classic method.

There is a famous dormitory at Kyoto University called Yoshida Dormitory, and because someone among the residents will take care of them, cats are apparently often abandoned there as well.

The Fuchu Art Museum also had an abandoned cat only once in 22 years.

Haruo Sato is one, but I have an image that there have long been many people from Keio who like cats, such as Yukio Ozaki, Mantaro Kubota, Yasuzaemon Matsunaga, Shofu Muramatsu, Yu Ryutanji, and Shintaro Okuno. There aren't many at Waseda before the war.

Actually, the Keio Library has many old Western books about cats. The reason is that there was a playwright named Kyota Mizuki (Class of 1919), and while Kyota Mizuki was a huge cat lover, his wife apparently hated cats. So instead of keeping cats, he supposedly collected books about cats. When he passed away, they were donated to the Keio Library.

In the storage room of the Major in Archaeology and Ethnology, there are many excavated lynx bones.

I hear cat lovers buy tons of merchandise. I've heard that while dog lovers only seem interested in their own dogs, cat lovers are different in that they want merchandise in addition to their own cats, and I think that might be true.

Is that because dogs are beings that are incorporated into the hierarchy of each household?

That's right. For dogs, there is a part where people like them because they are loyal in their relationship with them, whereas for cats, people like them even if they don't pay any attention to them.

Being interested in cats other than your own is a characteristic of cat lovers.