Why Were Actors Painted As Cats By Ukiyo-e Artists In Japan?

Conny Waters – AncientPages.com – If you enjoy art you may have stumbled upon older Japanese paintings where people are portrayed as cats. This may look funny and kind of cute, but it’s not always a subject of pure humoristic entertainment but rather restrictions and censorship.

If you go to Japan, you can find many places where images of cats suddenly appear. In modern Japan, there are cat cafes, cat shrines, cat temples, a cat train station master, and a cat island. The cat day is celebrated on February 22. Japan does cat worship better than any country on Earth.

Cats are said to have arrived in Japan about 1,000 years ago.  Traveling onboard ships carrying Buddhist scriptures that were sailing from China to Japan, cats entered not only the country but the heart of Japanese people.

Cats were considered guardians of Buddhist scriptures, but they were also troublemakers and their mischievous deeds like stealing food or destroying things have been a subject of many Japanese folktales. Cat’s mysterious nature led to the creation of the Bakeneko, or “cat monster” that is a legendary yokai in Japanese mythology.

Stories of the supernatural legends of Bakeneko can be found in many Japanese folktales. The most famous account is the tale of the Nabeshima Bakeneko Disturbance in Saga Prefecture.

Many Japanese artists loved cats which is one of the reasons why cats can be found on paintings, prints, and sculptures, but there is more to this story.

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