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Where does Maneki-neko (lucky cat figurine) come from?
The maneki-neko, the 'beckoning cat', comes from Edo, today's Tokyo. Clay figurines of a cat with one paw raised were being sold there by the 1850s, and the lucky cat now sits near shop doors and cash registers around the world.
Clay cats from Asakusa
In the late 16th century clay good for pottery was found at Imado, in Edo's Asakusa district, and local people began making Imado ware. A common theory traces the maneki-neko to the Imado dolls later made there. One of the earliest records of the figurines is an entry dated 1852 in a chronology of Edo, and the same year Utagawa Hiroshige made a print of a variation of the cat being sold, the oldest known image of it.
A cat with many origin stories
Several temples and shrines in Tokyo claim to be the cat's birthplace. In the best-known tale, set in the early Edo period, a cat at the gate of Gōtoku-ji beckoned the lord Ii Naotaka inside just before a violent thunderstorm broke, and the grateful lord made it his family's temple. In another, a poor old woman near Imado Shrine dreamt that her cat asked her to make clay figures of it; they sold so well that she escaped poverty.
Why people think of China
The figurine is so popular in Chinese communities, including the Chinatowns of the United States, that it is often taken to be Chinese and is sometimes called a 'Chinese lucky cat'. It is common in China too. How it spread beyond Japan is unclear, but other Asian countries and communities adopted it as a charm for prosperity. Its gesture is often misread as well: in Japan people beckon by raising a hand and folding the fingers down and back, and that is what the paw does.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org ↗ · nationalgeographic.com ↗
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