Bakeneko (化け猫)

A beast that has always kept close to human beings, yet never truly allowed itself to be tamed — when a cat lives through long years, or comes to harbor a deep and festering grudge, it is whispered that something monstrous takes up residence beneath the fur. In Ibaraki and Nagano, the threshold was said to be twelve years; in the northern reaches of Okinawa, thirteen. Owners would speak aloud a kind of covenant in advance: "I will part with this cat after such-and-such a number of years." For if the years were not decided beforehand, it was understood that the cat would eventually decide for itself.

The pupils narrow to a sliver or open wide and round depending on the hour. Stroke the animal in the dark and its back shimmers with a pale blue light. It crosses a room without a sound, concealing a wild blade beneath the mask of docility — it is precisely these qualities of the cat that traced the outline of the yokai in the human imagination. It cannot be controlled like a dog, yet it draws closer than any dog ever does. That unsettling ambiguity of distance is the soil in which the concept of the bakeneko took root and grew.

On an Edo night, when the shadow of a cat rearing up on its hind legs to lap at the fish oil in an andon lamp fell across a paper screen — those who witnessed it said nothing come morning. As recorded in the Wakan Sansai Zue, the act of licking the oil was regarded as a harbinger of the uncanny. A behavior born of hunger and instinct passed directly into tradition as an omen of cursed things to come.

The Nabeshima disturbance of Saga, the Arima disturbance — these are not mere invention, but legends laid over the foundation of actual events. The tale of a cat killed with cruelty returning to curse the humans responsible was not confined to aged animals alone. The more brutal the manner of killing, it was believed, the more tenacious the grudge with which the cat would come back.

In the pleasure quarters of Edo, the bewitching nature of the cat and the image of the courtesan melted into one another, and from that union the grotesque beauty of the "bakeneko courtesan" was born within the pages of illustrated storybooks. Mystery, sensuality, and danger — wearing all of these at once, the bakeneko went on dwelling in the darkness of the city.

Even now, there are times when a long-kept cat vanishes in the night and returns the following morning as though nothing has happened at all. Where it went, the people of old houses know better than to ask.