A Tokyo temple’s curse of the lucky cats

Legend goes that the Japanese feudal lord Naotaka Ii of the Edo period was heading home after some casual falconry when a cat seemed to wave at him, inviting him into a Buddhist temple called Gotokuji, in what is now the suburban Setagaya ward in southwestern Tokyo. When a storm quickly arrived, he was enjoying a conversation with the temple’s monk instead of getting soaked on the path home.

He saw the encounter as divine proof that the temple was blessed with a lucky cat and later funded a renovation of the temple in 1633. Fame followed the maneki-neko - “the beckoning cat” — that has come to symbolize good fortune with a global fandom.

After the feudal lord’s death in 1659, a small shrine was put up near the temple for his beloved maneki-neko, recalled Takashi Kimura, a monk who speaks for the temple. Some mourners decorated it with cat statues, and, as the figurines gained a following, merchants dating back to Japan’s Meiji era (1868 to 1912) started selling them outside the temple gate - then sold them down the street, across town and around the world.

Resting still or sometimes mechanically waving, maneki-nekos can be seen waving in shops, restaurants, homes, dorm rooms, offices and on car dashboards across Japan. Their cultural impact is extensive. They are the reason the Pokémon Meowth has a gold coin on its head. Since 2012, there has been a Lucky Cat Museum in Cincinnati. In 2013, Nintendo debuted a maneki-neko suit in “Super Mario 3D World.” And the following year, Washington Nationals catcher José Lobatón bought an $8 maneki-neko in San Francisco’s Chinatown, brought it to spring training and named it Gatitotude.

Now the temple where the maneki-neko was born is having a stroke of bad luck. Call it the curse of the lucky cats.

In recent years, as social media has boomed and a gift shop arrived on-site, visitors have bought ceramic cat statues, then left them on the temple grounds - often inscribed with prayers, making them too sacred to consider garbage. At one point, a local TV station counted 4,000 cat statues - but that was before vast new areas at the temple opened to accommodate the buildup. There are now cat statues everywhere, along with a buildup of prayers written on wooden tablets.

During a recent visit, foreign prayers were spotted in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Korean, Portuguese and Thai. One May prayer, written in Japanese, hoped for success on getting into a school of choice.

In May, Japan scrapped some of the world’s strictest pandemic-era travel restrictions. Tourists rushed in, also motivated by a weakened yen that made a trip to Japan a bargain. By October, monthly foreign tourists exceeded pre-pandemic levels for the first time.

That tourism surge, and its consequential demand on souvenirs and tchotchkes, has overwhelmed the tiny gift shop, which sells 10 sizes of cat statues as well as a general charm, a money charm, a wooden prayer tablet, a gosyuin (temple stamp) and a gosyuin book. On a recent visit, two sizes of cat statues were sold out and a third sold out before this reporter’s eyes. At the bottom of the inventory list was an apology of sorts: “Reason for underproduce can’t keep up with production next arrival undecided.” Below that, highlighted in a bright box of red ink, a plea: “Take home your cats.”

In September, the factory that makes its statues — in Seto, an area revered for ceramics — began shifting to producing dorei (clay bells) and dragon-like maneki-nekos for the upcoming zodiac calendar shift, which begins with the Lunar New Year. “We started to receive a very limited amount of the cat statues since September but now we are out of stock again,” Kimura wrote in November over emails that were translated from Japanese. “We don’t have any cats in stock right now and are hoping to get them for the new year.” (Lunar New Year is Feb. 10, but Kimura is leaving the temple this month, after nine years.)

The temple, of course, is more than an Instagram magnet or a bucket-list item; it is, first and foremost, a place of prayer and spirituality. Some people credit its maneki-neko mojo for protecting Gotokuji from U.S. air raids in World War II. An on-site cemetery is also the resting place for imperial concubines, former prime minister Okuma Shigenobu and Masutatsu Oyama, the founder of Kyokushin-style karate, among other notables.

Cat statues or not, people keep coming.

Hiroko Tsuji, a Spanish interpreter from Yokohama, went to Gotokuji to pray for her cat, Monaka, who is named for a sweet bean paste wafer sandwich.

“I bought a figurine and put it together with other cat statues,” Tsuji said in Spanish. “I prayed for Monaka’s health, my own, my family’s, that disasters would not occur, and for world peace, among other things. When I go to temples, whether Buddhist or Shinto, I ask a lot. I want the best.”

Her friend Yuko Hikimoto, an English and French interpreter from Yokosuka, mentioned an X factor that Gotokuji delivers for cat lovers: “Dog owners can walk their dogs and greet each other on the street every day. Cat owners can’t. So this temple is a special opportunity for feeling that connection with the community of cat lovers.”

Hikimoto prayed for her two rescued strays: safe morning walks for her 8-year-old, Kuroyan, and comfort for her 4-year-old, Black Panther, who has feline AIDS.

Andrew, a personal trainer from Australia who declined to provide his full name, bought a statue and left it for his ex-boyfriend’s cat, Luna.

“When we were together, we didn’t have pets, but he said I was like his cat; he ignored me because he knew I’d always come back to him,” Andrew said. “I heard after I left him that he replaced me with an actual cat. So I’m praying that Luna - that’s the cat - puts up a fight against his awfulness, just like I did.”

Marian Goldberg, a travel planner from New Jersey, has been to Japan 46 times since 1997. She came to Gotokuji with her daughter, Brianna, who wants a cat so badly that she owns cat trees but no cats yet. “Gotokuji is so cool, and it’s nice to see the local areas, not just the major parts of the city,” Goldberg said. “It’s kind of like some far-off part of Queens or Brooklyn. Real Tokyo.”

Gotokuji is enjoyed even by people who identify as “more of a dog person,” like Kat Potts, a data analyst for the British government from Essex.

Over the summer, she bought two cat statues, which she brought home with her to join two golden maneki-nekos she already owned (one from Xian, in China, and another that was a gift). Facing the totality of these facts, she sighed. “Fine,” she relented. “I’m a bit of a cat person.” Gotokuji’s newest convert.

Richard Morgan is a writer based in New York.