amuletsManeki-neko招き猫

said ma-NE-ki NE-ko

also: beckoning cat · lucky cat · calling cat · marushime-neko · zhāocáimāo 招財貓

A seated cat, one forepaw raised palm-down in a beckoning fold, usually holding an oval koban coin in the other. The classic figure is a calico Japanese Bobtail. Ceramic or plastic now; antique ones are carved wood, stone, cast metal or handmade porcelain. It sits near the entrance of a shop, a restaurant, a pachinko parlour, a laundromat, a bar, a hotel, and in houses. Some have a mechanical paw that swings, driven by a battery or a solar cell through a coil and a magnet.

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Japanese maneki 招き 'beckoning' + neko 猫 'cat' — the beckoning cat
The gesture is a Japanese beckon, not a wave: hand up, palm down, fingers folding towards the caller. Figures made for Western markets often turn the paw palm-up instead, because the Japanese gesture reads as goodbye elsewhere. cited

When

1852 to now still carried cited

Period	late Edo to the present
How the date is known	a dated example survives
Note	Fixed by two 1852 records: an entry in the Bukō nenpyō and Hiroshige's print showing the marushime-neko sold at Sensō-ji. The Imado-ware dolls it is thought to grow out of are dated to the Genroku era, 1688–1704.

Years are stored astronomically — 1 CE is 1, 1 BCE is 0, 500 BCE is −499 — and printed the way a reader says them. How these dates are made.

The thing itself

Form	Figurine
Made of	Fired clay · Plastic and resin · Wood · Iron · Copper and bronze
Goes	At the till · At the door
Made by	potters and, since the twentieth century, factories; no consecration is described in this project's sources
Colour	white · black · red · gold · pink
Retired	no — it is kept
Note	Antique examples are carved wood, stone, metal, handmade porcelain or cast iron. No published measurement was read, so no length is given.

What its carriers say it stops

Reported, attributed, not tested here. Each row below is somebody's claim, with their name on it.

Attracting custom, luck or love — the charm that pulls rather than blocks citedsaid by shopkeepers, in the paw rule: left paw raised to bring in customers, right paw raised to bring in money
Bad luck, unspecified citedsaid by the colour scheme as it developed alongside feng shui — black is the one kept to turn evil away
Illness — sickness in general, where no cause is named citedsaid by the colour scheme: red is the health cat
Poverty citedsaid by the colour scheme: yellow or gold is for wealth
Going unloved citedsaid by the colour scheme: pink is for romance

The story

The dated record starts in 1852. The Bukō nenpyō, a chronology of Edo, carries an entry for that year; Utagawa Hiroshige's print Joruri-machi Hanka no zu, also 1852, shows the marushime-neko — a variant of the beckoning cat — being sold at Sensō-ji in Asakusa. A Meiji newspaper picked it up in 1876, kimono-clad ones were handed out at an Osaka shrine around then, and by a 1902 advertisement the thing was established.

Behind that lies clay. Potting clay was found at Imado in Asakusa during the Tenshō era of the Azuchi-Momoyama period, local people started making Imado ware, potters from Mikawa Province moved in and developed it, and in the Genroku era (1688–1704) Imado dolls appear — which is the lineage most accounts give the beckoning cat.

Tradition holds — four different origin stories, each with a temple attached. Ii Naotaka's hawking party shelters at Gōtoku-ji in the Kan'ei era after a cat beckons them in at the gate, a thunderstorm breaks, and the Ii clan makes the temple its own. Ōta Dōkan, lost and outnumbered at Ekodahara, is beckoned into Jishōin and wins. A poor old woman near Imado Shrine dreams of the cat she had to give up, makes an Imado-ware figure of it, sells it at Asakusa Shrine and prospers. The courtesan Usugumo of Miuraya in Yoshiwara loses her cat to a rumour and a sword; the severed head kills the snake in the privy that would have killed her, and a customer gives her a wooden cat in its place. Each temple claims the birthplace.

It is routinely taken for Chinese. It is made and sold in China too, as zhāocáimāo, and in Chinatowns abroad it is often labelled a Chinese lucky cat or a golden cat. That is a fact about where the object circulates, not an error to be corrected off the page.

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How it is made and carried

Bought, not consecrated: this is a shop-counter object with no shrine rite behind it, though shrines and temples sell them. Which paw is up carries a reading, and the reading varies with time and place — a raised left paw for more customers, a raised right for more money; hence also the saying that the left is for a business and the right is for a house. Colour was added later, in combination with feng shui: the original white is for good fortune generally, black to turn away evil, red for health, yellow or gold for wealth, pink for romance. It is not retired, renewed or burnt. It sits by the till until it breaks.

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Now

Mass-produced worldwide as of 2026, in ceramic, plastic, keychains, piggy banks, air fresheners and pots. Hikone City's mascot Hikonyan is drawn from the Gōtoku-ji story and the Ii clan; the cat has been worked into Pokémon's Meowth and into the card game Balatro; a Trinidad and Tobago party ran one in an election advertisement in 2015, waving goodbye to the incumbent prime minister.

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