เครื่องรางแมวกวัก (มาเนกิเนโกะ)Maneki-neko招き猫

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.

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.

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.