Okabe: The Story of the Cat Stone, from the series Fifty-three Pairings for the Tôkaidô Road (Tôkaid
Okabe: The Story of the Cat Stone, from the series Fifty-three Pairings for the Tôkaidô Road (Tôkaidô gojûsan tsui)「東海道五十三対 岡部」 猫石のはなしJapaneseEdo periodabout 1845–46 (Kôka 2–3)Artist Utagawa Kuniyoshi (Japanese, 1797–1861), Publisher Ibaya Kyûbei (Japanese), Blockcutter Sugawa Renkichi (Japanese)Despite Kuniyoshi’s love of cats, these creatures invariably play a very negative role in Japanese ghost stories. One reason that cats may have been held in such low esteem might be that in some versions recounting the death of the Buddha, they appear as the only animal not to weep. In Kuniyoshi’s time it was widely believed that when a girl visited a temple after dark she ran the risk of being welcomed by a friendly old woman who would offer her a bed for the night. Once inside her house, the old woman would be transformed into a witch who would then kill and devour the poor girl. As cats frequently prowled around temples, it was assumed that the witch was a cat in human form.The village of Okabe is remembered for the dark weathered cat-shaped stone located next to a small temple. People generally thought that a cat witch once haunted the temple grounds and that the ordeal for the villagers would not end until the cat witch had died and turned to stone. The Okabe story was adapted for the kabuki theatre… but the text at the top of this print also states that nobody knows the exact details of the tale.“ -- source link
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