What is the Nabeshima Bakeneko Disturbance?
The Nabeshima Bakeneko Disturbance is a ghost-cat story set in the Saga (Nabeshima) domain in the Edo period, the most famous of Japan’s bakeneko tales. Together with the “Arima Cat Disturbance” of the Kurume domain and “The Cat of Okazaki,” it is called one of the “three great ghost-cat disturbances of Japan.”
The story of the disturbance
There are many versions, but the best-known plot goes like this. Nabeshima Mitsushige, second lord of the Saga domain, invited his retainer Ryuzoji Matashichiro to play Go. But a quarrel over the game made Mitsushige angry, and he cut Matashichiro down. Matashichiro’s mother, having lost her son, told her grievance to her pet cat and took her own life.
The cat licked her blood and became a bakeneko, took the form of Mitsushige’s beloved concubine and tormented him night after night. Mitsushige fell ill with a mysterious sickness, until a loyal retainer saw through the disguise and the bakeneko was destroyed, it is said.
The history of the Ryuzoji and Nabeshima families
Saga was originally ruled by the Ryuzoji clan, warlords of the Sengoku period. After Ryuzoji Takanobu died in battle, his retainer Nabeshima Naoshige took real power, and in the Edo period the Nabeshima family became lords of the Saga domain. Because the head of the Ryuzoji family died young and the line died out, a grudge against the Nabeshima has sometimes been spoken of, and the bakeneko story is thought to be a fiction based on this history.
In the late Edo period, storytelling and kabuki based on the tale were hugely popular, and performances were reportedly stopped after protests from the Saga domain. Shurinji Temple in Shiroishi, Saga Prefecture, still has a cat mound said to be a memorial to the bakeneko.
