What is a nekomata?
The nekomata is said to be an old cat that has turned into a yokai. Its most distinctive feature is a tail split into two, and it is said to speak human words, take human form and even dance. Edo-period yokai paintings show it as a cat with two tails.
The nekomata in the classics
Yoshida Kenko’s Essays in Idleness, written at the end of the Kamakura period, mentions a rumor that “deep in the mountains there is a thing called a nekomata that eats people.” In the story, a priest walking home at night is sure he has been attacked by a nekomata and tumbles into a river, only to find it was his own dog jumping on him in greeting. A Kamakura-period diary also records a beast believed to be a nekomata attacking people.
Mountain nekomata and house nekomata
There are two kinds of nekomata: a large wild beast living in the mountains, and a cat kept in a household for many years that transforms. Because of the folk belief that a cat kept too long would become a nekomata, there is said to have been a custom of cutting cats’ tails short.
