I saw this cat today in Glasgow’s China warehouse Town. Ostensibly a piggy bank, I can’t help thinking that it would be a waste to use it in such a way. For me it is a totem, an inscrutable, glittery piece of objet d’art, far more affecting than anything I saw at Recoat Gallery last night. It feels like he(?) is impotently trying to communicate something, something about being trapped in a strange ornament maybe.
Don’t these cats have a function warding off bad luck?
You see some with a moving arm that you position facing out the window/door.
Dual function? It definitely had a piggybankstyle slot on its back and stopper up its bum.
Actually, he’s a Japanese beckoning cat, called a ‘Maneki Neko’, and his presence is meant to attract cash and customers to your business. The ones with the moving arm are mimicking the way people beckon someone to come to them in East Asia, i.e. not with an upturned finger (which is considered rude), but by holding out a palm face-down and flapping the fingers.
You will see these in shops owned by people from East Asian countries other than Japan, mind you - the Chinese, for example, are up for anything that might give them a commercial edge!
Aha!
Beautiful, and very interesting symbolic meaning. Still, he one in the photo looks like it is made of chocolate and wrapped with the characteristic and traditional golden foil which I would perfectly straighten while bathing in the deliciously bitter-sweet flavour.
@Laura
The reason I didn’t buy it was because the foil looked a bit fragile and I feared there wouldn’t be chocolate underneath.
@Tabouli
Thank you for letting us know!
Multiculturalism gone mad, this ruthless sympathy. I have three of these in my room, and their sole duty is to irritate me out of zen gnosticism. It works in the same way anti-tiger stones do — magik and Pavlov quantum observation.