Cat Temple

In the suburbs of Tokyo there is a curious temple, properly called Daikeizan Gotokuji but popularly known as the Cat Temple. The story goes that a local ruler was invited by a cat into the temple and thereby found shelter from a sudden and violent thunderstorm. In gratitude, the ruler dedicated the temple to the helpful cat, which came to be known as Manekineko. This cat was thought to bring good luck, and model Manekinekos can now be found all over Japan, including hundreds (if not thousands!) in the grounds of Gotokuji Temple. Mostly these feline figurines are white and made of ceramic or plastic, but the example I have drawn here is a black metal figure that now beckons people into the temple.

When I originally decided to draw this scene, I realised that I didn’t have a photo taken from the viewpoint that I wanted, so creating this drawing started out as a big exercise in perspective as I tried to resolve views in photos taken from different angles into one coherent scene. In the main I think this worked, and I hope that I have managed to disguise a few small perspective anomalies that I subsequently discovered whilst drawing! I then considered adding colour washes to make the cat stand out more in the scene, but decided that the risk of ruining an okay drawing was too great. So here is the one and only monochrome Manekineko …