The boy draws cats on a byōbu screen at the haunted temple.
—Hearn tr., (1898). Illustrated by Kason.
"The Boy Who Drew Cats" (Japanese: 猫を描いた少年, Hepburn: Neko wo egaita shōnen) is a Japanese fairy tale translated by Lafcadio Hearn, published in 1898, as number 23 of Hasegawa Takejirō's Japanese Fairy Tale Series.[1][2] It was later included in Hearn's Japanese Fairy Tales.[3]
The original title in Hearn's manuscript was "The Artist of Cats".[1] Printing it on plain paper as in the rest of the series did not meet with Hearn's approval, and this book became the first of a five-volume set by Hearn printed on crepe paper.[1] Illustrations were by the artist Suzuki Kason [ja].[a][1]
This tale was known from TohokutoChugoku and Shikoku regions under the title Eneko to Nezumi (絵猫と鼠, "The Picture-Cats and the Rat").[5] Some commentators trace the tale to the 15th century legends around Sesshū.[6]
It has been suggested that Lafcadio Hearn's version is a retelling, and has no original Japanese story which is an "exact counterpart".[7] Thus "in his English edition, Lafcadio Hearn retold it with a thrilling ghostly touch. In the original story, the acolyte becomes the abbot of the temple after the incident, but in Hearn's version, he goes on to be a renowned artist".[b][4]
The legends surrounding the eminent inkbrush artist priest Sesshū as a young acolyte has been compared to this folktale,[8] and it has been suggested the tale may derive from the legends around young Sesshū.[6]
Hearn stipulated that he would not contribute a story unless it would be "prettily illustrated" in publication,[9] and even though the choice of artist was not the author/translator's, Kason's [ja] drawing catered to the American readers' taste for the fantastical, as in the example of the illustration showing the dead giant rat-ghoul.[10]
The tale is displayed as the second of 51 tales in the 1960 book, All Cats go to Heaven.
^ ab"The Boy Who Drew Cats". Kyoto University of Foreign Studies Rare Books Exhibition. 2007. Retrieved July 13, 2019.
^Kang, Jihyun (康 志賢) (2006). 浮世絵に見る『東海道中膝栗毛』滑稽の旅 (特集 旅). Nihon Ukiyoe Kyōkai. Ukiyo-e Art: A Journal of the Japan Ukiyo-e Society (in Japanese). 151–152: 23.
Guth, Christine M. E. (Spring–Autumn 2008). "Hasegawa's Fairy Tales: Toying with Japan". RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics. 53–54 (53/54). The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology: 266–281. doi:10.1086/RESvn1ms25608821. JSTOR2560882. S2CID164285608.
