Cat Shrine

Nekogamisha (猫神社), “Cat Shrine” on the signs, is a jinja within the grounds of Sengan’en (仙巌園) in Kagoshima City. This site was the site of one of the residences of the Shimazu lords of this area, and this jinja is connected to one of those lords.

According to the explanatory signs in the precincts, the seventeenth Shimazu lord, Shimazu Yoshihiro (1535–1619) took seven cats with him into battle, and distributed them among his troops. This was so that the officers could tell the time by looking at the way the cats’ eyes changed. (The website has an explanation, and it is to do with how wide the cat’s pupils are. The idea seems to be that cats’ eyes are sensitive to the changes in light levels over the course of the day.) I presume that this was to coordinate their actions, although the signs do not say.

Five of these cats died in battle, and the two that came back alive were enshrined in this jinja, which was originally on the grounds of the Shimazu castle. It was moved to its present site in the late nineteenth century, when the castle was taken over by the national military, but this area was still owned by the Shimazu. One sign reports that the local clockmakers venerate this jinja, or at least did in 1968 when the stone was carved, and a more recent one says that people pray for health and long life and for safe journeys, because the kami came back alive from their journey to the battlefield. Every year, on February 22^nd, they hold a matsuri to pray for long life for pet cats, although you are not actually allowed to take cats to the jinja.

There is no mention of the cats’ names, so this is another jinja with unnamed kami.

There are five stone statues (life-size) of cats on the sacred path up to the sanctuary, with signs saying that you are allowed to pet them (but please do not punch or kick them — presumably because you will injure yourself). Finally, there are two cats either side of the sanctuary — koma neko, I suppose. As this adds up to seven, with five outside the inner torii, and two by the sanctuary, in this case the koma neko would seem to be the kami of the jinja. There are also a number of small cat figurines at the base of the hokora, presumably as offerings. I have seen this a lot with foxes at Inari jinja.

As you can see from the photograph, the jinja has proper precincts, with a purification font, place for ema, and an offertory box. I very much doubt that this is a religious corporation or affiliated with Jinja Honchō, but it is physically larger than some jinja that are, and almost certainly gets more visitors than quite a lot of them. (It is in an important tourist attraction, and so cuuuuute.) Assuming the accounts on the signs are accurate, it also has over four hundred years of history, making it four times the age of Meiji Jingū in Tokyo, and probably older than every single Tōshōgū in Japan. (Those are the jinja enshrining Tokugawa Ieyasu, who died in 1616.)

I can’t see any reason to say this is not a real jinja.

And that means that cats are venerated as kami within Shinto.