Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And it is October
Speaker 3: on Stuff to Blow Your Mind, which means the Uncanny
Speaker 3: Pods continue. And today we're back with part two in
Speaker 3: a series we started on Tuesday about the monster cats
Speaker 3: of Japanese legend the cat yo Kai. So a brief
Speaker 3: recap of what we talked about last time. We covered
Speaker 3: a bit about the general role of cats in Japanese history,
Speaker 3: in Japanese culture, and then we discussed a couple of
Speaker 3: famous cat yo kai altered cats in monster form, including
Speaker 3: the neko mata, which may be a sort of giant
Speaker 3: monster cat or general large predator of the mountain forests,
Speaker 3: or maybe a cat that reaches a certain age, like
Speaker 3: a domestic house cat that reaches a certain age, maybe
Speaker 3: the age of one hundred, and then transforms into a monster.
Speaker 3: We also talked about the bakan Echo, a sort of
Speaker 3: a moral shape shifting cat that may play pranks, may
Speaker 3: drink blood, may exact deadly revenge, etc. Does that about
Speaker 3: cover it.
Speaker 2: Roub, Yeah, Yeah, pretty much? And an important thing to
Speaker 2: keep in mind, this is something we were talking about
Speaker 2: off Mike before we came in here, is that there's
Speaker 2: a certain amount of overlap between these different classifications. I mean,
Speaker 2: more generally, as we've often discussed with folklore and legends
Speaker 2: and mythology and even religion, that there's not often like
Speaker 2: a strong canonizing, codifying force that is coming in and
Speaker 2: saying like, Okay, this is this creature and this is
Speaker 2: this other creature. You know, things shift over time, Ideas merge,
Speaker 2: ideas influence one another, and I mean really, if you
Speaker 2: want to look outside of folklore and mythology and legend
Speaker 2: to find examples of this, I mean look no further
Speaker 2: than say, like comic book characters, where like a character
Speaker 2: like Lex Luthor or the Riddler, you know, have changed
Speaker 2: multiple times over the years to reflect different ideas in
Speaker 2: popular culture, with like Lex Luthor becoming less of a
Speaker 2: mad scientist in a mecha suit and becoming like a
Speaker 2: corporate businessman and so forth. The Riddler suddenly is the
Speaker 2: Zodiac Killer in recent films, you know that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Uh huh. I think that's a great comparison. But even
Speaker 3: in that case, at least the things you're talking about
Speaker 3: are fixed media documents like you know, comic books and films,
Speaker 3: which continue to exist in a fixed form. When something
Speaker 3: is just sort of oral legend and part of a culture,
Speaker 3: there's almost a limitless kind of free flow of the
Speaker 3: boundaries of the concept.
Speaker 2: Right right, There's no like central publication that is to
Speaker 2: some extent controlling the form. And you can argue just
Speaker 2: how much even something like The Riddler is controlled by say,
Speaker 2: DC Comics, because ultimately you have fan fiction, fan art,
Speaker 2: et cetera. But yeah, outside of that, you know, we're
Speaker 2: dealing with with situations where things are just growing organically,
Speaker 2: often in oral storytelling traditions, and then it gets influenced
Speaker 2: by various artistic renditions and so forth.
Speaker 3: So today we're going to be talking about some more
Speaker 3: Japanese stories of magical cats. Not all monster cats, but
Speaker 3: some of them are monster cats. But before we get
Speaker 3: into that, I wanted to look at something more broadly
Speaker 3: about the perception of cats as powerful beings. So in
Speaker 3: multiple sources I was reading for the series, there would
Speaker 3: be little comments and asides that were variations on the
Speaker 3: perception that cats just seem to have some kind of
Speaker 3: obscure hidden power, that something about the nature of the
Speaker 3: cat suggests there's more than meets the eye. And I
Speaker 3: find myself intuitively very much in agreement with that. But
Speaker 3: I would back up and say, even before you get
Speaker 3: to the assumption about magical powers, I think there is
Speaker 3: just something about a cat that suggests power of some sort.
Speaker 3: Like despite the fact that cats are Internet famous for
Speaker 3: being you know, goofy goobers, cute, goofy goobers, no doubt,
Speaker 3: they often are just as often when, especially when I'm
Speaker 3: in the physical presence of a cat, I often feel
Speaker 3: that a house cat is commanding a strange, mysterious power
Speaker 3: and respect. And I was talking to my wife Rachel
Speaker 3: about this and she said, basically she had the same feeling.
Speaker 3: She said, when in the presence of a cat's it's
Speaker 3: this kind of a creature that's holding something over you. Specifically,
Speaker 3: in her case, she talked about the feeling of the
Speaker 3: need to impress a cat like this is an animal
Speaker 3: that is passing judgment on you, and you are failing
Speaker 3: and there might be some kind of bad consequence to
Speaker 3: the fact that you are not standing up in the
Speaker 3: eyes of the cat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, when you go over to a friend's
Speaker 2: house and a dog. The dog may initially bark at you,
Speaker 2: but you know, as is often the case in my experience,
Speaker 2: then the owner will say no, no, no, Hugo or
Speaker 2: whatever the dog's name is, this person is fine, this
Speaker 2: person's fine, and eventually, in my experience, the dog tends
Speaker 2: to listen to this and it's like, okay, all right,
Speaker 2: it's fine the cat. You know, the best you can
Speaker 2: do when someone comes over is say like, look, I
Speaker 2: have nothing to do with how this cat is going
Speaker 2: to receive you. I can give you advice, I can
Speaker 2: tell you what not to do, but ultimately it's out
Speaker 2: of my hands.
Speaker 3: That's right. Yeah, you know, I'm not the boss here.
Speaker 3: In a way, so I can sense why people in
Speaker 3: various cultures throughout history might start to wonder if the
Speaker 3: domestic cat is brimming with bloodthirsty sorcery, and all it
Speaker 3: would take is that same feeling. I have that intuitive
Speaker 3: sense that the cat is powerful for some reason, but
Speaker 3: paired with the observation that that sense of power is
Speaker 3: incongruous with the cat's actual physical size and strength. Like
Speaker 3: you know that that sense of power cannot be justified
Speaker 3: through what a cat can literally actually do so the
Speaker 3: mind fills with magic. And I will add that, of course,
Speaker 3: the comparison to dogs is unavoidable. I love dogs. I
Speaker 3: am more of a dog person than a cat person,
Speaker 3: and I would not say this about dogs at all.
Speaker 3: This seems totally unique to cats. Dogs do not seem
Speaker 3: to have hidden power or magic in this way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as a cat person, I find that when I
Speaker 2: encounter a new dog, it's like things often push to
Speaker 2: one extreme or another. You know, a dog is either
Speaker 2: suspicious or hostile towards you, or they are just instantly
Speaker 2: already your friend and want to, you know, get all
Speaker 2: up in your business and see if you have treats
Speaker 2: and so forth. And of course you know, on the
Speaker 2: thread end of the spectrum obviously, as in my first example,
Speaker 2: a lot of times it's like yeah, the initial barking
Speaker 2: at a stranger, but then they're like, oh, okay, they're fine.
Speaker 2: But with the cat, there's often there often seems to
Speaker 2: be and again this is general, this is generality. Then
Speaker 2: they're gonna be in vidual exceptions with the cats as
Speaker 2: there are with the dogs. But they seem to occupy
Speaker 2: this middle ground, you know, where it's like a no friends,
Speaker 2: no enemies, approach to relationship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's good. But anyway, so this got me wondering, like,
Speaker 3: why is it that cats seem powerful in this way?
Speaker 3: I don't know if they seem this way to everyone,
Speaker 3: but I think at least a lot of people must
Speaker 3: share this feeling I have. And this turned out to
Speaker 3: be a difficult question to answer in a way that
Speaker 3: felt really solid and empirically justified. I don't think I
Speaker 3: have a great answer to this question, but I've turned
Speaker 3: up a few possible interesting ideas. So the first place
Speaker 3: I look to try to get some empirically justified threads
Speaker 3: on this is I was wondering, well, what are the
Speaker 3: behavioral markers of power in humans that we might just
Speaker 3: be sort of mapping on to the behavior of cats.
Speaker 3: And this is great because you know, the whatever government
Speaker 3: agencies or whatever are tracking my Internet behavior must now
Speaker 3: think I'm about to start a second career as one
Speaker 3: of the psychopath dating advice coaches, because I'm here searching
Speaker 3: for studies on what makes humans seem powerful? How do
Speaker 3: humans signal dominance and high status? Uh so, TikTok, masculinity, priesthood,
Speaker 3: here I come.
Speaker 2: I imagine there's a lot out there that equates dog
Speaker 2: ownership with strength and cat ownership with sensitivity. Uh. These are,
Speaker 2: of course both ridiculous stereotypes, but you do see this
Speaker 2: sort of thing reflected, like, look at this guy, he's
Speaker 2: got a he's got a big dog. Must be it
Speaker 2: must be a really powerful fellow. Look this, this, this
Speaker 2: creature is clearly physically powerful, and it just works for him.
Speaker 2: You know, it's observient to him.
Speaker 3: Where is the boss?
Speaker 2: Yeah, whereas the cat ownership, you know, is often interpreted
Speaker 2: in the opposite direction. I guess one of the seasonally
Speaker 2: appropriate examples is, of course, when when people realized or
Speaker 2: I mean, I think this was always kind of out
Speaker 2: in the open, but when people realize that that metal
Speaker 2: musician Glenn Danzig is a cat person and has cats
Speaker 2: and buys cat letter, right, people had a lot of
Speaker 2: fun with that concept because he pushes this hyper masculine
Speaker 2: identity out there, right, and so it just dealing with
Speaker 2: like those really like outrageous gender stereotypes. It was like,
Speaker 2: it seemed counterintuitive that this individual would have a cat.
Speaker 2: But then again, when you get into all the spooky stuff, right,
Speaker 2: it seems perfectly logical that he would have multiple black cats.
Speaker 3: I feel like I could have told you Danzig was
Speaker 3: a cat person. I don't know how I knew, but
Speaker 3: I knew. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think there are old photos of them with cats,
Speaker 2: long before the kitty litter shopping photo went viral.
Speaker 3: But anyway, what did I come up with here? Okay?
Speaker 3: I think about two ideas that are potentially interesting and
Speaker 3: one that was kind of a failed rabbit trail. We'll
Speaker 3: do the failed one first. This idea is about eye contact.
Speaker 3: I have the impression that something about the way a
Speaker 3: cat looks at you can feel intimidating, and that there's
Speaker 3: something about the gaze of a cat that that has
Speaker 3: to do with this feeling of power that I impute
Speaker 3: to them. And I wondered if this had something to
Speaker 3: do with our instincts about eye contact. I think it's
Speaker 3: absolutely clear that eye contact is one of the most
Speaker 3: potent and complicated elements of human body language. How much
Speaker 3: you do or don't connect with somebody's gaze. Who engages
Speaker 3: and breaks off eye contact and when they do it.
Speaker 3: These gestures that we make with our eyes are interpreted
Speaker 3: as containing lots of socially relevant information, And if you
Speaker 3: doubt this just like try to have a conversation with somebody,
Speaker 3: but don't do what feels natural with eye contact, like
Speaker 3: force yourself to maintain eye contact longer than you naturally
Speaker 3: would or something. It will I guarantee you immediately become
Speaker 3: extremely uncomfortable and you will both get freaked out for
Speaker 3: whatever reason. Humans just read a lot into how they
Speaker 3: manage eye contact with each other. There are a bunch
Speaker 3: of studies about this, and while there might be a
Speaker 3: lot of different kind of information encoded in patterns of
Speaker 3: eye contact, it's clear that one of the important types
Speaker 3: of social information that we interpret in patterns of eye
Speaker 3: contact has to do with power, status, and dominance. For example,
Speaker 3: there are studies showing that, at least in some human
Speaker 3: on human scenarios, people perceive to be powerful or in
Speaker 3: leadership roles are more likely to maintain eye contact once
Speaker 3: it is initiated, so you meet the powerful person's gaze
Speaker 3: and the powerful person will stare you down. Conversely, people
Speaker 3: who are perceived in social interactions as subservient or less
Speaker 3: powerful are more likely to break off eye contact and
Speaker 3: avert their gaze from that of a person they perceive
Speaker 3: as more powerful or higher status than them. So I
Speaker 3: was thinking about this, and I was thinking, what this
Speaker 3: does feel like It squares with experiences I've had with
Speaker 3: cats where they will just like stare into my eyes
Speaker 3: until I feel uncomfortable and feel like I have to
Speaker 3: look away, And this does appear to be a true
Speaker 3: dynamic for humans. But I couldn't really connect this to
Speaker 3: any empirical evidence that cats are especially prone to this,
Speaker 3: that cats are more likely than any other animal to
Speaker 3: hit you with a laser beam of unbroken eye contact.
Speaker 3: Like I said, I feel like I've had this experience before,
Speaker 3: but I don't think it's generally true of cats. In fact,
Speaker 3: a lot of like veterinary sources I was reading claim
Speaker 3: exactly the opposite. They say that cats tend to find
Speaker 3: sustained eye contact threatening and stressful, and that you should
Speaker 3: not stare right into their eyes because it will bother them.
Speaker 3: The reasoning being that that cats only whole eye contact
Speaker 3: with each other when they are preparing to fight, which
Speaker 3: would mirror the idea that eye contact has something to
Speaker 3: do with sort of like a you know, dominance and
Speaker 3: competition in mammals. So if vets and other experts say
Speaker 3: that cats generally avoid prolonged eye contact with humans. That's
Speaker 3: sort of the opposite of what I was wondering about.
Speaker 3: So I don't know, maybe there's something I'm missing, but
Speaker 3: I think my intuition about cats was just wrong in
Speaker 3: this case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've heard that cats favor a narrowing of the
Speaker 2: eyes and a head nod, though I've never investigated it
Speaker 2: to see if there's anything substantial backing it up. But
Speaker 2: in my limited experience, it kind of sort of seems
Speaker 2: to work, you know, like if I find myself staring
Speaker 2: at my cats, sometimes I'll do that, and you know,
Speaker 2: it seems like we have a cool moment. But in general, though,
Speaker 2: I would say, in my experience is all very subjective obviously,
Speaker 2: but cats have very captivating eyes. They have very large eyes.
Speaker 2: They're the eyes of a predator, you know, an obligate predator. Here.
Speaker 2: They also are eyes that are finely tuned for work
Speaker 2: in low light environments. They will appear to gleam, you know,
Speaker 2: in low light environments, which often has an impact on
Speaker 2: various supernatural interpretations, you know, eyes gleaming in the night,
Speaker 2: glowing in the night, and so forth. Whereas with dogs,
Speaker 2: I don't know, sometimes I encounter dogs, and it's like
Speaker 2: their eyes feel like they're completely dark, you know, like
Speaker 2: they're like a doll's eyes, but not in like a
Speaker 2: threatening Jaws fashion, but in a like this is a
Speaker 2: stuffed animal fashion, like there's no agency here. This this
Speaker 2: animal is just just dumb as I'll get out.
Speaker 3: I don't feel that about dogs. But yeah, not.
Speaker 2: All dogs, just some dogs I have encountered. Their eyes
Speaker 2: feel very dark and like I don't read them as well,
Speaker 2: whereas cat eyes are are there, if they're wide open,
Speaker 2: certainly they're very intense.
Speaker 3: Well, I think with some dogs you don't really get
Speaker 3: to see much other than the pupil, you know, like
Speaker 3: you're not seeing a lot of the whites of a
Speaker 3: dog's eye usually, which is something we use to interpret
Speaker 3: the theory of mind and other humans because, like, you know,
Speaker 3: when we're trying to understand what other humans are thinking,
Speaker 3: we look at where they're looking with their eyes, and
Speaker 3: that necessarily involves being able to see the relative proportion
Speaker 3: of the whites of the eyes on you know, Like,
Speaker 3: so we look at where their pupils are pointed. With
Speaker 3: a dog, yeah, a lot of times, like the darker
Speaker 3: part of the eyeball like fills up most of what
Speaker 3: you can see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a theory of mind, of course, is central
Speaker 2: to all of this. Anybody who's familiar with animals will
Speaker 2: tell you that, depending on the animal, it may not
Speaker 2: be the eyes that are the prime indicator of mood
Speaker 2: and so forth. I mean ears are especially important in
Speaker 2: a number of animals, like what are their ears doing,
Speaker 2: how are their ears positioned? And so forth.
Speaker 3: Anyway, Okay, so I think my thing about eye contact
Speaker 3: that's not really going anywhere. But a couple of other
Speaker 3: ideas I think might be onto something. One is about elevation.
Speaker 3: It seems to me that cats often seek to occupy
Speaker 3: high places in the room, on top of shelves and
Speaker 3: tall furniture in lofted areas, looking down on others, and
Speaker 3: unlike dogs, cats are climbers. They can actually get up
Speaker 3: to the high places. So I think even if a
Speaker 3: dog wanted to be up on top of the ship,
Speaker 3: it probably can't get there, but a cat can. Once again,
Speaker 3: I didn't know if this was a real trend with
Speaker 3: cats or just my personal idiosyncratic experience. While I looked
Speaker 3: it up to see if there are any studies on this,
Speaker 3: and there are, so I was reading in a book
Speaker 3: called The Domestic Cat, The Biology of Its Behavior from
Speaker 3: Cambridge University Press two thousand, edited by Turner and Batesen,
Speaker 3: And they're summarizing some research on this, and they say,
Speaker 3: quote Smith at All nineteen ninety four examined the behavior
Speaker 3: of cats in shelters with specific reference to their spatial
Speaker 3: distribution and object preferences. The cats used structures more often
Speaker 3: than the floor of their pins, and high structures which
Speaker 3: provided vantage points, were used more frequently than low ones.
Speaker 3: Other studies have confirmed that cats prefer high shelves and
Speaker 3: enclosed areas. So this is not just my gut feeling.
Speaker 3: Researchers have investigated this and they found that yes, cats do,
Speaker 3: on average actually prefer to get up high and look
Speaker 3: down on everyone else. Now pair that with the fact
Speaker 3: that I think is totally clear that humans frequently use
Speaker 3: physical elevation to signal power. Think of the elevation of
Speaker 3: the king or the queen's throne over the throne room,
Speaker 3: the elevation of the judge's bench over the courtroom, the
Speaker 3: elevation of the preacher's pulpit, etc. It seems like a
Speaker 3: common cross cultural reality that when we want to signal
Speaker 3: that a person is powerful and they must be respected
Speaker 3: and even feared. We put them up on an elevated
Speaker 3: piece of furniture. So related to this cultural convention, which
Speaker 3: in turn might proceed from some biological realities, we regard
Speaker 3: the entity up in a high place looking down on
Speaker 3: us as a being with power over us. Cats, on
Speaker 3: average do selectively seek out elevated perches and high vantage points.
Speaker 3: So I guess that's one possible contributing factor to our
Speaker 3: perceptions of the strange power of a cat. And by
Speaker 3: the way, I was thinking, I can think of any
Speaker 3: other common domestic animal that is able to do this,
Speaker 3: like you know, dogs and all the common farm animals
Speaker 3: and so forth don't climb up on shelves to peer
Speaker 3: down at us. The only other one I was thinking
Speaker 3: of was maybe like the goat, which does like to
Speaker 3: get up on top of the roofs of the pins
Speaker 3: and so forth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was about to ask you if you had
Speaker 2: forgotten our friend the goat, because the goat seems like
Speaker 2: the most striking example of animals that like, you go
Speaker 2: out and you'll see you'll see goats in a field
Speaker 2: and they have access to a hay bale or some
Speaker 2: other elevated structure. You'll often find multiple goats enjoying that
Speaker 2: heightened perspective, whereas cats, I don't know, you know, I
Speaker 2: don't doubt the research here, but you'll find cats enjoying
Speaker 2: elevated positions, but also shelving and other locations that are
Speaker 2: maybe less high, that are maybe picked out more because
Speaker 2: they are enclosed. You know, they're boxy, they're like little caves. Likewise,
Speaker 2: I mean, you'll find cats being on shoes and so
Speaker 2: forth with ground level. So, I don't know, it seems
Speaker 2: less pronounced in cats than with goats. For sure, Goats
Speaker 2: would seem to be the superstars uh here when it
Speaker 2: comes to elevated positions, I think the we do often
Speaker 2: put out uh like little pedestals and throne like structures
Speaker 2: for them to use, even of course climbing towers and
Speaker 2: so forth, So we do facilitate, uh, their their you know,
Speaker 2: their their desire to have some sort of an elevated position,
Speaker 2: and and also you know that'll end up looking like
Speaker 2: we have provided a special place for them, a throne
Speaker 2: for them to rule over the household. Uh Though at
Speaker 2: the same time, as we've discussed in the show before.
Speaker 2: They'll also favor say a discarded ikea instruction manual that's
Speaker 2: left on a bed. Oh, they'll they'll they'll lay in
Speaker 2: an empty box. So it's I don't know, I feel
Speaker 2: like they they do what they want. You know, you
Speaker 2: can't you can't entirely expect them to just go to
Speaker 2: the highest place. They're gonna also find a comfy place
Speaker 2: and that on that count, I would also add that
Speaker 2: one of the things about cats that may make them
Speaker 2: seem more powerful is the way they will recline in
Speaker 2: sudden some circumstances, especially if they're say on a couch
Speaker 2: where they have something to lean their bodies back against.
Speaker 2: They'll sometimes have this body position that makes them look
Speaker 2: like a reclining bipedal humanoid. And you know, their belly
Speaker 2: will perhaps be a little exaggerated since they may be
Speaker 2: an indoor cat that eats plenty, and this will sort
Speaker 2: of add to this feeling of a rotund ruler on
Speaker 2: their throne.
Speaker 3: Jab of the cat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but at the very least to your point, Yes,
Speaker 2: cats will take advantage of various surface levels on which
Speaker 2: to rest and to you know, view their domain, and
Speaker 2: a lot of times that will put them a certainly
Speaker 2: at a higher vantage point, perhaps one that is more
Speaker 2: on the level with human beings as opposed to just
Speaker 2: being on the floor.
Speaker 3: All right. Another idea I had about cats in the
Speaker 3: perception of power, what if kats seem powerful because they
Speaker 3: are non compliant or non conforming. There are multiple studies
Speaker 3: on this dynamic in humans. Just to refer to one
Speaker 3: that seems to be cited a lot, there is a
Speaker 3: study by Sylvia Balsa, Francesca Gino, and a not Keenan
Speaker 3: called the Red Sneakers Effect Inferring status and competence from
Speaker 3: signals of non conformity. This is from the Journal of
Speaker 3: Consumer Research from twenty fourteen. What seems to have incited
Speaker 3: this research is just some anecdotal observations that run counter
Speaker 3: to the conventional win wisdom that if you want to
Speaker 3: be respected, you need to dress sharp. You know. I've
Speaker 3: heard variations on this my whole life. Dress for the
Speaker 3: job you want, not the job you have, And they
Speaker 3: don't actually include, like in that statement, what you're supposed
Speaker 3: to wear, But the unspoken assumption is that this means
Speaker 3: dress up, not dressed down. You know, where in my case,
Speaker 3: the uh this is interpreted as wear a tie, shine
Speaker 3: your shoes, et cetera. But the authors here point out
Speaker 3: that counter to this conventional wisdom in certain sectors of
Speaker 3: business and culture they cite observations in Silicon Valley, there
Speaker 3: seems to be a principle operating in exactly the opposite direction.
Speaker 3: People in these contexts seem to try to signal their power,
Speaker 3: competence and high status by dressing down relative to their peers,
Speaker 3: so like you know, the CEO because they will not
Speaker 3: tuck their shirt in. You know, they're showing up at
Speaker 3: the board meeting in flip flops. So that's just an
Speaker 3: anecdotal observation. But the authors here wanted to put together
Speaker 3: a experiments to investigate empirically whether in some contexts non
Speaker 3: conforming behaviors or non compliance with social expectations, whether that
Speaker 3: does on average confer the appearance of power, competence and
Speaker 3: high status, and generally, in their experiments, which involve different
Speaker 3: kinds of you know, like staged encounters you might imagine
Speaker 3: in a university or business setting or whatever, they did
Speaker 3: indeed find that sometimes non compliance and non conformity are
Speaker 3: interpreted by others as signs of power, and they compare
Speaker 3: non conformity and non compliance with social expectations to a
Speaker 3: form of conspicuous consumption. Conspicuous consumption is a classic concept
Speaker 3: where people try to show off their high status by
Speaker 3: showing off that they can afford luxury goods, so, you know,
Speaker 3: having like expensive jewelry on or wearing you know, something
Speaker 3: that is impractically expensive, of an expensive car, or something
Speaker 3: like that to make people think that you are powerful
Speaker 3: and important. In their discussion section the author's write quote,
Speaker 3: we demonstrate that non conforming behavior as a costly, invisible signal,
Speaker 3: can operate similarly to conspicuous consumption, and compared to conforming behavior,
Speaker 3: lead to inferences of enhanced status and competence in the
Speaker 3: eyes of others. Across a series of lab and field studies,
Speaker 3: we explore observer's reactions to a variety of non conforming
Speaker 3: behaviors in different settings and find that observers confer higher
Speaker 3: status and competence to non conforming individuals compared to conforming ones.
Speaker 3: At a process level, our investigation reveals that the positive
Speaker 3: inferences from signals of non conformity are driven by perceived
Speaker 3: autonomy and moderated by observer's need for uniqueness. So The
Speaker 3: theory here seems to be that people interpret non conformity
Speaker 3: as an honest display of autonomy. Somebody who is not
Speaker 3: complying with social expectations is sort of conveying I will
Speaker 3: be fine without your approval, I don't need it, which ironically,
Speaker 3: in some cases makes some people seem more competent, more powerful,
Speaker 3: and more worthy of respect. So what are the boundaries
Speaker 3: of this effect? Because it obviously does not apply in
Speaker 3: every scenario, The authors in this paper, across their multiple studies,
Speaker 3: think that. Well, they say, they find that this effect
Speaker 3: only appears when the observer is familiar with the environment
Speaker 3: and social expectations within it. So you know, when there
Speaker 3: are quote established norms of formal conduct in the given context,
Speaker 3: and when the observer knows what they are. So like
Speaker 3: there have to be implied social rules in a place,
Speaker 3: and the observer has to know what they are. They
Speaker 3: also find that the perception of status and competence associated
Speaker 3: with nonconformity only appears if the observer believes that the
Speaker 3: person in question, the non conforming person, is violating the
Speaker 3: norms on purpose, if it seems like they're simply not
Speaker 3: aware that they're dressing or speaking inappropriately. That doesn't confer
Speaker 3: any sense of power. The power comes from willful flaunting
Speaker 3: of social expectations. So how does this connect to cats. Obviously,
Speaker 3: cats don't dress themselves or use language, so it wouldn't
Speaker 3: make sense to talk about them intentionally flaunting expected dress
Speaker 3: codes or ways of speaking. But I think basically anybody
Speaker 3: would have to agree that cats exude an air of
Speaker 3: non compliance and nonconformity, especially when contrasted with other domestic
Speaker 3: animals like the dog. The dog, of course, you know,
Speaker 3: highly social and usually quite eager to please. The dog
Speaker 3: will put on a tie for you if it can,
Speaker 3: by God. But there is something about the way that
Speaker 3: like if you try to train a cat. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's not true that you can't train a cat. Sometimes
Speaker 3: people do do it, but it is notoriously difficult, and
Speaker 3: often when people try it on their own, cat just
Speaker 3: ignores you, often not just ignoring you, but like staring
Speaker 3: right in your face while it ignores what you want
Speaker 3: it to do. And I think that does maybe convey
Speaker 3: a sense of willful flaunting of social expectations that could
Speaker 3: map on to these intuitions we have about human behavior
Speaker 3: that when somebody is just like, no, I'm just not
Speaker 3: going to comply with the social norms. That makes them
Speaker 3: seem like, oh wow, this is a powerful person and
Speaker 3: I have maybe I should respect them.
Speaker 2: Well, it is true that cats are quite ungovernable, the
Speaker 2: notoriously so. It's also one of their their charms too,
Speaker 2: but one of the frustrations of keeping them as well.
Speaker 2: There's a sticker design out there. I don't know. I
Speaker 2: get served ads for it all the time on like Instagram,
Speaker 2: I guess because I look at cat videos and it's
Speaker 2: though like a cartoon cat with two middle fingers up
Speaker 2: and it says you can't stop me, which I love
Speaker 2: because it does perfectly capture the spirit of the cat.
Speaker 2: They will do what they want. And yeah, like I
Speaker 2: imagine it's different like if a dog, say, were to
Speaker 2: poop on your bed, you know this would what would
Speaker 2: that be?
Speaker 3: Like, Joe?
Speaker 2: What as a dog owner, how does that go down?
Speaker 3: You get the sense that when a dog, I mean
Speaker 3: all dogs are different, of course, so we're speaking in generalizations,
Speaker 3: but I think on average dog owners would probably say
Speaker 3: that a dog can be made to feel ashamed about
Speaker 3: like that you show the dog that they pooped on
Speaker 3: the bed. There's a sense that like the dog couldn't
Speaker 3: help it, it just got caught up in the moment,
Speaker 3: or it really needed to go and it pooped on
Speaker 3: the bed. And then it looks at the poop and
Speaker 3: it's like, I'm sorry. A cat, you don't get that
Speaker 3: at all.
Speaker 2: That's right with a cat. The first part may still
Speaker 2: obviously be true. The cat could various circumstances just made
Speaker 2: it to where the cat ended up leaving its poop
Speaker 2: on the bed, But there is this feeling that the
Speaker 2: cat is saying, actually, this is where my poop goes. Now,
Speaker 2: this is just how it is. I have made this decision,
Speaker 2: and what are you.
Speaker 3: Going to do about it? I don't need your approval.
Speaker 2: Yeah you don't like it, there, move it. You're the
Speaker 2: one who handles my poop for me. But yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean that you encounter this all the time with cats,
Speaker 2: Like you attempt to get them a new litter that
Speaker 2: will be better for them and better for the whole household,
Speaker 2: and they reject it, or you get them a comfy
Speaker 2: new bed, but instead they're going to go sweep on
Speaker 2: the instructions for putting together the fancy cat bed that
Speaker 2: you just bought. You know, they're going to do what
Speaker 2: they want. They're not necessarily they may do what you
Speaker 2: want in time, but they're not going to do it
Speaker 2: on your schedule. They have their own agenda in place.
Speaker 3: So to summarize, I don't think I have a comprehensive
Speaker 3: theory about why cats seem powerful, but I think we
Speaker 3: got a few interesting ideas there. I think the non
Speaker 3: compliance and nonconformity thing maybe a big part of it.
Speaker 3: I think the elevation might possibly be a part of it.
Speaker 3: I don't think the eye contact thing really goes anywhere,
Speaker 3: but I'd be interested what listeners think, especially if you
Speaker 3: have I don't know if you're like a vet you
Speaker 3: work with cats or anything, or even if you know
Speaker 3: you just got a lot of cats and you want
Speaker 3: to tell us about them, Like, where do you think
Speaker 3: the sense that cats have a hidden power comes from?
Speaker 2: I think another area that comes to mind is this
Speaker 2: sort of idea that there is a vanity, like like
Speaker 2: a king Lee or queenly vanity to the cat. And
Speaker 2: I was thinking about this specifically last night because my
Speaker 2: son and I are I'm slowly reading Watership down to
Speaker 2: him when we still do some story time. He does
Speaker 2: lots of reading on his own. But I was like, Watershiped.
Speaker 2: If you're all into all these animal books, let's do
Speaker 2: Watership Down. And we were just reading a part in
Speaker 2: this in which the rabbits encounter a cat. A cat
Speaker 2: in Watership Down is a deadly illegal in one of
Speaker 2: the thousand enemies of the rabbit people, but in this
Speaker 2: encounter they managed to outrun the cat. And one of
Speaker 2: the rabbit's comments that the cats quote hate to look foolish,
Speaker 2: and this matches up with a lot of the things
Speaker 2: that unseasoned cat behavior. They will often seemingly walk off
Speaker 2: stumbles and mistakes with the kind of nonchalant that didn't
Speaker 2: happen vibe. This is of course all theory of mind
Speaker 2: and personification on our part, but that's how we often
Speaker 2: end up interpreting it. So the cat may seem prideful
Speaker 2: and powerful in a way, you know, kind of like
Speaker 2: eager to cover up a stumble it made, when of course,
Speaker 2: in reality, the cat is just doing some mix of
Speaker 2: just recovering from whatever they did wrong and moving on
Speaker 2: or conserving energy instead of wasting you know, time focusing
Speaker 2: on it. It's also coming back a little bit to
Speaker 2: the the subjects that we discussed in the last episode,
Speaker 2: this idea of cats catching on early in Japan with royalty,
Speaker 2: with nobility, and you have this, this this clear mental
Speaker 2: picture of a Japanese emperor, someone who is in a
Speaker 2: position where I'm you know, I'm imagining there's a lot
Speaker 2: of a lot of yes men surrounding them, there's a
Speaker 2: you know, a lot of power, there's a lot of
Speaker 2: things being done in such a way as to please
Speaker 2: the emperor, and then into their life strolls a cat,
Speaker 2: which you know is adorable and interesting, but also is
Speaker 2: not going to do what an emperor wants a cat
Speaker 2: to do. Like again, they are ungovernable to the last
Speaker 2: of them, to a fault. Even so, I think it's
Speaker 2: interesting to imagine that scenario and being part of there,
Speaker 2: and it's almost like they occupy would have occupied, like
Speaker 2: this gesture's place in the presence of the emperor, Like,
Speaker 2: here is a creature that will not do whatever I want,
Speaker 2: And in a way, there's something liberating about that.
Speaker 3: I think that's a really good comparison. Yeah, like the
Speaker 3: power of the jester, like the one who can criticize
Speaker 3: the king because they're a goober.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, now, coming back a bit to Japanese
Speaker 2: lore and legend and tradition concerning cats. I want to
Speaker 2: get into a few other ideas here. I want to
Speaker 2: mention again that two of my primary sources here are
Speaker 2: kaid Yo The Supernatural Cats of by Zach Davison, and
Speaker 2: then also a book titled The Japanese Myths The Guide
Speaker 2: to God's Heroes and Spirits by Joshua Friedman. The first
Speaker 2: cat I want to touch on, I think I may
Speaker 2: have mentioned this one in passing, but is the cat
Speaker 2: is the Meneki neko, the inviting cat. This is a
Speaker 2: cat that I think everyone a cat statue if you
Speaker 2: will that I think everyone has seen, probably in person,
Speaker 2: probably in multitudes at times. And if you haven't seen
Speaker 2: one in person, surely you've seen an image of this.
Speaker 2: This is a little statue of a cat gesturing with
Speaker 2: it with a face down paw, welcoming good luck into
Speaker 2: a space. A lot of times these are like solar
Speaker 2: and or battery powered as well, and so you get
Speaker 2: that little motion of the inviting paw.
Speaker 3: I don't think I knew what this was called, but
Speaker 3: I thought of this as the lucky cat, and it
Speaker 3: kind of has a in some forms. It has a
Speaker 3: paw that waves like the lever of an old school
Speaker 3: cash register.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Its origins are in the Edo period,
Speaker 2: when it was apparently observed that cats sometimes manipulate their
Speaker 2: paw in this way that resembles the Japanese traditional hand
Speaker 2: gesture to come inside. I think in Western traditions it's
Speaker 2: often easy to look at that and think of like
Speaker 2: waving or like you say, pulling a lever, But in
Speaker 2: Japanese tradition, I believe this would be more like, yeah,
Speaker 2: come inside. And the cat then is welcoming good luck
Speaker 2: generally inside a home or business. They are not, and
Speaker 2: I can't stress this enough, not welcoming in vampires. So
Speaker 2: if you are a vampire out there, do not misinterpret
Speaker 2: a luck cat as being an open invitation to come inside,
Speaker 2: because it's not gonna work.
Speaker 3: I can't believe this has never come up before when
Speaker 3: a vampire has to be invited in? Does that apply
Speaker 3: to places of business or only to homes? And if
Speaker 3: it applies to places of business, is the open sign
Speaker 3: welcome enough or does it have to come out of
Speaker 3: a person's mouth.
Speaker 2: I don't know. It depends on the interpretation. Yeah, if
Speaker 2: it's by appointment only. I think the vampire cannot come
Speaker 2: inside all right. Now. As for the lut cats, though
Speaker 2: Davison shares several more tidbits, I wasn't familiar with any
Speaker 2: of this. I'm going to stress though, that there's no
Speaker 2: real cannon here regarding what any of these details mean.
Speaker 2: And some you'll apparently find traditions that are the opposite
Speaker 2: of some of the standards here. But in general, you
Speaker 2: look at one of these lut cats, you may see
Speaker 2: a red bib or collar. This is a symbol of
Speaker 2: Buddhist divinity. Oftentimes you'll see it holding a coin, a
Speaker 2: gold coin. This is from the Edo period as well.
Speaker 2: It's got a cobine. It represents like vast wealth. And
Speaker 2: I think there's also this idea too that is kind
Speaker 2: of like, as Davison points out, like pearls before swine.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like a coin for a cat is
Speaker 2: something that a cat cannot actually appreciate, but it's kind
Speaker 2: of fun that it has it.
Speaker 3: The cat would rather have a lot of aluminum foil.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the colors mean a lot. Apparently. You often see
Speaker 2: white ones. A white luck cat typically means happiness. It's
Speaker 2: inviting in happiness. Red color real it's inviting in relationship
Speaker 2: success or and or protection from illness. The black color
Speaker 2: is protection from evil spirits. Gold cats obviously mean money.
Speaker 2: But then there are all sorts of newer colors that
Speaker 2: have apparently been introduced just in general popular culture, like
Speaker 2: blue for academic success, green for health, pink for love,
Speaker 2: and then calico apparently is considered the luckiest of all,
Speaker 2: I guess because you get a combination of colors and
Speaker 2: calicos of like luck associations like traditionally in Japan, also
Speaker 2: depending on which hand is doing the waving, some traditions
Speaker 2: say left hand invites in money, right brings in customers,
Speaker 2: though sometimes apparently this is reversed so it depends who
Speaker 2: you're asking about it. Right is for home, left is
Speaker 2: for business, left hand. It also apparently has a connotation
Speaker 2: with holding one's liquor, which apparently ties into the idea,
Speaker 2: particularly with a luck cat in a restaurants, of keeping
Speaker 2: clients drinking so that they're ordering more food. But again
Speaker 2: that nothing is there's no strict canon or coat here.
Speaker 2: You'll find various interpretations of this. Again, origins go back
Speaker 2: to the Edo period. You would have these motionless clay models,
Speaker 2: and there are a number of stories that lay out
Speaker 2: how these clay statues came to be. There are some
Speaker 2: stories apparently in which you have a situation where a
Speaker 2: hero is saved from ill luck or attack by a
Speaker 2: becketting cat in the night, and therefore after the fact
Speaker 2: they're like, oh, well this cat saved my life, will
Speaker 2: I will now honor it. There's one story that Davison
Speaker 2: relates in which there's like a samurai protecting this woman.
Speaker 2: They're going through the dark streets at night. This cat
Speaker 2: jumps out. He thinks it's a threat. He slays the
Speaker 2: cat and then realizes, oh, this cat was protecting us
Speaker 2: or warning us, and then he feels vast guilt and
Speaker 2: a shrine is built to the cats. There's also a
Speaker 2: cat temple origin story of sorts. There's an actual cat
Speaker 2: temple in Japan. Gotukuji, i believe is what it is called.
Speaker 2: So the cat is apparently, in some traditions, said to
Speaker 2: be one of only two animals that did not weep
Speaker 2: upon the death of the Buddha. I've seen it also
Speaker 2: put other ways that like the cat does not accept
Speaker 2: the Buddhist teaching, et cetera. Whatever, the details. You know,
Speaker 2: it matches up with the spirit of the cat. The
Speaker 2: cat does not seem likely to be greatly emotionally disturbed
Speaker 2: by the death of even the Buddha, and also is
Speaker 2: going to be rather neutral on Buddhist teachings.
Speaker 3: The cat is like, I will keep my attachments, thank
Speaker 3: you very much.
Speaker 2: Yes, But the story goes that, okay, cats are not
Speaker 2: really lined up with the spirit of Buddhist teachings. Therefore
Speaker 2: they're not a great animal to have at a holy site.
Speaker 2: But the story is that a monk kept one anyway
Speaker 2: because it was cute and adorable, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 2: so he hides it from the abbot there. But then
Speaker 2: one night during a storm, the cat invites a powerful
Speaker 2: lord to the temple for refuge, and that temple, Kotukuji,
Speaker 2: becomes the Cat Temple and today hosts thousands of luck cats.
Speaker 2: You can find various pictures of this place online and
Speaker 2: just yeah, tons and tons of white luck cats.
Speaker 3: Wow. I'm looking at a picture you included in the outline,
Speaker 3: and it looks like drifts of snow with strawberries.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, there are a bunch of them. Now again,
Speaker 2: we discuss that there's a lot of overlap with these
Speaker 2: different stories about the cats, supernatural cats of Japan, and
Speaker 2: this general idea that there's kind of an evolution. A
Speaker 2: cat becomes old enough, a cat becomes one hundred years old,
Speaker 2: and then the tale splits. It becomes something else. More
Speaker 2: tails mean more power, power even to change its shape
Speaker 2: and take on human form, manipulate aid, or hunt humans
Speaker 2: for sport, that sort of thing.
Speaker 3: Oh and when you said this, I just realized I
Speaker 3: forgot to mention when I did the recap at the
Speaker 3: beginning that yes, the Neko mata has a forked tail
Speaker 3: or two tails, that's like primary characteristic. I left out
Speaker 3: apologies about that.
Speaker 2: Now, while a lot of these ideas with supernatural cats
Speaker 2: are or they become the idea that this is something
Speaker 2: that a normal cat can and will turn into. One
Speaker 2: exception to this is the idea of the Neko Musumi.
Speaker 2: This is the cat Daughter, and Zach Davison discusses this
Speaker 2: in the book The Cat Daughter in Question. Here is
Speaker 2: a cat human hybrid, but her origin isn't situated in
Speaker 2: the domestic cat at all. She's not a former domestic
Speaker 2: cat that is transformed into this state. She's also attributed
Speaker 2: with certain acts that are feline in nature, like cat
Speaker 2: bathing and killing of rodents in line with their feline qualities. Now,
Speaker 2: as Davison lays out the origins of this one in
Speaker 2: the path of his evolution, kind of walk us through
Speaker 2: a couple of centuries of weird tales and oddities in
Speaker 2: Japanese culture. The earliest version of the tail stems from
Speaker 2: the Missy Momo or Seeing Things shows in the seventeen hundreds. These,
Speaker 2: he writes, were quote a combination of American freak shows,
Speaker 2: haunted houses, and the believe it or Not style of
Speaker 2: exhibitions still popular today. So amid so this would be
Speaker 2: a situation for you to encounter various Jokai artifacts, including
Speaker 2: the original Fiji Mermaid, which originated here in this setting
Speaker 2: and then ended up traveling into the West. But this
Speaker 2: is where the original cat Daughter is said to have existed.
Speaker 2: It's unknown, however, if this was somebody that had a
Speaker 2: birth defect, if it was somebody who had been made
Speaker 2: up with special makeup or lighting or of it's with
Speaker 2: some combination of different elements. But there was supposedly an
Speaker 2: individual that was the cat Daughter, and you would pay
Speaker 2: to see them are.
Speaker 3: There even any physical descriptions other than that in some sense,
Speaker 3: some vague sense, she looks like a cat.
Speaker 2: I don't think so. I think we don't have a
Speaker 2: lot to go on here, based on my reading of Davidson.
Speaker 2: So the Misimomo shows they die out, maybe they're no
Speaker 2: longer popular. But the story here of the cat Daughter
Speaker 2: comes back during the Edo period in the Kaidan or
Speaker 2: ghost story collections, sometimes she's called the Licking Girl again
Speaker 2: because she's half cat half human and she does things
Speaker 2: that a cat will do, like bathe herself by licking
Speaker 2: or fur, and of course killing various rodents that's also huge.
Speaker 2: But again her origins in these cases are still mysterious.
Speaker 2: Nobody's saying that she was a domestic cat at one point.
Speaker 2: She's just this anomaly, and apparently it counts. During the
Speaker 2: Edo period also sometimes present her again as a historical fact.
Speaker 2: Davidson points out that there's like one particular work that's
Speaker 2: primarily a historical and political diary and they just refer
Speaker 2: to the Cat Daughter as a fact, like this is
Speaker 2: a person that exists or existed, which I guess makes
Speaker 2: sense if its origins are in this Missy Momo seeing
Speaker 2: things show, but then things continue to evolve, and finally,
Speaker 2: in the nineteen thirties, the story takes on this form
Speaker 2: of a Buddhist morality lesson. So, in this story, you
Speaker 2: have a father who makes his living producing cat skin shamasin's.
Speaker 2: This is a stringed instrument that was sometimes traditionally made
Speaker 2: with cat or dog skin. And so in this story,
Speaker 2: the father has killed something like five hundred cats in
Speaker 2: his trade to make these nice musical instruments that he sells.
Speaker 2: But this ends up cursing his bloodline, causing his daughter
Speaker 2: to be born as park cat.
Speaker 3: So this is something kind of like a harmic punishment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. Now I want to point out there are
Speaker 2: also illustrations of the Nikomata from the seventeen hundreds. We
Speaker 2: talked about the Nikomada in the last episode, which depicts
Speaker 2: this creature in sort of like a cat humanoid form
Speaker 2: playing a shamasen and this was, I guess apparently amusing
Speaker 2: because the shamasin might have been made out of cat skin.
Speaker 2: All Right, the next one I want to discuss very briefly.
Speaker 2: I don't think I'm gonna go into this one much,
Speaker 2: but if you happen to be on any of our
Speaker 2: social media profiles, you may have seen an image selected
Speaker 2: to promote this episode, and it consists of what appears
Speaker 2: to be just a giant chonker of a cat, maybe
Speaker 2: not even leaping, but just sort of reaching out of
Speaker 2: the high bushes and small trees to swat at a
Speaker 2: human or a pair of humans and cause them great
Speaker 2: agony and fear.
Speaker 3: Elephant sized cat rising like steam out of the weeds.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the cat, I love his this very sort
Speaker 2: of neutral look on its face, like it doesn't look fearsome.
Speaker 2: And there are plenty of depictions of cats taking on
Speaker 2: you know, sort of evil and terrifying facial features, but
Speaker 2: this one, this cat looks very neutrals as he sort
Speaker 2: of you know, emerges from the bushes, and yeah, he's
Speaker 2: a total chonker. Very much reminds me of the cat
Speaker 2: meme of Oh laud he coming. I don't know if
Speaker 2: you've seen this one. This is the highest level on
Speaker 2: the chalk spectrum for how chonky a cat may be.
Speaker 3: I'm not familiar, but I understand the concept. Okay.
Speaker 2: This picture is a nineteenth century image from Kawan Nabi Kyoshi.
Speaker 2: This is supposed to be a giant cat attacking people
Speaker 2: in the forest. Now, this is supposed to be a
Speaker 2: depiction of the aeromote o ya maneko or the aeromote
Speaker 2: great mountain cat. So this is a remote island of Japan,
Speaker 2: and it is indeed home to a small aerio mote cat,
Speaker 2: a subspecies of leopard cat that is only found there.
Speaker 2: It's critically endangered. It is not giant, but there are
Speaker 2: legends of a much bigger cat with shining eyes that
Speaker 2: lives in the mountain. So, you know, I guess you
Speaker 2: could say it's kind of a cryptid of Japan. And
Speaker 2: you know, who knows if there is there's anything to this. Again,
Speaker 2: cats when they're you know, they may have that appearance
Speaker 2: of glowing eyes in the dark. And you can imagine
Speaker 2: how just just sighting one of these normal small wildcats,
Speaker 2: what could have led to this idea that there's something
Speaker 2: bigger lurking in the wilds.
Speaker 3: I was thinking about this after we recorded part one
Speaker 3: the other day, because of course, the world is full
Speaker 3: of actual big cat predators, lions, tigers, leopards. You know,
Speaker 3: these these are large predatory felines that can can could
Speaker 3: really mess you up. But it seems that the idea
Speaker 3: of taking like, even if you live in a place
Speaker 3: where there are no large predatory cats, you could almost
Speaker 3: like invent the idea yourself just by looking at a
Speaker 3: house cat and thinking, wow, this we're bigger and stronger.
Speaker 3: I'd really be in trouble.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean that's that's obviously always a concern
Speaker 2: with cats. You know, there's always the joke about like,
Speaker 2: if a cat we're larger than a human, you know,
Speaker 2: you would just eat you, that sort of thing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but yeah, I guess it's always you never want to
Speaker 2: err just entirely on the side of oh, well there's
Speaker 2: a tradition in this culture of a giant animal, that
Speaker 2: giant animal certainly existed, because obviously that's not always the case.
Speaker 2: I mean, because the human imagination is powerful enough to
Speaker 2: imagine large and small versions of any animals. There are
Speaker 2: no giant man sized spiders in Japan, but there are
Speaker 2: still stories about them exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And we make this point a lot on the show.
Speaker 3: Sometimes weird stories and myths and legends do go back
Speaker 3: to some kind of historical event that maybe is getting
Speaker 3: altered through retelling. It doesn't have to be that way.
Speaker 3: You don't have to assume that every crazy story goes
Speaker 3: back to something that really happened. People just are creative
Speaker 3: people make things up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean it's really a disservice at times
Speaker 2: to the to the human imagination and to and also
Speaker 2: to the traditions of various peoples to say like, oh, well,
Speaker 2: they clearly didn't think of this on their own. It
Speaker 2: must have been encrypted or Another version of this, of course,
Speaker 2: is the idea like, oh, look at this weird thing
Speaker 2: in their art. It has to be ancient aliens, like
Speaker 2: when you when you do that. There are a number
Speaker 2: of problems with the ancient aliens. I bought this, as
Speaker 2: we've touched on many times before, but a big one
Speaker 2: too is like you're you're doing a disservice to whatever
Speaker 2: traditional society you're commenting on by saying that this thing
Speaker 2: that they that they imagined, interpreted, that you know, has
Speaker 2: this important role in their belief system. When you just say, oh,
Speaker 2: that's that's people from another planet. That's not nothing they did.
Speaker 2: This is nothing that is a part of them. This
Speaker 2: is something external to them.
Speaker 3: Right, And of course that applies to like real human accomplishments,
Speaker 3: you know, buildings and structures, saying like, oh, people couldn't
Speaker 3: have done that without without alien help. That is wrong, misguided,
Speaker 3: not an appropriate reaction to the evidence, and it is
Speaker 3: insulting to you know, people who worked hard and we're clever.
Speaker 3: But also it applies to stories. You know, stories were
Speaker 3: say like, oh, you know, this being came out of
Speaker 3: the water and it had these physical features and all
Speaker 3: those things. There's no reason you have to assume that
Speaker 3: that's based on people actually encountering some being. They didn't understand.
Speaker 3: People were creative in the past, just like they're creative now.
Speaker 3: People today make up stories about fantastical beings and beasts.
Speaker 3: They did then too.
Speaker 2: Right, But then again, you know, we are creatures that
Speaker 2: live in the natural world, and we are often inspired
Speaker 2: by the natural world, and we kind of get back
Speaker 2: into that. In the final example, I want to highlight
Speaker 2: here this may be one of my favorites. It is
Speaker 2: the idea of the Kasha. This one's interesting because in
Speaker 2: its origin it is not a cat at all, but
Speaker 2: a terrifying flaming cart with or without only attendants, so
Speaker 2: terrifying you know, troll like demon beings attending it or
Speaker 2: sometimes not attending it. It comes down from the sky
Speaker 2: to drag away the souls of sinners who are living
Speaker 2: in the end times, drag them down to Hell and
Speaker 2: its many torments, because the cycle of reincarnation has run
Speaker 2: its course. You know, there's everything is broken, so it's
Speaker 2: time for the hell cart to come and just drag
Speaker 2: people away. Or at least that's how Kamakura Buddhists of
Speaker 2: the twelfth through fourteenth centuries apparently viewed matters. But much later,
Speaker 2: during the eighteen hundreds, you have influential yokai chronicler Tori
Speaker 2: Yama Sekan coming around. We've talked about him before because
Speaker 2: a very influential figure in sort of laying out what
Speaker 2: various yokai looked like and also just straight up making
Speaker 2: things up, like very much like creating on his own.
Speaker 2: I think we've touched on some of these before. Where
Speaker 2: when you many yokai have you know, very you know,
Speaker 2: cultural origins within the larger culture and in traditional folk
Speaker 2: beliefs and particularly in rural areas, but also in many
Speaker 2: in urban areas as well. But sometimes Sekan just sort
Speaker 2: of made something up because it was clever, or you know,
Speaker 2: it commented on some social or political element of the
Speaker 2: time that sort of thing. So he comes along and
Speaker 2: he reinterprets the Kasha as a cat creature covered in flames.
Speaker 2: They fear some cat creature, and Joe, I've included an
Speaker 2: image of the Kasha here as a yokai for you.
Speaker 3: That is brutal. The flames are coming off of its sideways.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, and there's these wonderful like Japanese flames that
Speaker 2: kind of feel like like tendrils or tentacles, you know,
Speaker 2: like they're they're reaching out to grab you. There's also
Speaker 2: this kind of like spiral motif behind it, like it
Speaker 2: has just come out of a warp from the hell domains. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: a fearsome creature come to get your soul.
Speaker 3: I guess the sideways flame suggests like a whipping wind
Speaker 3: or a storm or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so a very chaotic entity. And according to Davison,
Speaker 2: this is purely a product of Sekan's creativity, but his
Speaker 2: work was again highly influential, so it stuck. The Kasha
Speaker 2: was now a flesh eating animal spirit, and especially for
Speaker 2: the wicked. The idea is that during your funeral possession,
Speaker 2: a great wind may blow everything over, knock over your casket,
Speaker 2: open up the casket, your body comes rolling out and
Speaker 2: then in swoops the kasha to consume your corpse.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Now, eventually those Nikomada stories we talked about in the
Speaker 2: first episode, they end up influencing this kasha legend, making
Speaker 2: it a normal house cat that has been transformed due
Speaker 2: to its proximity to the human dead. So allow a
Speaker 2: normal cat to access a dead human body and they
Speaker 2: will try transform into a kasha and drag it away,
Speaker 2: you know, and you know, it may its tail may split,
Speaker 2: and all the other motifs that we've discussed. But something
Speaker 2: about being near the dead body, or drinking blood of
Speaker 2: the dead, or you know, licking the body of the
Speaker 2: dead as something of this nature will cause this transformation. Now,
Speaker 2: in the last episode, we mentioned that stories concerning the
Speaker 2: bacan eco in the dead, how these were were probably
Speaker 2: linked on various levels to observations of post mortem predation
Speaker 2: of human corpses by cats. Now it's not just cats,
Speaker 2: Dogs and other pets have also been observed to do this,
Speaker 2: to have a little to eat off of a dead
Speaker 2: human body. Apparently dogs wait a while and are a
Speaker 2: little more concerned about it in regards to cats. I
Speaker 2: think cats do it. I didn't look up any hard
Speaker 2: data on this, but Davidson ALUs to this. But at
Speaker 2: any rate, cats will get in there and have a
Speaker 2: little to eat off of the dead.
Speaker 3: One of the probably disturbing realities to humans coming on
Speaker 3: the scene is that I've read when this happens, the animals,
Speaker 3: including cats, often go for the face first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's not personal, it's just nature. Cats are meteors.
Speaker 2: But this is a case where the Kasha legend seems
Speaker 2: to be linked to these observations as well. So you
Speaker 2: get this idea that, like, look, keep the cats away
Speaker 2: from the dead, or they will interfere with them, which
Speaker 2: on one level is yes, absolutely true. They will. They
Speaker 2: will probably have a little bite, they will investigate the meat.
Speaker 2: And you can imagine how this takes on fantastic exaggerated proportions,
Speaker 2: the idea that the cat is not just going to
Speaker 2: eat of the dead. The cat may do something more
Speaker 2: directly that impacts the soul of the deceased. They may
Speaker 2: drag them to hell, they may take on the form
Speaker 2: of the deceased, or as pops up in story concerning
Speaker 2: both the Kasha and the Nikomata, they may leap over
Speaker 2: the body, and in doing so they kind of unleash
Speaker 2: invisible strings that then reanimate the dead.
Speaker 3: They raise the dead through invisible strings. Wow, I love that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So here we have a very uh you know,
Speaker 2: necromantic view of the powers of the cat, you know,
Speaker 2: and uh and it and again it's it's fascinating because yes,
Speaker 2: it is fantastic, and it ties into all these other
Speaker 2: ideas in the given culture here, but also a lot
Speaker 2: of it is vested in just our experiences of living
Speaker 2: with cats. That cats do seem to have this this secrecy,
Speaker 2: this neutrality, and they do things at times that seem
Speaker 2: to imply some some darker agenda, some some hidden system
Speaker 2: of rules and laws that govern their behavior, you know,
Speaker 2: either in this world or the next.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 2: They're they're, they're they're constantly fascinating and constantly forcing us
Speaker 2: to wonder, like, what are they up to? What are
Speaker 2: they on about? What's their whole deal?
Speaker 3: Well, Rob, I have greatly enjoyed this exploration of the
Speaker 3: various magical cat morphs and altered cats of Japan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. And next week
Speaker 2: we'll have an all new exploration for the Halloween season.
Speaker 2: I don't think we've entirely decided what it is yet,
Speaker 2: but it'll be awesome. Trust us now. On another note,
Speaker 2: I mentioned social media earlier. Go check out our various
Speaker 2: social media presences if you haven't had a chance, because
Speaker 2: they're all back up and running. You can find them
Speaker 2: all linked on stuff to Blow Yourmind dot com. We
Speaker 2: are STBYM podcast on Instagram. If you use any of
Speaker 2: these things, go check them out. If you don't use
Speaker 2: any of these things, hey, don't go sign up for
Speaker 2: them because we said we were using them.
Speaker 3: It's not worth it. But if you're already there.
Speaker 2: If you're already there, it's a way to keep up
Speaker 2: with what we're doing on the show. You may notice
Speaker 2: that we have some new host photos. You can see
Speaker 2: new photos of Joe and myself. These were taken at
Speaker 2: the Museum of Illusion Atlanta. I did delightful and educational
Speaker 2: attraction located in Atlantic Station here in Atlanta. This facility
Speaker 2: features a whole host of visual illusions, including illusion rooms
Speaker 2: you can walk into and interact with. They also have
Speaker 2: cameras there and also you can bring in your own devices,
Speaker 2: take your own selfies, and enjoy all sorts of strange illusions,
Speaker 2: mirror unreal reflections that sort of thing, Joe. We had
Speaker 2: a really good time looking into various infinity mirrors. There's
Speaker 2: even an upside down room. You remember this one.
Speaker 3: Yes, I really enjoyed the hatch that goes down forever.
Speaker 3: It gave me evocations of the House of Leaves.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that was a really fun one. We tried
Speaker 2: to get some photo We got a few photos there,
Speaker 2: but it was really hard to capture that infinity feeling.
Speaker 2: But yeah, Museum of Illusions Atlanta, it's fun for all ages.
Speaker 2: You can learn more about it at MOI Atlanta dot com.
Speaker 2: Oh and while we're at it, Hey, it's Halloween season.
Speaker 2: We have a new logo design for the Halloween season.
Speaker 2: You can get it on various merch if you go
Speaker 2: to our merch store, go to stuff to Blow Yourmind
Speaker 2: dot com and click the store tab. You can also
Speaker 2: find images of this on our various social media accounts.
Speaker 2: But it's the Stuff to Blow your Mind logo but
Speaker 2: with some various occult images added to it, and you
Speaker 2: can get that on any shirt color.
Speaker 3: Get one in time for Halloween.
Speaker 2: Yeah, get a sticker, get of whatever else they make.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if you want one, don't let us pressure you.
Speaker 2: Come on it's there for fun. It's there for fun.
Speaker 3: If you want, how do you say, well, what's the
Speaker 3: most non coercive way to encourage people to buy? Go buy,
Speaker 3: but you don't have to but go buy.
Speaker 2: We made something that we think is fun, but it's
Speaker 2: totally optional.
Speaker 3: It's not required.
Speaker 2: In the meantime. Hey, if you want to check out
Speaker 2: other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you know
Speaker 2: where to find us anywhere you get your podcasts. On
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays we have a core episode. On Mondays,
Speaker 2: we do listener mail. On Wednesdays we usually do a
Speaker 2: short form artifact or a monster Fact episode. There will
Speaker 2: be a Monster Fact episode next week, and then on
Speaker 2: Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk
Speaker 2: about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
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