The Nabeshima Bakeneko Disturbance: A Saga Ghost-Cat Tale Spread by Theater and Storytellers

The most famous bakeneko story of all is probably the Nabeshima Bakeneko Disturbance, set in Saga. A cat carrying its owner's sorrow slips into the depths of a castle and torments the lord who lives there. But this is a story, one that spread through the theater and through storytellers. Because it uses the name of a real daimyo family, the best way to enjoy it is to keep it clearly apart from history.

A tale spread by theater and storytellers

The Nabeshima tale is said to have become a hit from the late Edo period onward, both as a kabuki play and as a piece of kodan, a storytelling art in which the performer narrates a tale while rapping a folding fan on a small desk to keep the rhythm. It was retold after the Meiji era too, and in the Showa era it reached the movies, where it helped launch a whole genre of ghost-cat films.

In Edo-period theater, when a play drew on events connected to a real samurai family, it was common to change the names or move the story to a different era. This tale, too, varies from teller to teller and play to play, with different character names and plot details. There is no single "correct" version: it is a story that changed shape each time it was told.

The plot: a Go board, a mother's grief, and a cat

Here is a well-known version, kept very short.

The lord in the story had a young retainer who served as his partner at Go, the board game. One day, a quarrel over a game ends with the young man losing his life. His grieving mother pours out her sorrow to her beloved pet cat, and before long she, too, passes away.

Knowing the mother's sorrow, the cat becomes a bakeneko and slips into the inner rooms of the castle. It takes the place of a woman who serves at the lord's side, and night after night it torments him. The guards keep falling mysteriously asleep as the night wears on. But one retainer fights off his drowsiness and keeps watch, until at last he sees through the cat's disguise and defeats it. That, roughly, is how the story goes.

The real history behind the backdrop

Why is the story set in Saga? In the Warring States period, the powerful family in Hizen Province (today's Saga and part of Nagasaki) was the Ryuzoji clan. The Nabeshima family, once their leading retainers, rose to rule the land themselves, and in the Edo period they became the daimyo of the Saga domain.

A change like this, where retainers took the place of their former lords, surely stirred people's imaginations. It's thought that the ghost story was later built on that backdrop. However, nothing shows that the events in the story actually happened. The lord tormented by a ghost cat exists only on the stage and in the storyteller's tale, and the story should not be taken as an account of what real people did.

A cat that never forgets

The bakeneko in this story is not just a monster that attacks people. It is drawn as a rather sad figure, acting on behalf of its owner's grief. The idea that cats never forget a kindness, or a grudge, turns up again and again in bakeneko tales.

By the way, the nekomata, a cat whose tail splits in two, is a yokai sometimes told of together with the bakeneko, but that is a story for another day. You'll find the bakeneko's own legends, including its habit of licking lamp oil, on the Bakeneko page of our Yokaipedia. And Saga, the setting of this tale, is on the Yokai Map.