The courtesan whose cat became a legend. Usugumo — "light clouds" — of the Tamaya was a top-ranked tayū of the late seventeenth century, famed for beauty and intellect, the friend of artists and men of letters. But it's her cat she's remembered for. Usugumo adored the animal, carrying it everywhere, so devotedly that rumours spread she'd been bewitched by it. One day the cat clawed frantically at her kimono, refusing to let her move — and the brothel master, certain the creature was possessed and attacking her, drew his sword and struck off its head. The severed head flew through the air and sank its teeth into a venomous snake coiled nearby, poised to strike her. The cat had died shielding its mistress. Some say a jealous rival had hidden the snake there to be rid of her.

Heartbroken, Usugumo was consoled by a devoted customer who had a woodcarver make a statue of the faithful cat — and that carving, the legend says, is one of the origin-stories of the maneki-neko, the beckoning lucky cat that now waves from shop counters the world over. So this refined Edo beauty is, by a strange route, an ancestor of that ubiquitous plastic paw. And the pairing of subject and artist is almost too perfect: Kuniyoshi was the great cat-lover of ukiyo-e, a man who kept his studio full of them and kept a little altar for the ones he'd lost. Of course he was the one to draw her.

The Courtesan Usugumo of Tamaya (玉屋内薄雲), from the series Edo-machi Itchōme (江戸町壱町目, The Yoshiwara Pleasure Quarter) c1840.

Utagawa Kuniyoshi (歌川国芳, 1798-1861)