Discovery — National Archives, Tokyo

I found him by accident. Not in a temple, not in a scroll painting, but in a footnote to a footnote — a line in Donald Keene's translation of the Kanpyō Gyoki, the fragmentary diary of Japan's 59th emperor.

We think of medieval diaries as wars and famines and court intrigue. Emperor Uda, who reigned from 887 to 897, wrote about something else entirely on the sixth day of the second month in the first year of Kanpyō. He wrote about his cat.

It is the oldest surviving description of a pet cat by its owner in Japanese history. And it reads — impossibly, tenderly — like a blog post.

A Gift From

The Late Emperor

The cat was not Uda's to begin with. It had belonged to his father, Emperor Kōkō, who died in 887. Kōkō had received it from a courtier named Minamoto no Suguru — a man known for his eccentric love of continental rarities, Chinese poems, and, it seems, cats.

乳

Court Note · Nyūbu

According to the Chōya Gunsai, Heian aristocrats fed their cats milk gruel — rice porridge thinned with milk. Milk itself was a medicine, pressed from cows kept only in the imperial pastures. To feed it to a cat was an extravagance.

Imagine it: a kitten, smaller than a man's fist, arriving at the palace on a cushion. Black cats were considered lucky — they were thought to ward off evil spirits and sickness. But this one was more than a charm. The late emperor had loved it. When he died, Uda — then only twenty, suddenly enthroned — kept it close.

Inheritance in the Heian court was rarely about objects. It was about living things that remembered someone for you.

When He Spoke

to His Cat

The diary does not end with description. Uda — who had studied Chinese classics under Sugawara no Michizane — looked at his cat and saw philosophy.

He wrote that he spoke to it. Not in baby talk, but as one might speak to a superior, or an old friend.

Uda to the Cat — Direct address

“You know what lies beyond yin and yang better than I. Your comings and goings are so quiet, I cannot follow them with my eyes.”

— Onmyō no kotowari — the principle of yin and yang. Uda was not joking. He believed the cat moved between worlds.

Heian cats were often tied — freedom was dangerous for something so valuable.

There is something devastatingly modern about it. A young emperor, overwhelmed by ritual and death and statecraft, finds a few spare moments and writes about his cat's eyes. He gives it a red bow. He tells it that it understands the universe better than he does.

If you have ever posted a photo of your cat at 2 a.m. with a caption that is too sincere — you have done exactly what Emperor Uda did in 889.

Historical Context & Sources

The Kanpyō Gyoki is fragmentary. Only portions survive, copied and recopied by court scholars. The cat entry is one of the few personal passages — most of the diary is about ceremonies, appointments, and divination. That Uda chose to break protocol to describe a cat is why historians treasure it.

Heian-period cats were luxury imports from Tang China. They were not mousers in the Western sense — they were palace animals, kept on long red silk leashes (naga-himo) and fed by attendants. The Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon, written a century later, describes the imperial cat Lady Myōbu, who had her own attendants and rank.

Uda abdicated in 897 at age 30 to become a Buddhist monk. What happened to the black dragon above the clouds after that, no record says. But somewhere in Kyoto, in the second month of Kanpyō 1, a twenty-two-year-old emperor and his tiny black cat shared a quiet room, and for a moment, the empire could wait.

Kanpyō Gyoki

Heian-kyō

Kara-neko

Kokuryū

Onmyōdō

Imperial Cat

Colophon

Original date

Kanpyō 1 · 889

Translation

Keene / Tyler

Typeset in

Instrument & Newsreader

Set on warm paper stock. Ink black #1A1816, vermillion #C2452E, jade #0E3A2F. No cats were tied up in the making of this page.

Published 1,137 years later

終

© Heian Archive Project — For all cat dads, past and present

Read For the Love of a Cat for diary