Futeneko nan desu ka?

September 13, 2016 10:16 AM

I found a Japanese book with all these cool drawings of cats. I don't fully understand it. Please tell me all about Futeneko.

I came across a book called Futeneko with these great drawings of cats - there's a Tumbler with some Futeneko drawings. The artist is Ashizawa Muneto.

I'm learning Japanese but I have no idea what's going on in most of these. Can anyone tell me more about Futeneko? Where was it first published? What's the general idea? Has Ashizawa done anything else?

Any and all info appreciated.

Doumo arigatou gozaimasu!

posted by kristi to Media & Arts (3 answers total)

Response by poster: GAH! Futeneko WA nan desu ka. Obviously.
posted by kristi at 10:17 AM on September 13, 2016

Best answer: Arashizawa Muneto is one of the members of the 4-person comedy troupe "Popcorn." It's kind of hard to explain what is going on with Futeneko except to say they are whimsical drawings with no particular narrative. Does nothing for me... I'm more of a You Suck Hanakuma fan.

It's more of a meme than anything else—there are LINE stickers you can buy, it looks like, the NAVER Matome has some blog posts that curate fan art and so on, there's a Facebook page for Futeneko etc etc etc.

At the moment Arashizawa's main thing seems to be Futeneko, but he also has some stuff on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=%E8%8A%A6%E6%B2%A2%E3%83%A0%E3%83%8D%E3%83%88

Here's his Twitter feed:

https://twitter.com/ashizawamuneto?lang=ja
posted by My Dad at 11:52 AM on September 13, 2016

Response by poster: Thanks, My Dad - I appreciate the info!
posted by kristi at 10:46 AM on September 16, 2016