Imado · Taitō · 15 minutes up the Sumida from Asakusa
The Lucky Cat's Last Kiln
The earliest written record of the beckoning cat puts it in Asakusa in 1852, made of Imado clay. Imado was a kiln town of about fifty potter households. Today Taitō City counts one craftsman.
Imado ware 今戸焼Imado Jinja · Matsuchiyama ShōdenFacts checked October 2026
You have done Sensō-ji and Nakamise, and you have seen maneki-neko in every shop window from Kyoto to Okinawa. Walk fifteen minutes north along the Sumida from Asakusa Station and you reach Imado (今戸), the riverside neighbourhood whose clay went into the oldest beckoning cats that still survive. This piece is about what is left of that kiln town: a pair of stone dogs paid for by potters, a shrine that the internet calls the cat's birthplace, and one working studio.
Why go instead of another shrine with cat statues? Because here the cat has a paper trail and a craftsman, not just a legend. What you give up: Imado is a quiet residential strip with no café scene, and the one studio that still makes Imado ware is a workshop, not a showroom. It may be closed when you arrive.
A kiln town on the river今戸焼 · Imado-yaki
Imado ware was the clay industry of this stretch of riverbank from the Edo period into Meiji. Taitō City's own description lists what it made: roof tiles, everyday goods, unglazed clay figurines and craft pieces. By the late Edo period about fifty households were in the trade. Production is said to have begun in the Tenshō era, the 1570s and 80s; that date is tradition, not record.
Hiroshige painted the kilns. No. 37 of his One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, dated 1857, shows a tile-maker's yard near the Hashiba ferry, a short way upriver: round kilns, smoke drifting over the water, and gulls. As Tokyo grew and disasters hit, the potters moved out to the far side of the Sumida and further east, and the trade thinned to almost nothing.
Where the cat comes in丸〆猫 · marushime-neko
In 1852 two Edo diaries record the same craze. An old woman in Hanakawado, by Asakusa, was too poor to keep her cat and let it go. The cat came to her in a dream and told her to make its image. She did, and the cat figures, made in Imado clay, sold in huge numbers by the torii of the Sanja Gongen, the shrine beside Sensō-ji that is now Asakusa Jinja. One of the two diaries already uses the word maneki-neko.
The cats sold there are called marushime-neko (丸〆猫) for the stamp on their side, 〆 inside a circle, a sign for sealing in good fortune. They are the oldest beckoning cats that survive as objects, and examples have been dug up at Edo-period sites in Tokyo.
Other places claim the cat. Gōtokuji in Setagaya has the story of a cat that waved a lord in out of a storm; Jishōin and others have their own legends. What Imado has that they do not is a written record from the time and the clay objects to match.
Claim
What it rests on
Imado / Asakusa
Two diaries from 1852 describing Imado-made cats sold at Asakusa; surviving marushime-neko figures
Gōtokuji, Setagaya
Temple legend of a cat beckoning Ii Naotaka in from a storm
Jishōin and others
Handed-down legends, no record from the time
The cat is a late arrival. Imado had been firing clay for nearly three centuries before anyone wrote down a beckoning cat.
The potters' stone dogs今戸神社 · Imado Jinja
Imado Jinja (今戸神社) is the stop most visitors make. It is said to date from 1063, merged with a Hakusan shrine in 1937, and its current hall is from 1971. The pair of creation deities from the Hakusan side is why it became known for matchmaking; it runs its own singles events. The shrine is full of cat figures, and media call it a birthplace of the maneki-neko. The shrine's own website does not make that claim.
Look past the cats to the stone guardian dogs. They were given in 1752 and restored in 1822. The inscription on the base lists 42 Imado potters and organisers who paid for them, and Taitō City notes that one of the names is Shirai Zenjirō, an ancestor of the family that still makes Imado ware today. The dogs became a ward cultural property in 2003. This is the kiln town signing its name.
The grounds also have a stone reading 沖田総司終焉之地, marking this as one of the places where the Shinsengumi swordsman Okita Sōji is claimed to have died. The more common account puts his death in Sendagaya.
Getting there: Asakusa Station (浅草駅), any line, about 15 min on foot · 台東区今戸1-5-22 · by bus, the Riverside Sports Center stop is 1 min away
When: Shrine office 9:00–16:00, every day
Reality check: Stamps are pre-written slips only. No toilets and no parking on site.
One studio left今戸焼白井 · Imado-yaki Shirai
Taitō City's page on Imado ware, updated in 2024, names one craftsman in the ward: Shirai Yūichirō, sixth generation, recognised as a holder of the technique in 2012. With his mother, Michiko, he makes about 80 kinds of dolls and temple and shrine charms the old way: preparing the clay, pressing it into moulds, drying, firing, and painting by hand. Some pieces have a waiting list of months.
The studio is at Imado 1-2-18 (台東区今戸1-2-18), and it doubles as the shop.
Before you go: no published opening hours could be found, and one visitor report found it closed. A 2021 article said Taitō's last kiln had reportedly closed during the pandemic; later sources, including the city in 2024 and a blog in September 2025, show it working. Treat this as a working family studio that may or may not be open, and don't make the trip for it alone.
If someone comes to the door, ask: 見せていただけますか (misete itadakemasu ka).
Getting there: 台東区今戸1-2-18 · a few minutes from Imado Jinja
When: Unknown. Check before you go.
Reality check: A workshop, not a gallery. Be brief, buy if you can, and don't photograph people without asking.
The main line went west白井半七 · Shirai Hanshichi
The Shirai name also belongs to another line, the Shirai Hanshichi family of tea-ceremony ware, whose first generation worked in the 1680s. According to a Ginza gallery that handles the family's work, the seventh generation's kiln collapsed in the 1923 Kantō earthquake and he moved to Itami in Hyōgo. In 1939 the eighth generation moved to Takarazuka at the invitation of Kobayashi Ichizō, the railway magnate who founded the Takarazuka Revue. In 1980 the ninth moved the kiln to Sanda. Whether there is a Hanshichi working today could not be confirmed.
So the most famous kiln name from Imado ended up making tea bowls in a suburb of Kobe and Osaka, while a branch family stayed and kept making cats.
One more turn: the most careful recreations of old Imado dolls are made in Akabane, in Kita Ward, by Yoshida Yoshikazu, who has spent about thirty years copying old pieces and excavated finds in Sumida-basin clay. His marushime-neko cost around ¥3,000.
The family split in two after 1923. The famous name went west; the cats stayed by the river.
Radishes next door待乳山聖天 · Matsuchiyama Shōden
On the way up from Asakusa you pass Matsuchiyama Shōden (待乳山聖天), a sub-temple of Sensō-ji on a small hill. Worshippers offer daikon radishes, which stand for good health and harmony between husband and wife; the drawstring purse you see everywhere stands for business. On 7 January the offered daikon are simmered and served with yuzu miso.
From here a filled-in canal, San'yabori (山谷堀), runs inland as a park about 700 metres long. It once carried boats to the Yoshiwara pleasure quarter.
Getting there: Asakusa Station, exit 7 or A5, about 10 min
When: 6:00–16:30 every day · free
Reality check: A short stop. Ten minutes covers it unless it is 7 January.
Back in Asakusa, checking a cat in a shop: これは今戸焼ですか (kore wa Imado-yaki desu ka).
Stay on the river side of the blocks. The whole kiln town fits inside a fifteen-minute walk from Asakusa.
The honest part
Imado looks like any quiet riverside residential district. There are no kilns to see and no smoke. The shrine is busy with cat figures and matchmaking hopefuls, and the history is in the stone base of a guardian dog that most people walk past.
The studio is the heart of the story and the least reliable stop. Its hours are not published, it may be closed, and it is a family's workplace. If you arrive and the door is shut, that is the normal case, not bad luck.
"Birthplace of the maneki-neko" is a claim. Imado's case is better documented than the others, but nobody can prove where the first beckoning cat was made. The shrine itself does not say it.
If you want to see old Imado dolls rather than new ones, the Edo-Tokyo Museum reopened on 31 March 2026 and holds examples, but whether any are on display when you go could not be confirmed.
If you only have one day
A morning, before Asakusa gets crowded.
Asakusa Station, exit 7. Walk north toward the river.
Matsuchiyama Shōden. Look down San'yabori from the hill.
Imado Jinja; the office is open from 9:00. Find the 1752 komainu and read the base.
Walk past the Shirai studio at Imado 1-2-18. If it is open, go in briefly.
Back south along the riverside path to Asakusa, looking across at the Skytree.
Nakamise and Asakusa Jinja, where the cats were first sold in 1852.
Running late? Drop Matsuchiyama Shōden. Keep the komainu: it is the only thing in Imado that the potters made sure would last.