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Photo courtesy Jollice Tan
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When the inhabitants of Tashirojima, a small Japanese island in the Pacific Ocean, first brought cats from the mainland to keep the mice population down, they probably didn’t imagine that the felines would one day far outnumber the humans there. Today alongside the roughly 100 two-legged islanders left – mostly over the age of 65 – there live countless stray cats, an animal that in Japan is supposed to bring wealth and good fortune. As a result Tashirojima has commonly become known as “Cat Island”, and various attempts have been made since to leverage this moniker to increase visitor numbers – and income – to the island.
The most prominent of these attempts was the construction in 2000 of a handful of cat-shaped vacation homes, based on the rough sketches of manga artist Shotaro Ishinomori, which were subsequently further decorated with cat drawings. When Japan’s East Coast was hit by the devastating tsunami in March 2011, “Cat Island” was luckily left largely unharmed, although army helicopters had to deliver food for humans and cats in the aftermath. However, sadly the cat-shaped vacation homes have remained closed ever since… I (fh)
Cat crowd photo courtesy Hitek; cat face house courtesy Jasmine T. Blossom; cat-painted house courtesy Jollice Tan.
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»Architectural interpretations accepted without reflection could obscure the search for signs of a true nature and a higher order.«
Louis Isadore Kahn
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