UniLang

Hello dear ones

So, I've had this sweet cat for some years - I bought in in a shop that mostly sells food from Thailand. Nobody there knew what the inscription says, so I hope someone here can help me with it. I've tried to find something on the internet, but I only found the "Maneki-neko" cats. Does someone also know what kind of "lucky-cat" this is?

Thank you in advance and all the best

Sine

The part in red and white is an upside down 福, meaning "fortune". The part in gold and black is 千万両, meaning 10 million ryo.

Yasna wrote:The part in red and white is an upside down 福, meaning "fortune".

And it's upside down because in Chinese 福倒 "fortune upside-down" sounds like 福到 "fortune arrives".

Awesome! Thank you guys

linguoboy wrote:And it's upside down because in Chinese 福倒 "fortune upside-down" sounds like 福到 "fortune arrives".

I know it as 福倒了 "fortune has turned upside-down" and 福到了 "fortune has arrived".

Yasna wrote:The part in gold and black is 千万両, meaning 10 million ryo.

And now I've learnt that 両 is a (historical?) variant for the character 两／兩 in Chinese.
So in ancient Japan currency was also called 両?

linguoboy wrote:

Yasna wrote:The part in red and white is an upside down 福, meaning "fortune".

And it's upside down because in Chinese 福倒 "fortune upside-down" sounds like 福到 "fortune arrives".

And it's red because red is supposed to be auspicious AFAIK. You see these a lot during Chinese New Year. (Speaking of which, happy Chinese New Year!).

OldBoring wrote:And now I've learnt that 両 is a (historical?) variant for the character 两／兩 in Chinese.

It's shinjitai, i.e. a Japanese simplified character. Like the Chinese, the Japanese also simplified some of their Chinese characters, but sometimes, they did not do this the same way the Chinese did (nor did they go as far with it AFAIK). For example, 'to sell' is 賣 in traditional Chinese (and used to be this way in Japanese as well) and is now 卖 in simplified but has a completely different form 売 in shinjitai.

So in ancient Japan currency was also called 両?

Yes, that was an old Japanese coin.