Perlorian
Japanese cat photography brand
Perlorian, also Nameneko (なめ猫), Namennayo, and Don't Pelorian!, are a brand name encompassing images of cats by Japanese photographer Satoru Tsuda and various spinoff merchandise. Perlorian photographs feature real cats dressed in clothing and arranged in cat-sized dioramas so they appear to be doing human activities such as camping, going to school, or playing in a rock band. Some of the first Perlorian images featured cats involved in juvenile delinquent behaviour, such as smoking in a bathroom and being in a motorcycle gang. At its height in the early 1980s, Perlorian cats appeared on over 500 different pieces of merchandise.
Nameneko: a Japanese fad
Photographer Satoru Tsuda originally did not like cats, but in 1979 he took in four tiny kittens he had found abandoned at a dry cleaner's shop near his home, taking care of them just as a mother cat would. After a few months he noticed one of them ("Matakichi", named after the dry cleaning business in which he was found) playing with some doll clothes, and the idea for Perlorian was born. The first item was a poster of Matakichi dressed as a motorcycle gang member with the slogan "All Japan Fast Feline Federation — You Won't Lick Us!". The poster went on to sell 8 million copies and launched a craze for more items. Hundreds of items would be released in a short time, including novelty fake IDs, underwear, and a handheld video game. Like most fads the initial craze dissipated quickly, but Namennayo items are still being produced and in 2010 the brand celebrated its 30th anniversary.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Perlorian” as japanese cat photography brand. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as japanese cat photography brand. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 29, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7169169. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1979 and 2010.
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This entry incorporates text from “Perlorian” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.