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Raccoon balls
(hexbear.net)
I tried to look it up: These depictions began to appear during the Edo era (1603-1868) and, as far as I can tell, it's not entirely known why they had these gargantuan ballsacks.
Their skin, used by artisans, was known for it's great elasticity. In Japanese folklore, the tanuki are capable of shapeshifting.
In Japan today, tanuki statues are often placed outside establishments such as restaurants, and are said to bring good fortune.
Real raccoons do not have enormous balls.
TLN: ~~keikaku means plan~~ Tanuki means raccoon
I've had it backwards this whole time. I thought tanuki were raccoon dogs, you mean Tanuki just means 'raccoon'?
I'm pretty sure Blakey is just wrong and you were right the whole time
{タヌキ|tanuki} = raccoon dog
{アライグマ|araiguma} = raccoon
Neither Wiktionary nor my pop-up dictionary indicate that tanuki is used in Japanese to refer to raccoons. The reverse, however, of people saying raccoon in English to mean tanuki, is very common. It could be that this is what Blakey meant but poor phrasing made it sound like the opposite.
Ah, I see. Thanks. It could just be me reading their comment wrong. I do that a lot.
Yeah, poor phrasing. "Tanuki" is the japanese raccoon dog but I believe the word is also used to refer to actual raccoons.
Where have you seen this? Japanese Wikipedia writes of the raccoon (araiguma),
But that seems like a pretty different statement than "tanuki is also used to refer to actual raccoons". My Japanese-to-English pocket dictionary and every online dictionary in Japanese I've looked at has also not mentioned tanuki being used to refer to actual raccoons.
Looks like I was mistaken. Whoops! Totally misremembered, it's been a while.
No, tanuki are raccoon dogs, but afaik the word "tanuki" is also used to refer to raccoons (which are not native to Asia) in Japanese.