Jenny Willett

Since her Master’s studies at Eberhard-Karls University of Tübingen Jenny Willett has focused on stories and myths about cats in Japan through the lens of “Demonic Cats in Japanese folklore”. As a doctorate candidate at the University of Cologne she now delves deeper into this research topic in order to understand the strong connection of cats with the aspect of death,  especially of the so called cat yôkai in their fully developed state of the Edo period.
During her research stay at the DIJ Tokyo Jenny Willett will collect and analyse unidentified sources and/or those which are unavailable outside of Japan. She will add them to a corpus of traditions and stories that will become the foundation of her analysis of the folklore of the Japanese cat.