Mofusand: How One Illustrator’s Cat Drawings Conquered the World
On a grey Tuesday morning in Shibuya, a queue of people stretched around the block for hours — not for a new phone, not for a concert, but for illustrations of a round, expressionless cat stuffed inside a corn dog. Somehow, this image had already found its way into the feeds of teenagers in Bangkok, office workers in São Paulo, and art students in Paris — none of whom read Japanese, all of whom felt something immediate and wordless upon seeing it. This is the story of Mofusand, a hobby project by a single illustrator named Juno that became one of the most quietly powerful cultural exports Japan has produced in years. What exactly is it about this cat?
