We know that Doraemon is a cosmic, robotic spender from the future. DorayakisNobita’s friend and that he keeps an arsenal of strange gadgets in his pocket. Its role in rituals where people pray for rain is much less known; That’s exactly the usage given to it by a group of Thai villagers fed up with the drought and extreme heatwave punishing parts of Southeast Asia. If the idea is strange, the images of the ritual that have been circulating on the Internet for days are even stranger: in them you can see a group of Thais carrying a stuffed animal of the famous caged cosmic cat.

The image is absolutely striking.

And it responds in part to ritual traditions and animal consciousness.

Click on the image to go to the tweet.

Hae nang maew. This sentence may not tell you anything, but hae nang maewThis ceremony, which can be translated as “cat parade”, is the name of the ritual recently celebrated by about 200 residents of several villages in the Phayuha Khiri region of central Thailand. The ceremony is very old, its origins go back several centuries and are partly related to the cycle of agricultural crops.

When the planting season approached, local people working in the fields carried a basket or a small cage with a cat in it. During the ceremony, they took the animal out in procession and wet it to make it meow. In this way – at least keeping the tradition – a rainy season was sponsored.

Where I call cats… I say Doraemon. Although the tradition seems still alive, as time went on Thais began to make slight changes to the ritual. The most important of these is that they no longer use real, flesh-and-blood cats, as can be seen in the Phayuha Khiri ceremony. Instead of locking a cat to spray water, they prefer representations. And there is a big blue cat with no ears, bulging eyes and a pocket on its belly, which is especially popular in Thailand. The result can be seen on the networks: A group of Thai villagers parade with a Doraemon stuffed animal.

Click on the image to go to the tweet.

Wish for rain… and lift your spirits. The ceremony was reported, among others, by Matichon Online, a major Thai newspaper founded in the 1970s. In the news, it can be read that more than 200 villagers set off with a ceremony, passing through three towns at the end of the day. Avoid heat. In addition to the Doraemon stuffed animal in a wreathed cage, they carried two other cat dolls. During the march, citizens sang, danced and prayed for rain.

Phongphan Kerdkham, one of the local leaders, said that the “Lady Maew” parade has been held for ten years, but this year they decided to continue due to lack of rain. He states that one of the biggest goals is to raise public morale. This ritual also served to warn farmers of the problems they were experiencing due to weather conditions. By the end of the day, the parade was covered by Thai media as well as others such as: time or IGN.

Click on the image to go to the tweet.

Doraemon or Dorami? The fact that the villagers gave up live cats during the ceremony does not mean that there was no controversy. @Singhyam, one of the first users of X to share and makes the news go viral, ensuring that a debate has begun in Thailand about the “legitimacy” of the ceremony. And not because a stuffed animal of a manga character is used, but because tradition dictates that the animal must be a female cat. “The news anchor said they should use Dorami” slide @Singhyam is referring to Doraemon’s yellow robotic cat sister.

Stuffed animals for rituals. While the image of Doraemon caged and being paraded away in Thailand is intriguing, this is not the first time one of his figures has been used in a ritual. We could see this years ago at a similar ceremony in Thap Khlo, again in a similar context, when it had not rained for more than a month and the crops were dying due to lack of water. The organizers’ reasoning at the time was the same as the one that applies now to Phayuha Khiri: they decided to live without cats to avoid criticism of animal torture. Hello Kitty plush animals were also seen at other celebrations.

Background. Whether intentional or not, residents of Phayuha Khiri reach out to media from around the world, far beyond their own area, to talk about the weather conditions the country is experiencing. A few days ago Starits Times The extreme heat wave that has shaken parts of Asia has led to record temperatures in dozens of regions of Thailand, historic levels of energy demand and risky situations in the capital. In Matichon Online, they also point out that the region Doraemon is taken to in a parade is suffering from a “serious drought” that is threatening crops.

Image | Déng Minh Đức (Flickr)

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