The Musashi's are a musical group in Japan, consisting of five cats owned by musician/songwriter Hideo Saitō. The group is affiliated with

Stardust Promotion is a leading Japanese talent agency, headquartered in Shibuya, Tokyo. It was founded in 1979 and invests in entertainment forms including music, cinema, and modelling. The agency has a dominant share in the management of actresses. For example, ...

; the contract with Stardust stated that each cat will be given one

skipjack tuna The skipjack tuna (''Katsuwonus pelamis'') is a medium-sized perciform fish in the tuna family, Scombridae. It is otherwise known as the balaya (Sri Lanka), bakulan/kayu (North Borneo), tongkol/aya (Malay Peninsula/Indonesia), aku (Hawaii), cakal ...

approximately valued at 7000 Japanese yen (US$90.00) per song.

Members

*Musashi (ムサシ) - leader; 4-year-old male

Norwegian Forest Cat The Norwegian Forest cat ( no, Norsk skogskatt and ) is a breed of domestic cat originating in Northern Europe. This natural breed is adapted to a very cold climate, with a top coat of long, glossy, water-shedding hair and a woolly undercoat f ...

. Youngest but also the fattest. *Leo (レオ) - 4-year-old male cat. Quiet crying noise. *Luca (ルカ) - 6-year-old female cat. Quiet but high crying noise. *Seri (セリ) - main vocal; 12-year-old female cat. *Marble (マーブル) - 15-year-old female cat. When the owner picked her up, she was living on the street and in poor health.

History

2007

Toward the end of 2007, Saitō posted a video of the cats on YouTube to celebrate Christmas. In the video, the cats sing to the tune of " Jingle Bells" along with instrumental backup. This video became popular with cat lovers, not only in Japan, but all over the world. The YouTube video had over 1.2 million views by the end of 2007. It was also nominated for a YouTube award in the category of "Best Video of 2007".

2008

In 2008, the Musashi's signed a contract with

. On March 3, they released their first single covering a popular Japanese song "Hotaru no Hikari". This cover was accompanied by a new original song. The single was a digital download from music.jp. A second single titled "Ichinensei ni Nattara" was released on April 7, 2008.

2015

On September 24, 2015, Seri died at the age of 19. Seri had been battling kidney disease since two years prior. Their blog was opened up to make the announcement.

Discography

Singles

*2008-03-03 - Hotaru no Hikari *2008-04-07 - Ichinensei ni Nattara

References

* {{Reflist 2007 establishments in Japan Former Stardust Promotion artists Individual cats in Japan Japanese pop music groups Musical groups established in 2007