招き猫

Etymology
Compound of.

First cited to 1893, although physical examples are found earlier in the.

In Japanese culture, holding one's hand with the palm downwards and waving vertically is a gesture used to beckon someone. This is somewhat similar to an upside-down version of the beckoning gesture used in US culture. The way that cats will sometimes wave a front paw in the air is also similar to this Japanese beckoning gesture, giving rise to the iconic image of the maneki neko. This image is often used to beckon customers into a shop.

See the Wikipedia articles for more detail.

Noun

 * 1)  maneki-neko, beckoning cat figure of a cat with one paw raised believed to bring good luck