Drunken Tanuki by @SleepyShippo (Sleepy Shippo)

Ok, this started out as being part of a picture in my Houshi Buri series of drawings. What happened was that when I started coloring it, I loved the way that the coloring came out on this guy and decided to have just a separate picture of him.

This is, as the title implies, a drunken tanuki. The tanuki is a raccoon-dog, a species native to Japan and some other parts of Asia. They are often mistaken for regular raccoons in anime translations, but don't be fooled. In folklore, tanuki are comical shapeshifters, gluttons, and sometimes perverts. In stores and shops throughout Japan, statues of tanuki are displayed as a sort of charm to attract customers, for it is said that the tanuki travels from place to place in search of wine, women, and an overall good time. They are portrayed obese and standing on their hind legs. They wear a sando-gasa (sedge hat) on their heads, carry a "merchant booklet" (think I.O.U.'s) in one hand, and a hisago (gourd bottle) in the other hand. [However, in this image, he's carrying a tokkuri (sake bottle) rather than a hisago.]

The one feature that catches most people's attention about them right away is the scrotum so huge that it drags on the ground. The Japanese are more tolerant of this kind of low humor than Westerners, so that's why you don't see Japanese parents freaking out about their kids seeing these things in shop windows. Real tanuki actually do have large testicles (not as big as the statues, but still...), as competition for females is quite fierce.