Juzu Bead

The Juzu Bead bracelet is a loop of small, rounded Buddhist prayer beads worn by any Sohma who carries the Cat spirit. Each bead alternates between red and white the whole way around the strand. The earlier 2001 adaptation colored them black and white, a choice Natsuki Takaya later flagged as a mistake. In the present day the band belongs to Kyo Sohma and stays within his branch of the clan.

Left uncovered, a person possessed by the Cat does not settle into the shape of a plain house cat. They instead take on a second, grotesque body that gives off a rotten stench, and it is exactly this form the beads exist to suppress. The Cat alone was denied a place among the twelve after seeming to turn against God in the old zodiac tale, and the extra transformation forms part of that punishment. By Kyo's telling, the strand was shaped from the bones of a dead priest and colored with their blood.

The first wearer shown in the story is Kazuma's grandfather, who kept the beads on while confined to the Cat's Room. Once he passed, the burden fell to Kyo Sohma, whose mother inspected the strand daily out of dread that he might change. As a boy Kyo was made to slip it off by Kagura, who had no idea what that meant and fled in terror, and Akito reacted with revulsion at the sight of his true body.

Years later, when Kyo was around seventeen, his adoptive father Kazuma tore the bracelet away on purpose so that his son would not ignore anyone ready to embrace him. Tohru Honda became the first person to accept Kyo even after witnessing the monster, and the beads were eventually handed back to him. When the curse finally lifted, Kyo pulled the strand off for good; unsure how to feel, he left it lying there, and Tohru gathered the beads up on his behalf. They have rested in a bowl in her room ever since, kept among family photographs and other keepsakes. In Fruits Basket Another, Kyo's son Hajime wears the same bracelet, not because of any curse but as a way of honoring what his father once carried.