Okami mouse pads for the desk

These Okami mouse pads and desk mats carry Padrift artwork inspired by Capcom's ink-painted adventure, printed in high resolution from edge to edge on 3 mm neoprene. A fabric top takes the mouse, a non-slip base holds the desk, and a stitched border keeps the edges from fraying. There are eight sizes in the range, from 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm) for a mouse alone to 23.6″ × 47.2″ (60 × 120 cm) for most of a desk, and every design's page shows the ones you can order it in. We print a pad only once it has been ordered.

Okami was made by Clover Studio under director Hideki Kamiya and first released on the PlayStation 2 in Japan in April 2006. You play Amaterasu, the sun goddess, who returns to the world as a white wolf to drive a curse out of the land of Nippon. Even the title is a play on words: in Japanese, ōkami can mean "wolf" or "great god," depending on how it is written. The game never sold in huge numbers at first, but it has been re-released on almost every platform since, and its painted look has aged remarkably well.

Paper, ink and a black keyboard

Okami looks like a painting on paper. Its world is drawn with thick black brush outlines over a warm background the color of old parchment, with a faint paper grain, with flat washes of color and a few strong accents: the crimson of Amaterasu's markings, gold, and the pink of cherry blossom. That palette is unusually easy to live with on a desk.

A parchment-toned mat brightens a dark wooden desk without the glare of pure white, and the black ink lines echo a black keyboard sitting on top of them. If your setup already has red in it, a red keycap set or a red cable, the crimson accents tie everything together. For a white desk, choose a design with more open paper and fewer heavy outlines, so the mat reads as a soft cream panel rather than a dark block.

Drawing the Celestial Brush with a mouse

Okami's central idea is the Celestial Brush. At almost any moment you can freeze the world into a sheet of paper and paint on it: a straight stroke slices through an enemy or a boulder, a circle drawn in the sky raises the sun, a loop around a withered tree makes it bloom, and a circle with a short tail becomes a bomb. On the PC release you paint those strokes with the mouse, which makes the pad under it part of the game.

Brush techniques ask for shapes rather than precise aim, but a wide circle or a long slash drawn at low sensitivity needs room to travel. A pad that leaves your arm space to sweep, at least XL, 15.7″ × 35.4″ (40 × 90 cm), lets you draw a full circle without lifting the mouse halfway through. The fabric top gives a smooth, even stroke, and the non-slip base keeps the mat from shifting under a quick slash.

Amaterasu along the length of the mat

Amaterasu is long and low: a white wolf with red swirls on her fur, a flaming reflector floating on her back and a tail that trails like a brushstroke. Running or leaping, she fills a long desk mat from one end to the other, and that shape is the natural fit for the XL and the 4XL. Where she sits matters. With her head toward the left end of the mat, she stays visible beside the keyboard; with her head at the right, she runs out from under your mouse hand.

On a dark desk, her white fur makes her stand out sharply. On a light one, choose a design with a deeper background, such as a night sky or a gold sunrise, so that she doesn't disappear into the paper.

Empty space for your peripherals

Traditional Japanese ink painting leaves large areas of the paper untouched, and Okami borrows that habit. A mountain is a few strokes; mist is simply blank paper. On a desk mat, that empty space has a practical use. A design with a single painted subject at one end and open paper across the middle gives the keyboard somewhere to sit without covering anything important.

Think of the mat as a scroll with its subject placed on purpose: a branch of cherry blossom reaching in from the top left corner, a wolf at the far right, and nothing but paper grain in between. It looks calmer than a dense scene, and it suits a work desk where you also want room for papers.

A handscroll on a long mat

Classical Japanese picture scrolls, emaki, were long horizontal paintings unrolled a section at a time and read from right to left. The long M, 11.8″ × 27.6″ (30 × 70 cm), has nearly the same proportions as a section of a scroll, and Okami's journey across Nippon translates naturally into that format: Kamiki Village at one end, a field, a river and a city in the middle, the snowy north at the other.

A scroll layout also ages well on a desk. Because no single point is the focus, you notice different parts on different days, depending on where the keyboard happens to sit.

Cursed lands and restored lands

Much of Okami is about undoing a curse. Cursed zones are drained of color and choked with a red-black fog, and when Amaterasu restores the guardian sapling of an area, color floods back in a burst of flowers and green grass. Those two states give a desk two very different moods.

The cursed palette, dark red, black and violet, suits a gaming setup with red or purple lighting and a black keyboard. The restored palette, fresh green, pink blossom and blue sky, suits a bright desk in daylight. A design that shows the moment of restoration, color spreading out across a gray field, works on either and is one of the few Okami images that tells its story in a single frame.

Constellations and the brush gods

Amaterasu doesn't learn her techniques alone. Each one belongs to a brush god, most of them in the form of an animal of the Chinese zodiac, and you find each god by completing a constellation in the night sky, painting in the stars that are missing. That makes the constellations one of the cleanest motifs in the game: a few bright points joined by thin lines on a deep blue ground.

On the 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm) pad, a single constellation reads clearly from the top corner your hand leaves free. On a long mat, a sky full of them makes a quiet night-time design for a dark desk.

Issun in the corner

Amaterasu's companion is Issun, a wandering artist from the Poncle people, so small he rides on the wolf's head and appears on screen mostly as a tiny glowing green dot that never stops talking. He is a good joke for a desk precisely because of his size. A design that puts him small in a corner, half hidden, rewards anyone who looks closely, and it suits the edge of a mat where the mouse doesn't travel.

Orochi and the dark designs

The first great enemy of the game is Orochi, an eight-headed serpent who demands a sacrifice from Kamiki Village each year. The eight heads spread wide, so a design with Orochi coiled across a 4XL, 23.6″ × 47.2″ (60 × 120 cm), uses the whole desk: heads reaching out at both ends, the body under the keyboard. It is a dramatic choice for a black setup.

Many of the lesser demons wear masks, and their shapes, red and black on paper, also suit smaller pads for anyone who prefers the game's darker moments to its blossoms.

Cherry blossom season

Cherry blossom runs through the whole game. Restored trees burst into pink, the Konohana tree watches over Kamiki Village, and the Bloom technique scatters petals wherever Amaterasu goes. A blossom design is the gentlest Okami choice: pink and white on paper, with a branch or two in the corner and petals drifting across the surface.

It pairs well with a pink or white keyboard, light wood and soft daylight, and it suits a shared desk where a battle scene would feel out of place. If you want the game's spirit without a wolf in view, petals and a painted sun are enough.

Okami HD on PC

The game reached the PS3 in HD in 2012 and arrived on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in December 2017, with a Switch release in 2018. The PC version brought sharper resolutions and mouse control for the brush, which is why Okami now sits on so many desks rather than only in front of a TV. You can still play the rest of it with a controller, and a desk mat holds both a pad and a keyboard.

An XL gives a controller a soft spot beside the keyboard for the long stretches of exploring, with the mouse ready for brushwork on the right.

Okamiden and the new sequel

A follow-up, Okamiden, came out on the Nintendo DS in 2010, starring Chibiterasu, a small wolf pup, and using the touch screen for brushwork. Then in December 2024 a new Okami sequel was announced, with Kamiya returning to direct. Designs built around Chibiterasu suit a lighter, cuter desk than the full-grown Amaterasu, and for a small pad, a pup is easier to fit than a full-grown wolf.

Sizes for an Okami desk

Which sizes a design comes in is shown on its product page. These are the ones that suit Okami art.

Setup	Size	Good for
Mouse only	S, 11.8″ × 15.7″ (30 × 40 cm)	A constellation or a painted sun
Laptop desk	TCG Mat, 14″ × 24″ (35.5 × 61 cm)	A blossom branch beside a laptop
Compact keyboard	M, 11.8″ × 27.6″ (30 × 70 cm)	A section of a picture scroll
Keyboard and mouse	XL, 15.7″ × 35.4″ (40 × 90 cm)	Amaterasu running the full length
A deep desk	XXL, 23.6″ × 35.4″ (60 × 90 cm)	A sunrise over Kamiki Village
The whole desk	4XL, 23.6″ × 47.2″ (60 × 120 cm)	Orochi with all eight heads

L, 11.8″ × 31.5″ (30 × 80 cm), stretches a scroll layout a few inches further than M, and 3XL, 19.7″ × 39.4″ (50 × 100 cm), gives Amaterasu more sky above her on a desk that isn't quite deep enough for XXL.

Gifts for a celestial artist

An Okami mouse pad suits someone who first played on the PS2, someone who drew the brush with a Wii remote, or someone who discovered the game through the HD release. If you don't know which part of the game they loved, a sunrise with Amaterasu or a blossom design is the safe pick. The anniversary of the Japanese release falls in April, which also happens to be cherry blossom season.

For a desk you have never seen, go with the XL, which fits a keyboard and a mouse on nearly any desk. We print and stitch each pad over 1–3 business days, send it out from Turkey, and US parcels usually arrive 2–5 business days after that.

Looking after a parchment-colored pad

Cream and paper tones show the oil from your wrist faster than black ink does. Wipe the resting area with a damp cloth every week or so. If the pad needs a real clean, wash it by hand in lukewarm water with a little mild soap, rinse thoroughly, roll it in a towel to press out the water and leave it flat to dry. Keep it out of the washing machine and the dryer, and never put an iron on it.

A note on names

Okami, Amaterasu and the other names of characters, places and techniques appear here only to describe what inspired our designs. Padrift is not affiliated with, sponsored or endorsed by Capcom, which publishes Okami and owns its rights.