Table of Contents
Introduction:The Immigrant Fox The Origin of Fox Tales
Fox Behavior and Traits
The Folklore Fox’s Traits and Abilities
Chapter 1 The Shifty, Sexy Fox The Jewel Maiden
Attitudes toward Women
How the Fox Became Kitsune
Shape-shifting and Head Shaving
The Price of Failure
Zen, the Senses, and the Fox
Misunderstanding the Fox
Chapter 2. The Grateful Fox Modern Gratitude
Chapter 3 Fox in the Family Money and Fox-ownership
Money and the Threat to Tradition
The Price of Being Adopted by a Fox
Why Call People Fox-owners?
Chapter 4 Fox Within: Fox Possession The Disease of Fox Possession
The Benefit of Possession
Culture-Bound Hysteria
Chapter 5 Fox and Rice Inari’s History
Fox and Goddess
Responsibilities of Divinity
Fox Statue or a Cat?
The Job of the Inari Fox
Chapter 6 The Sorcerer and the Fox Pipe Foxes
The Use of Familiars
Fox Fire
Divination
Protection against Fox Magic
Western Witches and Fox-sorcerers
Chapter 7 The Tip of the Tail
Further Reading: Ainu Fox Stories How a Man Got the Better of Two Foxes
The Two Foxes, the Mole, and the Crows
Further Reading: Chinese Fox Stories The Fox and the Raven
The Talking Silver Foxes
Further Reading: Japanese Fox Stories The Foxes’ Wedding
The Grateful Foxes
The Fox and Badger
Tamamo, The Fox Maiden
On a Contest Between Women of Extraordinary Strength
Notes
Bibliography
Introduction:The Immigrant Fox
Something about the fox—her red fur, her white-tufted tail, or her uncanny intelligence—haunts our history. Our stories speak about the fox more than any other animal.[1] Stories from across the world speak of her as a trickster, a demon, a devoted mother, an ideal wife, and a divine messenger. In Jewish tradition, Samson tied three-hundred foxes together by their tails, fastened torches to them, and let them loose to burn the fields, groves, and vineyards of the Philistines.[2] Europe’s tricky fox, Reynard, loves to tweak the noses of medieval aristocrats and clergy. Wherever foxes run, people whisper of their cunning, pranks, and magic. Yet of all cultures that speak of foxes, Japanese culture has a unique relationship with the animal. The vixen wraps her tail around every aspect of Japanese culture, from the thousands of shrines dedicated to Inari, the Shinto Goddess of Rice, to how people answer telephones.
In order to understand Japan, we must first understand the fox. She is a creature of field and farm, and she runs with the common people more than high priests and aristocrats. But this doesn’t stop her from playing pranks and causing problems among the ruling class, as even the Shogun Hideyoshi discovered.
The Japanese fox lives on the border of the commonplace and the mysterious, never quite fitting into a neat compartment. The fox tangles positive with negative and divinity with demon. She hunts fields and wanders towns, straddling both the human world and the animal world. Living on this edge gives her the ability to tap into both worlds. Her flexibility in folklore makes her hard to pin down. She is both saint and devil. She represents Japan’s soul and humanity’s darker drives.
The Origin of Fox Tales
Many scholars believe that Japanese fox stories originated in China around 333 BC and traveled to Japan with other Chinese ideas.[3] Not all scholars agree with this assessment, however. The Ainu, a people native to northern Japan, have their own tradition of fox stories which developed apart from Chinese stories. Japanese fox tales developed features neither Ainu nor Chinese stories have: Inari-foxes and fox-sorcery. The origin of the fox doesn’t have to be an either-or scenario. Chinese fox tales can easily mix with Ainu and other native stories to create the Japanese vixen. One fox story captures the relationship of Japanese fox tales to their origin stories from China:
One day all the animals in Japan heard the tiger, king of beasts, was coming to their country to fight with them. They were afraid that the tiger would prove too powerful for the bear, so the fox was ordered to meet the tiger, and if possible outwit him with cunning; failing that, the bear would try his strength. The tiger, having reached Japan, came to a large forest a thousand miles in diameter. The fox met him and said, “How do you do, sir? I have heard you are the king of animals in foreign countries. Is it true, great sir?”
“Yes, I am, and no one can run faster than me.”
“Then will you not run a race with me?” asked the fox.
“Yes, but you don’t suppose you can win, do you?” said the tiger.
They retired to one side of the forest and began to run. The cunning fox lightly leaped up and laid hold of the tiger’s tail. The tiger, intent on the race, ran until exhausted. The sly fox leapt over his head and was declared the winner.[4]
This story refers to the conflict between China, the tiger, and Japan, the fox. But the tale reveals how the fox rode into Japan on the tail of China’s influence. Native and imported fox stories ran the breadth of Japan on the fast moving influence of Chinese culture. On their journey, the tales became something unique to Japanese culture, building and expanding upon the patterns China provided.
The story also points to the cunning of the Japanese fox. She understands she couldn’t fight the tiger like the bear could. In fact, the animals worry the bear lacks the tiger’s strength. So they ask the fox to use her cunning to outwit the tiger. In another Chinese fable from 333 BC, the fox warns the tiger to beware her cunning:
The Sovereign of Heaven has privileged me among all animals by giving me greater cunning than to others. Should you devour me, you would certainly displease him very much. [5]
Fox Behavior and Traits
Understanding basic fox behavior helps us understand why the fox tickles our imagination. Despite being a canine, the fox shares more in common with cats than with dogs. She stalks prey like a cat does, and she has paws with partially retractable claws. She even has vertical-slit pupils like a cat.
Foxes dash across the northern hemisphere and live in a variety of environments. Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran have desert foxes. The Arctic Circle has its own type of fox. The fox lives and adapts to its environment with ease because she can eat a variety of food. A study in Missouri found foxes eat 34 different mammals, 14 species of birds, 15 families of insects, and 21 varieties of plants.[6] They change their diet based on the season and climate. During summer and autumn, foxes often eat berries and fruit and bury surplus food to eat later. When burying food in snow, the fox will disguise the cache and brush away her paw prints.[7] Not only does this behavior suggest forethought, but it also reveals foxes’ intelligence and cunning. In fact, foxes can remember dozens of cache locations.
Foxes are solitary hunters, but they also form monogamous relationships to raise kits. Unlike many animals, both male and female foxes care for their young, and daughters from previous litters sometimes help with raising their siblings.[8] Fox families provide a foundation for folktales about human-fox relationships and the idea of the divine-mother fox. Folktales do not come out of mere superstition. The stories enhance what people understand and try to explain the mysteries they can not.
The Folklore Fox’s Traits and Abilities
Based on their observations of living foxes, Chinese, Japanese, and Ainu stories agree: some foxes are good, and others are evil. Luckily, we can know a fox by its color. The Jap
anese red fox’s fur can change to white during winter months. Black-furred foxes hunt across Japan and China. The black fox and the white fox bring good luck.[9] The common red fox brings trouble, but she can change into a good fox with time and religious training. Chinese stories clear up this complication by creating two classes of foxes. Celestial foxes, considered good foxes, have white or black fur and a set of nine tails. These foxes were originally red foxes that lived for 1,000 years and became wise with their age. Japanese stories associate the nine-tailed white fox with the goddess Inari.[10] The other category includes the troublemakers: the wild foxes. Folktales love these foxes. They play pranks and bewitch people. They possess people and shave the heads of unwary travelers, but not all wild foxes cause trouble. The category includes many good-hearted foxes destined to become celestial foxes and divine-mothers.
Chinese wild fox stories provide most of the traits characteristic to the Japanese fox. She shape-shifts, bewitches, and possesses. According to both Ainu and Chinese stories, the fox can turn into anything, including a teakettle. Her shape-shifting antics often go awry. As you can imagine, turning into a teakettle isn’t the brightest idea. In another story, a fox changed into a tree with a similar unhappy result:
Nakadayu, the nephew to the chief Shinto priest of the Kasuga shrine at Nara, was once roaming about with his servant towards evening in a lonely mountain when they spied a gigantic cedar tree standing ahead of them, about 200 feet high.
Said Nakadayu to his servant:
“I never saw such a big cedar tree standing near here on this mountain before. Can you see the tree yonder?”
“Yes, master,” answered the servant, “I can see a big cedar tree over there.”
“I don’t think we have such a gigantic cedar tree even in other parts of this province,” said Nakadayu.
“We have cedar trees in this province. However I have never seen such a big one before,” agreed the servant.
“In that case,” observed Nakadayu, “we might have been bewitched by a fox. We had better go home now.”
They had been walking about the mountain to cut plenty of grass for the horse kept at Nakadayu’s house. They were unaware of the passing of time. In the gathering dusk, they saw the moon rise and cast a weird light on the cedar tree. A nocturnal bird screeched somewhere. A bush nearby rustled in the stillness of the mountain as if a bandit lurking behind it were coming out.
Master and servant exchanged glances, and each of them fixed an arrow to the string of the bow they were carrying for self-defense. A squirrel appeared and quickly vanished across the path.
“Before we go home,” said the servant, “let us shoot the cedar tree and come here again tomorrow morning to see it.”
arrow upon their bows.
“We had better shoot the cedar tree from a shorter distance,” advised the servant.
The proceeded a little farther—drew their bows to their full extent—and both shot the giant tree at the same time.
“Whiz!” went the arrows—and the next moment they saw the huge tree disappear!
They were afraid that it might be the act of some uncanny hand, so they left the spot without delay.
The following morning they found an old fox shot dead by two arrows stuck in its body at the very spot where the gigantic cedar tree had been observed standing by Nakadayu and his servant.
The prank of the fox cost it its life.[11]
When I first read this story, I had to ask myself: why would a fox turn into a tree? It is a rather boring prank. But when you think about it, many people use landmarks to navigate through forests. A large cedar tree makes a good landmark. By shape-shifting into such a tree and then moving around, the fox could trick anyone who is using the tree as a landmark. The victim could well become lost, much to the fox’s delight. Only this time, the fox’s trick turns against it. Nakadayu and his servant know the woods well enough to suspect the tree is a fox. This suggests the fox was known to play such tricks.
While the fox can change into objects far larger than her real size, she prefers to transform into a human woman. As a fox ages, she transforms into increasingly beautiful women, and the 1,000-year-old fox transforms into the loveliest of all women. Her experience with human society allows her to better judge human ideals of beauty. Age also lends practice. Old foxes do not need illusion to complete a disguise, unlike young foxes. Young foxes keep their shape-change and illusion only long enough to finish their tricks.
You may notice how I refer to the fox as female. For the Japanese, the fox is foremost a woman. Although most Chinese foxes are male, male foxes rarely appear in Japanese tales. The Japanese vixen uses her beauty and shape-shifting ability to conjure illusions in order to bewitch people. Her illusions can turn graves into large houses, as one traveling singer discovered:
In the An-ei era. (1772-1780) a well-known joruri-actor [joruri singing a story to the sound of a shamisen] was richly entertained in a large farmer's house, where a big crowd filled the room and enthusiastically applauded him when he gave proof of his talent. After he had recited a long time, suddenly it became silent about him and lo! he was alone. No house, no room was to be seen, and in the dim morning light he found himself in a graveyard! Hastily he fled away home in the belief that foxes had deceived him and given him horse dung and cow urine instead of nice food and wine. The idea made him ill and confused, and for some days he kept to his bed.
In the meantime, the rumor rapidly spread all over the province that he had been haunted by foxes which had asked him to play for them. And this was true; but his suspicion about the food and wine the brutes had offered him was not correct, for on that same night a wedding had taken place in a neighboring village, and all the eatables and drinkables which were ready for the guests had disappeared in a mysterious way. That was certainly the work of foxes or tanuki, for on the moor where they had entertained the actor, fish-bones, and wine- cups lay spread about. Apparently, the foxes, admiring his art, had offered him the food and wine stolen from the wedding party. After some days the actor recovered, but he henceforth chose another profession and only recited joruri now and then at somebody's request.[12]
Fox spirits share illusion magic with their physical sisters, but the spirit forms can possess people to create more powerful illusions. Possession allows the fox spirit to take control of the victim and directly shape the victim’s perception of reality. The belief in possession and bewitching foxes has remained surprisingly stubborn. Westernization during the Meiji Reformation did little to quell the beliefs. Even as recent as 1983, a woman was diagnosed as being possessed by a fox.[13]
Beyond using her powers on people, the fox’s presence impacts people on a social level. Japan inherited the idea of fox-ownership from China. Fox-ownership occurs when a fox spirit decides to adopt a hapless family. The family prospers under the patronage of the fox but at the expense of the family’s neighbors. The fox spirit possesses and pranks the family’s rivals and steals wealth to give to her adopted humans. This hurts the adopted family’s reputation, and the village blames the family for any theft that happens. Because of this phenomenon, people who owned a fox were banned from the community. Fox-ownership even caused a lover’s suicide as recently as 1953.[14] Families inherited fox spirits and passed the spirit on through marriage. Because of this, being labeled as a fox-owner became a part of the family’s identity, and few in the local community wanted to marry into such a negative label.
Not all traits of the Japanese fox came from China. Two unique traits developed in Japan. Strangely, these traits failed to travel back to China. As I mentioned earlier, the fox and the popular idea of the goddess Inari are inseparable. Both Chinese and Ainu fox stories lack any sort of fox deity. As the goddess of rice and wealth, Inari and her shrines scatter throughout Japan. Foxes often visit these shrines in their search for food. A natural relationship developed out of this. The fox’s close association with the goddess combines with the Chinese category of divine foxes to create a
hierarchy. Inari foxes are good, divine foxes charged with punishing their wild cousins. One tale shows Inari foxes punishing a wild fox for eating a turtle at a temple. A visiting lord heard of the desecration and ordered a hunt for the fox.
That night he heard some noises in front of his room, and when he opened the door and looked out, he saw a fox, bound with creeping vines, the ends of which two other foxes held in their mouths. Upon the Lord's question as to what they intended to do with the culprit, they attacked the animal and killed it at once.[15]
The other trait unique to Japanese fox lore is fox-sorcery. Fox-sorcerers use a fox as the source of their magic, much like the black cat of a witch. In addition to gaining a fox that can cast illusions and shape-shift, the sorcerer gains the fox’s divination and possession abilities.
The Japanese fox barks a complex story. Let’s run with her and learn about her life, starting with her role as the ideal wife and as a shape-shifting prankster. As we chase her through the forest and city streets, we will hear the tales people share about her.
Fox tales reveal truths about human behavior and Japanese culture. Stories of affectionate vixens touch on the tragedy of love and unavoidable loss we must all face when a loved one dies. Stories of the fox’s gratitude suggest how we too should be grateful for life and kindness. Fox-ownership reveals ugly truths about how communities treat those viewed as different or threatening. In all of these ways, the fox embodies Japanese ideals and fears. In the form of a woman—ideal wife and divine mother—she represents the soul of Japan.
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