Shape-shifting and Head Shaving
The fox-wife is not the only type of shape-shifting story. The Japanese fox doesn’t limit herself to the shape of a beautiful woman, nor are all Japanese foxes benevolent mothers-to-be. Fox folklore brims with sexy prankster fox-women and shifty troublemakers. In the fox-wife stories, she uses her cunning to help her appear as human as possible. Many fox tales use the same characteristic to cause trouble for hapless humans.
But how exactly does the fox transform? The method varies. In some stories, the fox places a human skull on its head and bows to the stars until the skull doesn’t fall off.[35] Another method of shape-shifting requires the fox to make a coat of leaves—no small feat for an animal without hands—and make a topknot out of a wisp of straw. Then she does three double somersaults without touching the ground.[36] Despite all the effort, the fox may not transform completely. Young foxes can’t include their tails and lose their disguise whenever they get drunk or lose their concentration. Only old, wise foxes transform into beautiful fox-wives. Most prank tales feature a young fox.
What types of pranks does the fox enjoy? Well, wild foxes enjoy shaving the heads of unwary men. One such story, “The Carpenter and Foxes,” shows just how tricky the Japanese fox can be.
One day a young carpenter named Toku travels to a moor named Maki. People know foxes infest the place, but Toku is a stubborn man and doesn’t believe in the stories. His fellow carpenters dare him to enter the moor. If nothing happens, he will win a big bottle of sake, but if he loses he must buy each of his friends a bottle. Determined to show his friends how silly they are, he enters Maki. Soon after entering, he sees a fox transform itself into a beautiful girl by placing duckweed on its head. Toku decides to turn the tables on the foolish fox. When fox-girl calls out to him, asking for help returning to her village, Toku decides to play along. During the walk, he tries to see the end of the fox’s tail peeking out from the fox girl's robes, but he doesn’t have any luck.
They come upon the village and the fox’s supposed house. Toku tells the resident couple about the fox-girl, but they fail to believe him. To prove he is right, he grabs the girl and demands she reveal her true nature. She stammers her confusion until Toku grabs a piece of wood and beats the girl to force her to reveal her tail. Only the girl never transforms. She collapses on the floor of her parent’s house, broken and lifeless.
Horrified at what they have just witnessed, the parents drive Toku from their home. A Buddhist priest happens to be passing by and, hearing the wailing of the old couple, demands an explanation. The parents tell the priest about the murder and demand the young carpenter pay with his life. Toku collapses before the priest and pleads for mercy.
The Buddhist priest asks the parents to spare Toku’s life so he may spend it trying to make amends as a discipline of Buddha. They relent. A grateful Toku kneels before the priest. The priest bids the mother to bring a razor and water to shave Toku’s head, as is the custom to become a disciple. As soon as the last swipe of the razor lifts, Toku hears laughter, and he awakens to find himself sitting in the moor alone. He raises his hand to find his head has been shaved. He lost his bet.
Foxes often use people’s knowledge against them. In the story, Toku knows about how foxes are shape-shifters despite not believing the stories. The fox lets Toku see her transform, knowing he will think he has the advantage. Then she uses his knowledge against him. Fox tales sometimes let the reader in on the fun, like this one. Anyone who is familiar with other fox tales will know Toku is in for it.
As you can see in the story, foxes cast illusions to complete the prank. The village, the parents, and the priest are all illusions cast by other foxes joining the fun. Illusion and shape-shifting play roles in a related tales about feasts.
One evening a traveler came across a beautiful woman. “You look exhausted from your journey,” she said. “Please come to my house and rest.”
The man was indeed tired from his long journey, and the woman was exceedingly beautiful, so he accepted. The woman’s home was as exquisite as her figure. In the dining hall spread a feast like he had never beheld. Food of all types, some he had only heard about, piled the finest porcelain.
“Please, eat your fill,” the beautiful hostess said. “I am quite alone and would enjoy your company for the night.” The look on her face left no doubt to her intent.
The next morning, the traveler awoke to a cold, open sky. He sat upright and realized he lay in a muddy grave. Strewn around him were bones, leaves, and worse. He wiped his mouth, feeling sick. Laughter lilted on the wind.
In these stories, the fox leads the victim to a palace by a beautiful girl. A lavish feast spreads before him. After enjoying the feast, and sometimes the charms of the fox-girl, the man awakens in a grave surrounded by the feast’s leftovers. Only instead of food, the poor guy sees rotting leaves, garbage, and feces.
The Price of Failure
Pranks do not always go well for the fox. Because young foxes cannot transform their tails, they are often discovered and killed. One such story tells of a silly fox who finds a noh mask. Noh masks represent characters in plays. Because of this, the fox thinks the mask will transform her. She slips it on her head and runs off to try to trick someone. Her first potential victim happens to be a hunter whose puzzlement only lasts a moment. The fox dies before she realizes her mistake.
Failed pranks have dire consequences. Discovered foxes die or even face exile. Another folktale accounts of one such exile.
A fox took the shape of the consort of the Lord of Shikoku, and the latter found to his unbounded astonishment two women sitting in his house, who were exactly alike and who both pretended to be his real wife. A physician believed that it was the so-called 'soul-separating' illness, which causes one woman to become two. He uttered a Buddhist stanza and striking on the floor with his staff proceeded to recite prayers, but all in vain. Then the husband seized the women and shut them up. As he saw that one of them ate quite different food from the ordinary, he examined that one by torture, whereupon she became a fox. He then decided to kill the animal, but a crowd of 4 or 5000 people, Buddhist priests and laymen, men and women, came before the gate and answered the Lord's question, as to why they were, as follows:
"We are the foxes of the whole of Shikoku, who come to you with a request. The fox who has done you a wrong is a descendant of Kiko myojin, the 'Venerable Fox-god'; his name is Osa- gitsune, he is a messenger of Inari and the King of the Foxes of Japan. If you do him harm, there will come great calamity upon the country. He is our teacher of haunting, and if he dies we cannot haunt any longer. Please spare his life!' The Lord promised that if they all would leave Shikoku by ship, he would send the prisoner after them. Thereupon, they gave him a written oath, that they never would return to Shikoku as long as this document existed. They went away and since that time there have been no foxes in Shikoku. The document was, in the author’s time, still in the hands of the same family."[37]
The story explains why Shikoku is one of the few islands in Japan that lacks foxes. Notice how not even the King of Foxes fits into human society. This motif appears in most stories where the fox poses as a human.
Wild fox tales are not limited to feudal Japan. In 1889, a train was seen on the Tokyo-Yokohama line, speeding toward other trains. The strange train would always remain the same distance and threaten a head-on collision. One night, a train engineer grew tired of this. He ramped up the speed of his train and caught up with the phantom. As soon as he closed the distance, the phantom train disappeared. A short time later, a crushed fox was found under the real train’s wheels.[38]
Zen, the Senses, and the Fox
Fox disguises and illusions warn us about trusting our senses. The tales emphasize how easily our senses are tricked. Foxes can transform feces and garbage into a delicious feast. They can become trees, horses, and trains. Foxes transform to match desires. The beautiful girl people stumble across isn’t what she appears. Desire and fox magic com
plete the illusion. The victim sees and hears what he wants. Fox illusions only work because the victim wants what the fox seems to offer. A story of a young samurai takes this idea to an extreme. In the story, the fox doesn’t offer what the samurai desires, but he wants what he wants regardless.
A young samurai travels near Kyoto where he comes across a lovely girl dressed in silk. Struck by her beauty, he invites her into conversation. They talk deep into the night until the samurai confesses his love for her. He demands she returns his affection. She refuses and protests he is married. He continues to press her until she breaks down and cries. She tells him that having sex with him would lead to her death. He shrugs this off. After all, who ever heard of someone dying after having a tryst? She eventually gives in. When morning comes, she gets ready to go home. She tells him she goes home to die, and she asks him to visit her. She also asks him to copy the Lotus Sutra and offer it to Buddha for her soul’s sake. He thinks the request is silly, but he promises anyway to put her at ease. Later, he travels to the girl’s home with the hopes of seeing her again. Only he comes across her distraught mother. He goes up a hill and finds the body of a beautiful female fox. Upon seeing her, he knows the fox is the girl. Grief overwhelms the samurai, and he decides to keep his promise. He dutifully copies the sutra many times, feeling as if he couldn’t do anything to right the wrong he committed. One night, the girl appears in a dream and thanks him for his hard work. His action saves her soul from the sin of the dalliance. The young samurai gains spiritual insight from the encounter and his work copying and memorizing the spiritual teachings of the sutra.[39]
The story contains strong Zen elements. The experience of the samurai helps him grow spiritually. The Lotus Sutra he copies contains the foundational teachings of Buddhism. Copying these teachings helps the samurai learn about how to act selflessly toward people. It is a fitting lesson for his selfish behavior toward the fox. Zen Buddhism embraced fox stories as teaching tools and enjoyed using those stories to break people out of their normal ways of thinking. These stories love to play with people’s assumptions, and Zen uses the wild fox to represent people’s lack of understanding.[40] Despite its usefulness in spiritual practice, belief in fox shape-shifting stories can lead people to disbelieve their senses in dangerous ways.
In 1889, Japan’s Bandai volcano erupted, destroying a 27 square-mile area around it. A plume of debris and smoke rose 20,000 feet into the air. Lafcadio Hearn interviewed an old man who witnessed the event from a nearby peak. The old man thought the eruption, earthquakes, and black rain were all the work of a fox trying to trick him with an illusion.[41] In this case, the man deluded himself to avoid being tricked by a fox. The man couldn’t believe what he saw and categorized it as a fox-illusion. The destruction didn’t concern him because it wasn’t real in his mind. This is similar to Toku in the story, “The Carpenter and Foxes.” Both the old man and Toku relied on their knowledge of fox behavior, and both were mistaken. Hearn’s account reveals how deep fox tales extend into Japanese culture. The stories provide a way to explain the unimaginable. The man was fortunate not to have stood closer to the “illusion.”
Misunderstanding the Fox
Although the fox is deeply woven into Japan’s culture, she remains misunderstood. A particularly cruel story accounts of a fox who is tortured because people misunderstood her intent and behavior.
Once, long ago, a fox in the shape of a girl asked passing riders if she might ride behind them to get home. Most riders agreed, and when the riders stopped at their destinations, the girl leaped off the horse in her fox form. Well, word of these antics made their way to a garrison of soldiers. Determined to end the mischief before it escalated—after all, who knew what such a bold fox would do next!—the officer of the garrison tricked the fox into a horse ride and captured her. He took her to the garrison where his fellow soldiers tried to shoot her with arrows, just for fun. She managed to escape by using her superior agility to jump around the arrows and over the wall. The officer went out and tricked the foolish fox into another horse ride. He captured her again and tortured her until she reverted to her true form. Afterward, the soldiers burned her and let her go.Sometime later, the officer found the fox in her female form and asked her if she wanted a ride. She refused.[42]
The soldiers worry about the fox’s intention, and the fox simply enjoys riding on the back of a horse. Because the soldiers do not understand the fox’s harmless—albeit annoying—behavior, they torture her. For the fox’s part, she doesn’t harm anyone other than perhaps scaring them out of their wits. But her antics push at social class divisions. Samurai lending rides to women, particularly women of lower class, hurts the samurai’s reputation. Like many other fox-woman stories, this tale warns against picking up women who are alone. Remember, women had few rights in feudal Japan and were regarded as a type of property. Picking up a woman could be mistaken for theft. The men intend to take advantage of the fox-girl, and that intent leaves them open to public shame: being seen with a woman on his warhorse. The fox’s desire for fun causes her to be tortured and disfigured.
As you can see, the Japanese fox is a complicated creature. Her ability to shape-shift makes her an ideal wife and a dangerous prankster. Luckily, most prankster foxes are unable to fully transform and have to rely on illusions. This gave her victims some chance of seeing through the prank. Not all foxes are tricksters, however. Some use their shape-shifting skills to help people. Foxes in these tales are motivated by a deep sense of gratitude toward a person. Their actions overlap the wild fox trickster’s antics and the selfless love of the fox-wives. In many of these shape-shifting stories, the fox fails at her prank, but the victim shows mercy. Mercy is rare indeed for failed tricksters. Because of these tales, gratitude becomes a key trait of the Japanese fox.
Chapter 2 The Grateful Fox
Not all foxes are tricksters or divine wives; many fall into the gray area between. Many foxes have kind hearts and want to help people. Other foxes are tricksters who have a change of heart after being shown mercy. In most failed prank stories, such as Nakadayu and the fox-tree, the fox pays for her failure with her life. Pranksters know that failure means death, so when the victim shows mercy to the prankster, the fox becomes overwhelmed with gratitude. Appreciation often forces the fox to become less selfish. The debt changes her life.
Some foxes enjoy helping people, as long as their help is appreciated. One old man discovers what happens when a helpful fox feels snubbed.
An old man in Owari Province labors to dig a well. A kindhearted fox sees how hard the old, bent-backed man worked and decides to help. The fox transforms into a strong young man and finishes digging the well in no time, but instead of nicely thanking the fox, the old man complains. Angry and disappointed with the old man’s lack of appreciation, the fox curses the water in the new well.[43]
The Japanese fox’s sense of ethics requires people to express gratitude whenever she helps them. She wants appreciation for using her powers for a person’s benefit. If the person grumbles like the old man, the fox quickly feels fed-up and seeks revenge.
The other class of gratitude tales deals with people forgiving the fox. These stories stress the importance of mercy and compassion. Whenever a person spares her, the fox expresses gratitude through gifts. In some of these stories, fox gifts can be a bit mixed. Sometimes she will award money as thanks for the help, but half the money transforms into leaves or garbage because of the fox’s nature. Shape-shifting and illusion are like breathing for a fox. Helping someone with expectation for a certain reward ends with disappointment. The tales reveal how many people never feel satisfied with what they have.
Gratitude motivates the Japanese fox to perform selfless acts that cost her life or the lives of her children. In traditional Chinese and Japanese medicine, the fox’s liver and other organs were believed to cure some illnesses.[44] The use of fox-organs to cure people plays a role in a few gratitude fox-tales. One touching story shows the selflessness of a fo
x family.
Long, long ago, a man delivered a fox-cub from the hands of some boys, who had caught it and were going to kill it. The little fox joyfully scampered away. Shortlyafterward, the man’s only son fell seriously ill; all kinds of medicines were tried, and in the end, the physician decided that only the liver of a live fox could cure the boy. The parents tried in vain to obtain such a liver from the villagers—nobody had any. But late that night a stranger came to the house, bringing a fresh fox-liver which he said he had received for the boy. After eating it, the boy of course recovered, but the parents still did not know who might have sent them the liver until one night in a dream, the mysterious stranger again appeared to the father and explained that in gratitude for the earlier delivery of their cub, he and the mother had decided to kill it so that its liver might save the kind-hearted man’s son. The parents, in turn, showed their gratitude by erecting a shrine to the Fox-Inari in their garden, where they prayed for the cub’s soul, and venerated the fox couple.[45]
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