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The extra=, in popular Japanese folklore, is a fox or fox spirit which possesses the supernatural ability to shapeshift or bewitch other life forms.
The kitsune exhibit the ability of bakeru, or transforming its shape and appearance, like the bake-danuki as well as the ability to bakasu, i.e. beguile or bewitch; these terms are related to the generic term bakemono meaning "spectre" or "goblin". Another scholar ascribes the kitsune with being a "disorienting deity" (that makes the traveler lose his way) and such capabilities were also ascribed to badgers (actually bake-danuki or raccoon dog) and occasionally to cats (cf. bakeneko).
The archetypal method by which the kitsune tricks (bakasu) humans is to lead them astray, or make them lose their way. The experiences of people losing their way (usually in the mountain after dark) and blaming the kitsune fox has been recounted first or secondhand to folklorists well into the present times.
Other typical standard tricks occur as folktale types: people are tricked into taking a "bath in a Night soil pot" (i.e., Slurry pit), or eating "horse-feces dumpling", or accepting "leaf money" (cf. ).
The "fox wife" theme occurs in a number of noted medieval works (e.g. Nihon ryōiki),. Chapter 2. "Foxes, Wives and Spirits: Shapeshifting and the Language of Marriage", pp. 33–70 but on that theme, the story of nine-tailed vixen Tamamo-no-mae ('Jewel-algae ladyship') and sessho-seki ("murder stone") deserve special attention,. Chapter 1. "The Jewel Maiden and the Murder Stone: Orientations to Shapeshifting and Signification", pp. 1–32 as well as the story of a vixen Kuzunoha giving birth to the astrologist-magician Abe no Seimei.. Chapter 5.
The "Fox wife" is also a folktale type category.
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/a>, # 116ABC extra='fox wife', pp. 161–170 There is a weather myth that associates sunshine rain with the kitsune's wedding (Cf. ), and the folktale type for it.
The fox jewel or tama (cf. ) sometimes occur in folktale tradition as something held important by the fox, sometimes as the item necessary for it to transform or conduct other magic. This and the kitsunebi ('fox-fire') which the creature is reputed capable of firing off (cf. ) are standard parts of the pictorial depictions of kitsune, especially on a white kitsune or byakko ().
The kitsune came to be associated with Inari, a Shinto kami or spirit, and serve as its messengers (). The fox also figures in Buddhist as the mount of the deva Dakini, and there is some conflation between the two deities ().
Another dimension is that the kitsune was thought capable of spiritual possession or kitsunetsuki (q.v.), which was a superstition widespread throughout Japan. This is multi-faceted: the illness causing possession might be sought to be exorcized by hiring some shaman, but the fox can turn into a benevolent guardian spirit also, or a case of both as in the case of an 11th century tale ; (cf. Kitsunetsuki#Hungry fox).
For an unwanted possession to be exorcised, a professional miko priestess (as in the foregoing tale) or a shugendō priest would be consulted, well into the 20th century as the superstition persisted. A miko or itako purports to be capable of forcing a controlled possession of herself by a fox spirit, and engage in , a sort of séance to speak on behalf of the spirit.: kitsune no kuchiyose; : a izuna kuchiyose might also be considered fox spirit summoning ; but , et passim, a miko performs such kuchiyose for various spirits not necessarily of the fox kind.
The concept of certain families being "fox owners" ( kitsune-mochi) due to it taming a jinko or ninko were written about in the Edo Period and Meiji era, but appear to be localized around Izumo Province (also further described under kitsunetsuki) which was the backdrop of Lafcadio Hearn's folkloristics. In Izumo, the "owner" families were feared as being able to unleash the fox spirits on normal people.
In other regions, it is only the yamabushi or lay priests trained in shugendō who have the reputation of using extra=lit. "air/ chi fox". In some cases, the fox or fox-spirit summoned is called the osaki. The familiar may also be known as the extra=lit. "tube fox, pipe fox" because they were believed to be so small, or become so small as to fit inside a tube.
The kitsune appears in numerous Japanese works. Noh (), kyogen (), or bunraku and kabuki (, Yoshitsune Senbon Zakura) plays derived from folk tales feature them,: "the most interesting part of fox-literature belongs to the Japanese stage". However, Hearn's example which he excepts as if it is a play with dialogues, is Hizakurige, an Edo Period novel widely known in Japan. as do contemporary works such as native animations, comic books and .
Other old sources include the aforementioned story in the Nihon ryōiki (810–824) and Wamyō Ruijushō (c. 934). These old sources are written in Man'yōgana, which clearly identifies the historical form of the word (when rendered into a Latin-alphabet transliteration) as ki1tune. Following several diachronic phonological changes, this became kitsune.
The fox-wife narrative in Nihon ryōiki gives the folk etymology kitsu-ne as 'come and sleep', while in a double-entendre, the phrase can also be parsed differently as ki-tsune to mean 'always comes'.
Many etymological suggestions have been made, though there is no general agreement:
Kitsu is now archaic; in modern Japanese, a fox's cry is transcribed as kon kon or gon gon.
For pre-historic considerations before the chronicles, Cf.
(1850) argued that there were three classes of foxes, gradable by age, the sky or celestial ''tenko'', the white fox ''byakko'' and black fox, of which the ''tenko'' was the most ancient, but had no corporeal form and was strictly a spirit(cf. ).
In Japanese folklore, Kitsune have as many as nine tails (but this is derived straight from Chinese classics, as explained below). Generally, a greater number of tails indicates an older and more powerful Kitsune; in fact, some folktales say that a fox will only grow additional tails after it has lived 100 years. One, five, seven, and nine tails are the most common numbers in folktales.
The story was later introduced or invented (established by the 14th century), that the queen-consort Daji (Japanese pronunciation: Dakki) was really a nine-tailed fox that led to the destruction of Yin/Shang dynasty, and the same vixen some 2,000 years later appeared as Tamamo-no-mae in Japan (q.v., also and Hokusai's painting of Tamamo previously as Lady Kayō of India). Tamamo clearly draws from Chinese myth and literature, so her being depicted as a golden-furred and 'nine-tailed fox' matches precisely what the Chinese classics writes about the celestial fox ( tian hu 天狐) which a 1,000 year old fox turns into.
(Cf. also )
Inari's kitsune are white, a color of a good omen. They possess the power to ward off evil, and they sometimes serve as guardian spirits. In addition to protecting Inari shrines, they are petitioned to intervene on behalf of the locals and particularly to aid against troublesome nogitsune, those spirit foxes who do not serve Inari. Black foxes and nine-tailed foxes are likewise considered good omens.
There can also be attendant or servant foxes associated with Inari, the Shinto deity of rice. Originally, kitsune were Inari's messengers, but the line between the two is now blurred so that Inari Ōkami may be depicted as a fox. Likewise, entire shrines are dedicated to kitsune, where devotees can leave offerings.
According to beliefs derived from fūsui ( feng shui), the fox's power over evil is such that a mere statue of a fox can dispel the evil kimon, or energy, that flows from the northeast. Many Inari shrines, such as the famous Fushimi Inari shrine in Kyoto, feature such statues, sometimes large numbers of them.
However, the custom of offering abura-age must have arisen rather late (in the Edo Period). In comparison, the notion that the fox's favorite food being estra="oil-fried mice or rat" dates farther back, since it is attested in 's Matsunoya hikki (c. 1845), which also cites a Muromachi period work Sekyō shō (where there is a metaphor of "springing up like a fox at a yaki-nezumi roasted").
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/a>卷九十六
Watchers of the kyōgen-play know full well that part of the theatrics involves the fox character being driven crazy by the presence of its favorite food, the "oil-fried young mice", While this freak food bait might be thought of as the stuff of popular belief, the oil-fried mouse was an effective bait for trapping foxes, and actually used into the modern era (see fig. right).
Some commentators have extrapolated (on websites, etc.) that people used to offer deep-fried mice to Inari Jinja but was switched to vegetarian substitute, but this has already been rejected by scholar who offers an alternate origin, where in the esoteric rites of Dakini buddhism (associated with foxes, cf. ) dumpling coated with kinako was offered, which was people colloquially called something like "oil dumpling", which hints at this actually being an oil-fried dough treat as found in Chinese cuisine.
Actually, foxes were certainly blamed as cause for illness, and the Buddhist liturgy called extra=“Ritual of the Six-syllable Sutra were being performed to excorce it since those times (cf. kitsunetsuki).
Kitsune are connected to the Buddhist religion through the , goddesses conflated with Inari's female aspect. Dakiniten is depicted as a female boddhisattva wielding a sword and riding a flying white fox.
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/a> 1, Gutenberg21; ; 1896, p. 317
The Inari Shinto liturgical text 意根利之秘伝 (1780 colophon) lists five types of foxes to be revered, mainly the three: tenko (celestial), extra='sky', chiko (earth), plus byakko (white), and extra=probably related to the 'purple fox' of Chinese myth. 's 有斐斎剳記 ( 1781) appeared, which ranks the extra='wild foxes' as the most obtuse, followed by the newly created extra='air fox', kūko (sky), then tenko (celestial). 's essay Zen'an zuihitsu, Book 2 (1850) gives his own conclusion that there are extra='sky/celestial/, white, black foxes', graded by age, of which the celestial is the most ancient.
Hearn was of the opinion that these precise and intricate stratifications of fox kind according to learned opinion could not be reconciled with the more down-to-earth picture of the kitsune held by the common peasantry.: "One cannot possibly unravel the confusion of these beliefs, especially among the peasantry".
(Cf. also )
However, Hearn also doubts that such a stark differentiation between the Inari fox and possession fox (good vs. evil) had always been made by the populace in bygone times, and opines this was something imposed upon by the literati. A similar verdict is rendered by , that "practitioners of religion and the intelligentsia were the ones who made commonplace the divide between the good fox vs bad fox".:"善狐と悪狐の分離実体化を一般化したのは、宗教者と知識人" And it was in that milieu that 宮川政運 in Book 3 of his essay work (1858) set apart extra='good foxes' and yako ('wild foxes') as the bad. According to Miyagawa, the good fox breaks down further into five subtypes: gold, silver, white, black, and celestial.
An example of revenge is found in a tale set in Kai Province from the 11th century Uji shūi monogatari, where the fox sets fire to a man's home.
An example tale of gratitude involving the dainagon (major counselor) Yasumichi occurs in the Kokon Chomonjū of the mid-13th century, , who was pestered by a family of foxes that took up lair at his mansion, and their bake or mischief escalated to a level of intolerance. But the nobleman halted his plan to eradicate them after a fox appeared in his dream to beg mercy. The foxes after that rarely made rowdy noises, except to cry out loud to announce some good fortune about to happen.
A favorite trick of the fox's trade is transformation into a beautiful woman to beguile men. (cf. ) The kitsune that initiates sexual contact may also manifest the ability to suck the life force or spirit from human beings, reminiscent of or Succubus.
Besides the ability to transform, the kitsune is credited with kitsune other supernatural abilities such as spiritual possession (), generating fox-fire (cf. kitsunebi and ).
Another favorite trick of the fox is to give human fake money., Type of Tale "108. Leaf Money". Paper currency turns into a leaf once inside the wallet in modern versions,Mayer, Fanny Hagin 1984
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/a>, p. 212 or gold coinage ( koban) turns to leaf in older tales.
The fox in fable is also famed for tricking humans into eating dumpling (dango) actually made of horse Feces., Type of Tale "105. The Horse-dung Dumpling". This is alluded to in the novel Tōkaidōchū Hizakurige (1822) colloquially known as Yaji-Kita after the characters making the journey. In one scene, Yajirobē who "imagines that the fox has taken the shape of Kitahachi" refuses the mochi offered him on suspicion of it being inedible horse dung. Foxes are also accused of tricking people into taking a bath in a night soil pot (human manure pit), Type of Tale "104. Taking a Bath in a Nigh-soil Pot". or a "cesspool" as Hearn puts it politely., note
Tales distinguish kitsune gifts from kitsune payments. If a kitsune offers a payment or reward that includes money or material wealth, part or all of the sum will consist of old paper, leaves, twigs, stones, or similar valueless items under a magical illusion. True kitsune gifts are usually intangibles, such as protection, knowledge, or long life.
As a common prerequisite for the transformation, the fox must place a leaf (or reeds, weeds) or a skull over its headKomatsu 1990, pp. 49, 53, 56 apud (cf. Kitsune zōshi picture scroll). The fox's use of skull to transform derives from China, as it is attested in Youyang zazu (9th century). It may have to run a circle around a tree three times to transform.Mayer, Fanny Hagin 1984
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/a>, p. 140 apud The imagery held by present-day Japanese is that the fox will place a leaf on its head and do a flip in the air to turn into someone or some thing. The use of leaf is hard to explain, but when one examines the corpus of mukashibanashi folktales, the fox frequently stand by water (to look at the reflection of itself) transforms by placing aquatic plant on its head, the weed being a sort to ersatz wig.。
Common forms assumed by kitsune include beautiful women, young girls, elderly men, and less often young boys. These shapes are not limited by the fox's own age or gender, and a kitsune can Human guise. Kitsune are particularly renowned for impersonating beautiful women. Common belief in feudal Japan was that any woman encountered alone, especially at dusk or night, could be a kitsune. Kitsune-gao ('fox-faced') refers to human females who have a narrow face with close-set eyes, thin eyebrows, and high cheekbones. Traditionally, this facial structure is considered attractive, and some tales ascribe it to foxes in human form. Variants on the theme have the kitsune retain other foxy traits, such as a coating of fine hair, a fox-shaped shadow, or a reflection that shows its true form.
A medieval tale describes an old fox that transformed into an enormously tall sugi ("cedar") tree, but this raised the suspicion of a man who was searching for his horse; he and his minions shot the tree with arrows, and later a fox was found lying dead.
In some stories, kitsune retain—and have difficulty hiding—their tails when they take human form; looking for the tail, perhaps when the fox gets drunk or careless, is a common method of discerning the creature's true nature. A particularly devout individual may even be able to see through a fox's disguise merely by perceiving them. Kitsune can also be exposed while in human form by their fear and hatred of dogs, and some become so rattled by their presence that they revert to the form of a fox and flee.
The kitsune were also said to employ their kitsunebi to lead travelers astray in the manner of a will-o'-the-wisp.
Stories of kitsunetsuki s has already been attested during the Heian period, and the setsuwa narrative blaming illness on a fox spirit in Nihon ryōiki can be taken as an early attestation of kitsunetsuki.
From a clinical standpoint, those possessed by a fox are thought to suffer from a mental illness or similar condition. Such illness explanations were already being published by the 19th century, but the superstition was difficult to eradicate (cf. ).
The patient struck ill by the kitsunetsuki syndrome is evidently unable to speak on the kitsune spirit's mind, so that a (hired) miko exorcist temporarily takes over the possession and explains what the fox wants, as in the case of the narrative in the 11th century Uji shūi monogatari, where the fox discloses it merely craved human food.
The idea of fox possession arguably became more widespread in the fifteenth century. Various learned men argued fox possession as superstition or an illness during the Edo period to no avail, the superstition persisted. Lafcadio Hearn picked up on the kitsunetsuki lore during the Meiji Era current near his adoptive home province of Izumo, et seqq. even while Medical science continued to tried to debunk the myth, and the belief in fox and other animal spirit owning families regionally persisted even in the studies conducted c. 1960. and note 21, citing Ishizuka, T. (1959). "Tsukimono" MiInzokugaku taikei 8: 28ff
The great amount of faith given to foxes can be seen in how, as a result of the Inari belief where foxes were believed to be Inari no Kami or its servant, they were employed in practices of dakini-ten by mikkyō and shugendō practitioners and in the oracles of miko; the customs related to kitsunetsuki can be seen as having developed in such a religious background.
In this story, a man from , Mino Province found and married a fox-wife, who bore a child by him. But the household dog born the same time as the baby always harassed the wife, until one day frightened her so much she transformed back into a 野干, construed to mean "wild fox". Although the husband and wife become separated (during the day), she fulfills the promises to come sleep with him every night, hence the Japanese name of the creature, meaning "come and sleep" or "come always", according to the folk etymology presented in the tale.
Alternate versions of the fox-wife tale appeared later during the Kamakura period in the works Mizukagami and Fusō Ryakuki of the 12th century.
The fox-wife's descendants were also depicted as doing evil things by taking advantage of their power.Yoshihiko Sasama. (1998) Kaii ・ kitsune hyaku monogatari 怪異・きつね百物語. pp. 1, 7, 12. Yuzankaku. According to the foregoing story, the fox-wife's child became the first ancestor of the surname 狐直. However, in another tale from the Nihon Ryōiki, a story was told about a ruffian female descendant;, " On a Contest between Two Women of Extraordinary Strength (2:4)", pp. 70–71 the tale was also placed in the repertoire of the later work Konjaku monogatari. Here, the woman nicknamed "Mino kitsune" (Mino fox), was tall and powerful and engaged in open banditry seizing goods from merchants.
The historical Abe no Seimei later developed a fictional reputation of being the scion of fox-kind, and his extraordinary powers became associated with that mixed bloodline. Seimei was purported to have been born a hybrid between the (non-historical) Abe no Yasuna, and a white fox rescued by him that gratefully assumed the shape of the widower's sister-in-law, Kuzunoha to become his wife, a piece of fantasy with the earliest known example being the Abe no Seimei monogatari printed 1662, and later adapted into puppet plays (and kabuki) bearing such titles as Shinodazuma ("The Shinoda Wife", 1678) and ("A Courtly Mirror of Ashiya Dōman", 1734).
One scene in Kitsune zōshi reveals the foxes caught in the act of performing transformation by placing as skull or human hair on its head (cf. image right).
After fleeing from Shang dynasty China, she was Kayō fujin consort named serving King Hanzoku (Kalmashapada of India (cf. figure right below).
As aforementioned, the fox wife in the Nihon ryōiki tale gave rise to the ancestral line of the Kitsune-no-atae clan, and a woman of great strength named "Mino kitsune" belonged to that heritage.
A fox's jewel is described as a round white object the size of a small mandarin orange in a tale from the Konjaku monogatarishū compilation (12th century). The miko (female "exorcist") acting as spiritual medium for the fox is playing with it, and a samurai snatches it away.: "The Story of a Fox Repaying Kindness For Returning Its Treasured Ball": "The Fox's Ball"
It is held that the fox jewel is necessary for the fox to change shape, or use its magical power. Another tradition is that the pearl represents the kitsune's soul; the kitsune will die if separated from it for too long.
An anecdote is recorded in the 18th century, which purports that an actual fox jewel was stolen from the creatures by several temple samurai, causing the temple's high priest (, "bishop") distress, prompting its return to the foxes. The stone flashed kitsunebi fire according to the account.
The fox jewel was frequently discussed under the name of extra='treasure-gem jewel', "cintamani" in the post-medieval period, and stories about ホーシの玉 is common in the popular telling (recorded oral literature), which often speaks of such stone or tufty object being found or acquired and given over to the custody of a temple, etc., to be enshrined. The top data is from Fukushima 1991, followed by Byakko no hōshi no tama, Fukushima 1996, etc., followed by many different name headings.
(Cf. ).
And the phosphorescent fox is not only depicted with the kitsune-bi fire floating above their heads, but with a luminous jewel ( tama) at its tail tip, which Lafcadio Hearn surmises is the same from Buddhism (cf. Mani Jewel and ).
Fox Jewels are a common symbol of Inari and representations of sacred Inari foxes without them are rare.
In the Buddhist context, the fox is standardly depicted as the creature on which the goddess Dakini rides. The luminous jewel is depicted on the fox's tail.
The earliest "fox wife" (狐女房) tale type in Japan in Nihon Ryōiki (Cf. ) bears close resemblance to the Tang dynasty Chinese story Renshi zhuan ("The Story of Lady Ren", c. 800), and the possibility has been suggested that this is a remake of the Chinese version. A composite fashioned from the confluence of Tang dynasty wonder tales ( chuanqi genre, as exemplified by the Renshi zhuan) and earlier wonder tales ( Zhiguai xiaoshuo genre) has also been proposed.
The trope of the fox as femme fatale in Japanese literature also originates from China. Ōe no Masafusa (d. 1111) in Kobiki or extra= A record of fox spirits The femme fatale vixen was the mult-millenarian Tamamo-no-mae who was queen-consort during the Yin/Shang dynasty of China according to the fantastic tale.
The oldest relationship between the Japanese people and the fox dates back to the Jomon period necklace made by piercing the canine teeth and jawbone of the fox.Kaneko, Hiromasa (1984) Kaizuka no jūkotsu no chishiki: hito to dōbutsu no kakawari 貝塚の獣骨の知識―人と動物とのかかわり. pp. 127–128. Tokyo bijutsu. Seino, Takayuki (2009) Hakkutsu sareta Nihon retto 2009 発掘された日本列島2009. p. 27. Agency for Cultural Affairs.
The kitsune figures in animations, comic books and .
Japanese metal idol band Babymetal refer to the kitsune myth in their lyrics and include the use of fox masks, hand signs, and animation interludes during live shows.
Western authors of fiction have also made use of the kitsune legends although not in extensive detail.
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