Kitsune

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• Japan · Japanese

  Kitsune

  fox · ninko or hito-kitsune, "man-fox" (Izumo)

  Shapeshifters

  

  Inari faith links the fox with the kami: a fox was said to lead the mountain kami down to the rice paddies, and Fushimi Inari Taisha has a shrine, Myōbusha, where fox spirits are worshipped. In the folk belief Lafcadio Hearn recorded in Izumo in the early 1890s, the goblin fox deceives people by enchantment, and its favourite disguise is a beautiful woman. Hearn also notes stories of a fox who took a woman's shape, married a man and bore him children out of gratitude.

  In its sacred form the fox belongs to a living religion: the Encyclopedia of Shinto counts more than 30,000 Inari shrines, and their fox images are part of active worship, not props. The feared side of the belief has harmed real families: Hearn recorded that households said to keep foxes (kitsune-mochi) were shunned in Izumo and their daughters could marry only into other such families, and that "kitsune" itself was a deadly insult for a certain kind of woman. The card romanticises neither side.

  Earliest written source not verified

  Lafcadio Hearn, "Kitsune", Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (1894)

  Tradition · not evidence