Kitsune Shapeshifting

The kitsune is the fox of Japanese folklore, and no other animal plays a more central role in the folkloric imagination. Long-lived, witty, capable of taking human form, breathing small fireballs, and possessing the unwary, the kitsune is both a figure of fun and a figure of dread. It is the messenger of the rice goddess Inari, the rival of the tanuki trickster, the lover of unwary scholars, and the topic of one of the strangest love stories in the Japanese literary tradition.

The Fox in the Older Japanese World

The Japanese fox appears in the earliest written records of the islands. The eighth-century chronicles Kojiki and Nihon Shoki speak of foxes as messengers of the kami of the harvest, and from the start the creature has occupied an awkward position between the wild animal and the deity. The fox was feared by farmers, who watched their chickens and their ducks, but it was also revered, because a fox appearing near the rice field was taken as a sign of Inari’s favour.

The art of the fox’s transformation, known in Japanese as henge (変化), is the central folkloric motif. The tanuki, the badger, the snake, the weasel, the cat, and the crow can all, in the appropriate stories, take human form, but the fox is the artist par excellence. The Chinese huli jing and the Korean gumiho belong to a single east Asian tradition of long-lived fox spirits, and the stories have travelled back and forth across the China Sea for more than a thousand years.

Hōjō, Henge, and the Art of the Fox

The fox’s main supernatural abilities are three: hōjō (放生), the breathing of small fireballs; henge, the taking of human form; and kitsune-tsuki, the possession of a human being. In the early evening, a fox can be seen exhaling small pale flames that float in the air. The hōjō was used for illumination rather than for destruction, and the older stories tend to be amused rather than alarmed by it.

The henge is more ambitious. A fox that has lived a hundred years or more can take the form of a man or a woman. The white fox of the Inari shrine is the heavenly messenger; it is permitted, even required, to take human form in order to deliver the will of the goddess to the priests. The black fox is the protective messenger; the red fox is the more alarming messenger, and the appearance of a red fox at a household was a serious omen.

The Nine Tails: Kyūbi no Kitsune

The most powerful fox of all is the nine-tailed fox, the kyūbi no kitsune (九尾の狐), which has lived a thousand years or more. The nine tails are the badge of full maturity and the sign that the fox has joined the ranks of the divine. The older Chinese accounts, from which the Japanese tradition borrowed, place the nine-tailed fox in the time of the sage-king Yu and again at the court of the Han dynasty, where she became the favoured concubine of Emperor Wu.

The nine-tailed fox has, in the last hundred years, become a major figure in popular culture. The image of the great white or red fox with nine flowing tails, surrounded by fire, is now a familiar figure in Japanese anime, manga, and video games, and the motif has spread into the global pop culture of the K-drama and the manhwa. The wider tradition of the mythical creatures of the world places the figure in its global context.

Inari, the Rice Goddess, and the Fox Messengers

The cult of Inari, the kami of rice, of prosperity, of the household, and of the fox, is the most important institutional setting for the kitsune folklore. The head shrine at Fushimi Inari, on the southern edge of Kyoto, is a great complex of small shrines winding up the wooded slopes of Mount Inari, and every neighbourhood in Japan has at least one of its smaller Inari shrines. The Inari fox is not a yōkai or a supernatural animal; it is the messenger (tsukai) of the kami, and it is honoured as such.

Kitsune-Tsuki: Fox Possession

The most alarming of the kitsune’s powers is kitsune-tsuki, fox possession. The condition was recognised in the Heian and Edo periods as a medical, religious, and social problem, and a substantial literature of case histories has survived. The afflicted person, usually a young woman, would speak in a strange voice, take on canine mannerisms, climb trees, refuse to eat rice, and answer questions in a high, mocking tone. The diagnosis was made by a yamabushi ascetic or by an Inari priest, and the cure was an exorcism at the shrine.

The most famous case history is that of the Heian-era woman who was possessed by a fox and was treated by the great onmyōji Abe no Seimei. The possession was eventually identified as the work of a fox who had been slighted by the family. The cure involved writing the name of the fox on a piece of paper, sealing it, and burying it in the shrine grounds. The motif is, however, much older than the medieval period: the Chinese huli jing tradition includes possession stories going back to the Tang dynasty, and the Indian vetala stories and the European were-fox tradition are wider parallels.

Kuzunoha: The Fox Wife and the Scholar

The most famous love story of the Japanese kitsune tradition is the tale of Kuzunoha, the fox wife of the scholar Abe no Yasuna. Yasuna, walking through the capital, met a beautiful young woman being harassed by drunken men. He came to her aid; she thanked him; they fell in love; they were married; she bore him a son. Years later, the great onmyōji Abe no Seimei recognised the signs of a fox in the household. One day, the boy saw his mother at the doorway; her shadow was a fox. The truth came out.

The mother, weeping, took her leave of her husband and her son. She left a parting verse, written with her tail: “If you think of me, look for me in the violets by the eastern hills of Nara.” The boy, grown to a man, went to the eastern hills, found the place, and there saw his mother in the form of a beautiful woman, smiling. The Kuzunoha story is the Japanese equivalent of the Lady White Snake of the Chinese folk tradition and the Celtic selkie wife of the European north — the marriage of a human and a non-human spouse, the discovery of the truth, the parting.

The Modern Kitsune

The kitsune has not been a passive inheritance. The white, black, and gold foxes of the Inari shrines are still there, and the red fox of the older possession stories still haunts the J-horror films. The kemono-folk of the modern anime and manga — characters who can take human and animal form — are direct descendants of the older kitsune. The Inari cult has followers in the United States, in Brazil, and in Europe; the J-horror films of the early 2000s made the figure of the long-haired fox woman a global cinematic shorthand. The modern oral storytelling traditions of the world are now part of the same long chain.

Sources and Further Reading

Bathgate, Michael. The Fox and the Jewel: Shared and Private Meanings in Contemporary Japanese Inari Worship. University of Hawaii Press, 2004.
Smyers, Karen A. In the Shadow of the Sun: A Contemporary Appreciation of the Sun Goddess and the Japanese Monarchy. Routledge, 1999.
Nozaki, Kiyoshi. Kitsune: Japan’s Foxes of Mystery, Romance and Humor. Translated by Linda C. Grimm. Heian International, 2002.
Foster, Michael Dylan, and Shinonome, Kijin. The Book of Yōkai: Mysterious Creatures of Japanese Folklore. Chronicle Books, 2015.