Kitsune (and, incidentally, Old Man Coyote)

This entry was delayed because I thought it would be interesting to explore a popular shapeshifter whose lore has become twisted and changed by modern subcultures: the Japanese kitsune. However, what I discovered in my research was oftentimes contradicting, and in the end it proved very difficult to get down into the most traditional of stories and accounts without finding ones that had been altered by modern ideas. This was troublesome, and I slept on it.

Earlier this morning, I found a website that accomplishes pretty fairly what I'd had an idea to do in this entry. Watts Martin's article "Coyote of the Orient" does a fantastic job analyzing the kitsune (shapeshifting foxes) mythologies and how they compare to Native American stories about Old Man Coyote, who is a fellow shapeshifter of good, evil, neutral, self-serving, beneficial, malevolent, sexual, amoral, moral, and generally chaotic nature. The article may be found at this link.

I highly reccommend reading through it thoroughly. Martin makes the connection between the fox and the femme fatale character, showing how kitsune myths reflect this. He discusses the "Konjaku Monogatari, a 31-volume collection of narratives written in the 11th century," which is the source for most traditional kitsune stories that remain in existance today. Interestingly, the collection was authored by Takakuni, a Buddhist, at a time when Buddhism had entered Japan and the ideas of karma and samsara were being integrated into society. The kitsune characters in his stories became figures much like Coyote: they were used as negative lessons, as figures NOT to emulate.

Cleverness used in a negative fashion is a common trend in kitsune stories. Martin quotes Kiyoshi Nozaki, who writes:

"Kitsune, as you will read in such a book as the Konjaku Monogatari, is an animal wanton by nature. It is supposed to satisfy its desire by having relations with men through the art of bewitchery. Apart from the question of the possibility of this, you will notice, in the fox tradition, that kitsune is making use of its superior brains in various ways in bewitching men. This is the time-honored tradition of Japan in regard to the bewitchery of kitsune."

The kitsune legends are yet another example in which the human-shifted creature is described as having an alluring beauty. Their shifting ritual generally involves the donning of a skull and praying until they become human, but the reversion to fox seems to be instantaneous. Lesser-seen abilities of the kitsune include possession (similar to demonic possessions in Western cultures) and fox-lights, or will-o-wisps. The idea of foxes being connected to fire (an element of passion and hypnotic power) is not terribly unusual.

In some kitsune stories they are connected with Inari, the rice god. They seem to serve as messengers or guardians of the shrine to Inari, and are usually depcited as white foxes in these cases. Foxes that do not serve Inari are generally referred to as "wild foxes," or nogitsune.

At the end of his article, Martin provides a bibliography with some further reading suggestions. In short, he's done the work for me. Have a look at the full contents of his article; you won't be disappointed.