Kitsune
The ''', in popular Japanese folklore, is a fox or fox spirit which possesses the supernatural ability to shapeshift or bewitch other life forms.
General overview
Etymology
The full etymology of kitsune is unknown. The oldest known usage of the word is in the text Shin'yaku Kegonkyō Ongi Shiki, dating to 794.Other old sources include the aforementioned story in the Nihon ryōiki and Wamyō Ruijushō. These old sources are written in Man'yōgana, which clearly identifies the historical form of the word 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:
- Myōgoki suggests that it is so called because it is "always yellow ".
- Arai Hakuseki in Tōga suggests that ki means 'stench', tsu is a possessive particle, and ne is related to inu, the word for 'dog'.
- Tanikawa Kotosuga in Wakun no Shiori suggests that ki means 'yellow', tsu is a possessive particle, and ne is related to neko, the word for 'cat'.
- Ōtsuki Fumihiko in Daigenkai proposes that the word comes from kitsu, which is an onomatopoeia for the bark of a fox, and ne, which may be an honorific referring to a servant of an Inari shrine.
- Nozaki also suggests that the word was originally onomatopoetic: kitsu represented a fox's yelp and came to be the general word for 'fox'; -ne signified an affectionate mood.
Nihongi chronicle
In the Nihon Shoki, the fox is mentioned twice, as omens. In the year 657 a byakko or "white fox" was reported to have been witnessed in Iwami Province, possibly a sign of good omen. And in 659, a fox bit off the end of a creeping vine plant held by the laborer, interpreted as an inauspicious omen foreshadowing the death of Empress Saimei the following year.For pre-historic considerations before the chronicles, Cf.
Anciently-aged foxes
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.In Japanese folklore, Kitsune have as many as nine tails. 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, that the queen-consort Daji 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. 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 which a 1,000 year old fox turns into.
Inari Shinto deity
According to Hiroshi Moriyama, a professor at the Tokyo University of Agriculture, foxes have come to be regarded as sacred by the Japanese because they are the natural enemies of rats that eat up rice or burrow into rice paddies. Because fox urine has a rat-repelling effect, Japanese people placed a stone with fox urine on a hokora of a Shinto shrine set up near a rice field. In this way, it is assumed that people in Japan acquired the culture of respecting kitsune as messengers of Inari Okami.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, 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.
Swordsmith deity
Aburage
The fact that Japanese soup noodles garnished with fried slice of tofu called aburage or abura-age are called kitsune udon and kitsune soba stems from the popular belief the Inari deity prefer to be offered the abura-age.However, the custom of offering abura-age must have arisen rather late. In comparison, the notion that the fox's favorite food being nezumi no abura-age dates farther back, since it is attested in 's Matsunoya hikki, which also cites a Muromachi period work Sekyō shō.
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.
Some commentators have extrapolated 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 dumpling coated with soy flour was offered, which was people colloquially called something like "oil ling", which hints at this actually being an oil-fried dough treat as found in Chinese cuisine.
Buddhist context
notes that the idea of the fox as seductress and the connection of the fox myths to Buddhism were introduced into Japanese folklore through similar Chinese stories, but she maintains that some fox stories contain elements unique to Japan.Foxes were blamed as a cause for illness, and the Buddhist liturgy called rokujikyōhō were being performed to exorcize it since those times.
Kitsune are connected to the Buddhist religion through the Dakiniten, goddesses conflated with Inari's female aspect. Dakiniten is depicted as a female boddhisattva wielding a sword and riding a flying white fox.
Classifications
A number of authors tried to classify and sub-classify the foxes in different ways, starting from the Heian Period, intensifying in the Edo Period. A sample of it is given as anonymously undated opinions by Lafcadio Hearn.The Inari Shinto liturgical text Inari no hiden lists five types of foxes to be revered, mainly the three: tenko, kūko, chiko, plus byakko, and kūko. 's Yūhisai sakki appeared, which ranks the yako as the most obtuse, followed by the newly created kiko, kūko, then tenko. 's essay Zen'an zuihitsu, Book 2 gives his own conclusion that there are tenko, byakko, genko, 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.
Good vs. evil, or
Hearn's observation was that the Izumo Province during the time of his residence there did conform to the idea that kitsune divided into the good, which are Inari foxes, and the bad. The worst of the bad are called ninko, and there are other bad, called the Yako.However, Hearn also doubts that such a stark differentiation between the Inari fox and possession fox 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". And it was in that milieu that Miyagawa Masakazu in Book 3 of his essay work set apart zenko and yako'' as the bad. According to Miyagawa, the good fox breaks down further into five subtypes: gold, silver, white, black, and celestial.
Eye for eye, favor for favor
One analysis is that the kitsune will avenge malice with malice, but generally does not repay goodwill with malice, and is loyal to its debt.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 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.