Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan (35 page)

All foxes have supernatural power. There are good and bad foxes. The
Inari-fox is good, and the bad foxes are afraid of the Inari-fox. The
worst fox is the Ninko or Hito-kitsune (Man-fox): this is especially the
fox of demoniacal possession. It is no larger than a weasel, and
somewhat similar in shape, except for its tail, which is like the tail
of any other fox. It is rarely seen, keeping itself invisible, except to
those to whom it attaches itself. It likes to live in the houses of men,
and to be nourished by them, and to the homes where it is well cared for
it will bring prosperity. It will take care that the rice-fields shall
never want for water, nor the cooking-pot for rice. But if offended, it
will bring misfortune to the household, and ruin to the crops. The wild
fox (Nogitsune) is also bad. It also sometimes takes possession of
people; but it is especially a wizard, and prefers to deceive by
enchantment. It has the power of assuming any shape and of making itself
invisible; but the dog can always see it, so that it is extremely afraid
of the dog. Moreover, while assuming another shape, if its shadow fall
upon water, the water will only reflect the shadow of a fox. The
peasantry kill it; but he who kills a fox incurs the risk of being
bewitched by that fox's kindred, or even by the ki, or ghost of the fox.
Still if one eat the flesh of a fox, he cannot be enchanted afterwards.
The Nogitsune also enters houses. Most families having foxes in their
houses have only the small kind, or Ninko; but occasionally both kinds
will live together under the same roof. Some people say that if the
Nogitsune lives a hundred years it becomes all white, and then takes
rank as an Inari-fox.

There are curious contradictions involved in these beliefs, and other
contradictions will be found in the following pages of this sketch. To
define the fox-superstition at all is difficult, not only on account of
the confusion of ideas on the subject among the believers themselves,
but also on account of the variety of elements out of which it has been
shapen. Its origin is Chinese [4]; but in Japan it became oddly blended
with the worship of a Shinto deity, and again modified and expanded by
the Buddhist concepts of thaumaturgy and magic. So far as the common
people are concerned, it is perhaps safe to say that they pay devotion
to foxes chiefly because they fear them. The peasant still worships what
he fears.

It is more than doubtful whether the popular notions about different
classes of foxes, and about the distinction between the fox of Inari and
the fox of possession, were ever much more clearly established than they
are now, except in the books of old literati. Indeed, there exists a
letter from Hideyoshi to the Fox-God which would seem to show that in
the time of the great Taiko the Inari-fox and the demon fox were
considered identical. This letter is still preserved at Nara, in the
Buddhist temple called Todaiji:

KYOTO, the seventeenth day
of the Third Month.
TO INARI DAIMYOJIN:-

My Lord—I have the honour to inform you that one of the foxes under
your jurisdiction has bewitched one of my servants, causing her and
others a great deal of trouble. I have to request that you will make
minute inquiries into the matter, and endeavour to find out the reason
of your subject misbehaving in this way, and let me know the result.

If it turns out that the fox has no adequate reason to give for his
behaviour, you are to arrest and punish him at once. If you hesitate to
take action in this matter, I shall issue orders for the destruction of
every fox in the land.

Any other particulars that you may wish to be informed of in reference
to what has occurred, you can learn from the high-priest YOSHIDA.

Apologising for the imperfections of this letter, I have the honour to be
Your obedient servant,
Your obedient servant,
HIDEYOSHI TAIKO [5]

But there certainly were some distinctions established in localities,
owing to the worship of Inari by the military caste. With the samurai of
Izumo, the Rice-God, for obvious reasons, was a highly popular deity;
and you can still find in the garden of almost every old shizoku
residence in Matsue, a small shrine of Inari Daimyojin, with little
stone foxes seated before it. And in the imagination of the lower
classes, all samurai families possessed foxes. But the samurai foxes
inspired no fear. They were believed to be 'good foxes'; and the
superstition of the Ninko or Hito-kitsune does not seem to have
unpleasantly affected any samurai families of Matsue during the feudal
era. It is only since the military caste has been abolished, and its
name, simply as a body of gentry, changed to shizoku, [6] that some
families have become victims of the superstition through intermarriage
with the chonin or mercantile classes, among whom the belief has always
been strong.

By the peasantry the Matsudaira daimyo of Izumo were supposed to be the
greatest fox-possessors. One of them was believed to use foxes as
messengers to Tokyo (be it observed that a fox can travel, according to
popular credence, from Yokohama to London in a few hours); and there is
some Matsue story about a fox having been caught in a trap [7] near
Tokyo, attached to whose neck was a letter written by the prince of
Izumo only the same morning. The great Inari temple of Inari in the
castle grounds—O-Shiroyama-no-InariSama—with its thousands upon
thousands of foxes of stone, is considered by the country people a
striking proof of the devotion of the Matsudaira, not to Inari, but to
foxes.

At present, however, it is no longer possible to establish distinctions
of genera in this ghostly zoology, where each species grows into every
other. It is not even possible to disengage the ki or Soul of the Fox
and the August-Spirit-of-Food from the confusion in which both have
become hopelessly blended, under the name Inari by the vague conception
of their peasant-worshippers. The old Shinto mythology is indeed quite
explicit about the August-Spirit-of-Food, and quite silent upon the
subject of foxes. But the peasantry in Izumo, like the peasantry of
Catholic Europe, make mythology for themselves. If asked whether they
pray to Inari as to an evil or a good deity, they will tell you that
Inari is good, and that Inari-foxes are good. They will tell you of
white foxes and dark foxes—of foxes to be reverenced and foxes to be
killed—of the good fox which cries 'kon-kon,' and the evil fox which
cries 'kwai-kwai.' But the peasant possessed by the fox cries out: 'I am
Inari—Tamabushi-no-Inari!'—or some other Inari.

Goblin foxes are peculiarly dreaded in Izumo for three evil habits
attributed to them. The first is that of deceiving people by
enchantment, either for revenge or pure mischief. The second is that of
quartering themselves as retainers upon some family, and thereby making
that family a terror to its neighbours. The third and worst is that of
entering into people and taking diabolical possession of them and
tormenting them into madness. This affliction is called 'kitsune-tsuki.'

The favourite shape assumed by the goblin fox for the purpose of
deluding mankind is that of a beautiful woman; much less frequently the
form of a young man is taken in order to deceive some one of the other
sex. Innumerable are the stories told or written about the wiles of fox-
women. And a dangerous woman of that class whose art is to enslave men,
and strip them of all they possess, is popularly named by a word of
deadly insult—kitsune.

Many declare that the fox never really assumes human shape; but that he
only deceives people into the belief that he does so by a sort of
magnetic power, or by spreading about them a certain magical effluvium.

The fox does not always appear in the guise of a woman for evil
purposes. There are several stories, and one really pretty play, about a
fox who took the shape of a beautiful woman, and married a man, and bore
him children—all out of gratitude for some favour received—the
happiness of the family being only disturbed by some odd carnivorous
propensities on the part of the offspring. Merely to achieve a
diabolical purpose, the form of a woman is not always the best disguise.
There are men quite insusceptible to feminine witchcraft. But the fox is
never at a loss for a disguise; he can assume more forms than Proteus.
Furthermore, he can make you see or hear or imagine whatever he wishes
you to see, hear, or imagine. He can make you see out of Time and Space;
he can recall the past and reveal the future. His power has not been
destroyed by the introduction of Western ideas; for did he not, only a
few years ago, cause phantom trains to run upon the Tokkaido railway,
thereby greatly confounding, and terrifying the engineers of the
company? But, like all goblins, he prefers to haunt solitary places. At
night he is fond of making queer ghostly lights,
[99]
in semblance of
lantern-fires, flit about dangerous places; and to protect yourself from
this trick of his, it is necessary to learn that by joining your hands
in a particular way, so as to leave a diamond-shaped aperture between
the crossed fingers, you can extinguish the witch-fire at any distance
simply by blowing through the aperture in the direction of the light and
uttering a certain Buddhist formula.

But it is not only at night that the fox manifests his power for
mischief: at high noon he may tempt you to go where you are sure to get
killed, or frighten you into going by creating some apparition or making
you imagine that you feel an earthquake. Consequently the old-fashioned
peasant, on seeing anything extremely queer, is slew to credit the
testimony of his own eyes. The most interesting and valuable witness of
the stupendous eruption of Bandai-San in 1888—which blew the huge
volcano to pieces and devastated an area of twenty-seven square miles,
levelling forests, turning rivers from their courses, and burying
numbers of villages with all their inhabitants—was an old peasant who
had watched the whole cataclysm from a neighbouring peak as
unconcernedly as if he had been looking at a drama. He saw a black
column of ashes and steam rise to the height of twenty thousand feet and
spread out at its summit in the shape of an umbrella, blotting out the
sun. Then he felt a strange rain pouring upon him, hotter than the water
of a bath. Then all became black; and he felt the mountain beneath him
shaking to its roots, and heard a crash of thunders that seemed like the
sound of the breaking of a world. But he remained quite still until
everything was over. He had made up his mind not to be afraid—deeming
that all he saw and heard was delusion wrought by the witchcraft of a
fox.

Strange is the madness of those into whom demon foxes enter. Sometimes
they run naked shouting through the streets. Sometimes they lie down and
froth at the mouth, and yelp as a fox yelps. And on some part of the
body of the possessed a moving lump appears under the skin, which seems
to have a life of its own. Prick it with a needle, and it glides
instantly to another place. By no grasp can it be so tightly compressed
by a strong hand that it will not slip from under the fingers. Possessed
folk are also said to speak and write languages of which they were
totally ignorant prior to possession. They eat only what foxes are
believed to like—tofu, aburage,
[100]
azukimeshi,
[101]
etc.—and they
eat a great deal, alleging that not they, but the possessing foxes, are
hungry.

It not infrequently happens that the victims of fox-possession are
cruelly treated by their relatives—being severely burned and beaten in
the hope that the fox may be thus driven away. Then the Hoin
[102]
or
Yamabushi is sent for—the exorciser. The exorciser argues with the
fox, who speaks through the mouth of the possessed. When the fox is
reduced to silence by religious argument upon the wickedness of
possessing people, he usually agrees to go away on condition of being
supplied with plenty of tofu or other food; and the food promised must
be brought immediately to that particular Inari temple of which the fox
declares himself a retainer. For the possessing fox, by whomsoever sent,
usually confesses himself the servant of a certain Inari though
sometimes even calling himself the god.

As soon as the possessed has been freed from the possessor, he falls
down senseless, and remains for a long time prostrate. And it is said,
also, that he who has once been possessed by a fox will never again be
able to eat tofu, aburage, azukimeshi, or any of those things which
foxes like.

It is believed that the Man-fox (Hito-kitsune) cannot be seen. But if he
goes close to still water, his SHADOW can be seen in the water. Those
'having foxes' are therefore supposed to avoid the vicinity of rivers
and ponds.

The invisible fox, as already stated, attaches himself to persons. Like
a Japanese servant, he belongs to the household. But if a daughter of
that household marry, the fox not only goes to that new family,
following the bride, but also colonises his kind in all those families
related by marriage or kinship with the husband's family. Now every fox
is supposed to have a family of seventy-five—neither more, nor less
than seventy-five—and all these must be fed. So that although such
foxes, like ghosts, eat very little individually, it is expensive to
have foxes. The fox-possessors (kitsune-mochi) must feed their foxes at
regular hours; and the foxes always eat first—all the seventy-live. As
soon as the family rice is cooked in the kama (a great iron cooking-
pot), the kitsune-mochi taps loudly on the side of the vessel, and
uncovers it. Then the foxes rise up through the floor. And although
their eating is soundless to human ear and invisible to human eye, the
rice slowly diminishes. Wherefore it is fearful for a poor man to have
foxes.

But the cost of nourishing foxes is the least evil connected with the
keeping of them. Foxes have no fixed code of ethics, and have proved
themselves untrustworthy servants. They may initiate and long maintain
the prosperity of some family; but should some grave misfortune fall
upon that family in spite of the efforts of its seventy-five invisible
retainers, then these will suddenly flee away, taking all the valuables
of the household along with them. And all the fine gifts that foxes
bring to their masters are things which have been stolen from somebody
else. It is therefore extremely immoral to keep foxes. It is also
dangerous for the public peace, inasmuch as a fox, being a goblin, and
devoid of human susceptibilities, will not take certain precautions. He
may steal the next-door neighbour's purse by night and lay it at his own
master's threshold, so that if the next-door neighbour happens to get up
first and see it there is sure to be a row.