Kitsune, the fox spirit

Where the legend comes from

The magical fox came to Japan from China. The Classic of Mountains and Seas (Shanhaijing), compiled between the Warring States period and the early Han dynasty (roughly the 4th to 2nd centuries BCE), describes a creature on Mount Qingqiu that "looks like a fox with nine tails" and cries like a baby. It eats people, and whoever eats it is protected from sorcery [4, 5]. Around the 4th century CE, the scholar Guo Pu wrote that a fox can become a woman at fifty, a beauty at a hundred, and a heavenly fox at a thousand years [6].

Japan's oldest written fox tale is in the Nihon Ryōiki, a collection of Buddhist stories compiled by the monk Kyōkai in the early 9th century. A man from Mino Province marries a beautiful stranger, and the family dog keeps attacking her. One day it frightens her into her true fox shape. Still in love, the husband asks her to "come and sleep" with him every night. In Japanese that is kitsu-ne, a famous folk explanation for the word "kitsune" [3, 1].

Messengers of Inari

Kitsune are best known as the messengers of Inari, the kami of rice, harvests and business success. The head shrine, Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto, dates back to 711. More than 30,000 shrines across Japan are dedicated to Inari [9, 10]. Its mountain paths run through about 10,000 vermilion torii gates, donated by companies and individuals hoping for prosperity [9].

Stone foxes guard these shrines in pairs, often wearing red bibs. Many hold a key to the rice granary or a wish-granting jewel in their mouths [11, 1]. Foxes are said to love fried tofu (aburaage). That is why tofu-wrapped inari sushi and kitsune udon are named after them [9].

Tails and foxfire

In the stories, a fox's power shows in its tails. Tellings disagree on the numbers. Many say a fox grows a new tail every hundred years or so, and nine tails mark a fox of about a thousand years: the kyūbi no kitsune, wise and very powerful [2, 7].

Foxes also make kitsunebi (狐火), "foxfire": ghostly lights that drift through the dark and sometimes lead travellers astray [2]. Folk belief also divides foxes into good, often white foxes that serve Inari (zenko) and mischievous wild ones (yako) [1, 8].

Three famous foxes

• Tamamo-no-Mae. A brilliant court beauty who made Emperor Toba (r. 1107–1123) fall gravely ill, until a diviner exposed her as a nine-tailed fox. She fled to Nasu, was killed, and her spirit became the Sesshō-seki, the "killing stone." The real stone in Nasu, Tochigi, split in two in March 2022, most likely from cracks and weathering [12, 13].
• Kuzunoha. A white fox who became the wife of Abe no Yasuna. Their son was said to be Abe no Seimei, Japan's most famous court diviner. When her secret came out, she had to leave her child behind. A version was printed as early as 1662 [7].
• The fox wife of Mino. The Nihon Ryōiki tale above, the oldest of them all [3].

How artists picture the kitsune

At shrines the fox is a calm guardian of stone or bronze. In Edo-period woodblock prints it becomes something stranger. Utagawa Hiroshige's 1857 print shows foxes gathering at a tree near Ōji Inari Shrine on New Year's Eve, breathing small flames. Local farmers read those fires to predict the next harvest [14]. Tsukioka Yoshitoshi's 1890 print shows Kuzunoha in human form as she leaves her child [15]. Across these images the fox is beautiful, a little uncanny, and never just an animal.

Taleyra's kitsune follows the same tradition. She is white like Inari's messengers, has nine tails for a thousand years of wisdom, and is surrounded by foxfire.

Kitsune today

The nine-tailed fox is still everywhere. It appears as Ninetales in Pokémon, as Kurama in Naruto and as Ahri in League of Legends. Its cousins live on as the huli jing of China and the kumiho of Korea. And every year, millions of visitors walk the torii tunnels of Fushimi Inari, past the stone foxes that still guard the gates.