I/ TRANSACTIONS OF THE ASIATIC SOCIETY OF JAPAN, 1 -- VOL. XXXVI : PART3. -- CONTENTS: I THE FOX AND BADGER IN JAPANESE FOLKLORE, 1 YOKOIIAMA,SHANCIIAI, IIONGKONC, SHINCAMRE : KELLY & WAISII,1.'~) 'I'UKYO: 2. P. MAKUYACo., L'I). i Lon;uo~:KEGAN I'AUI, TKUEUNEK& CU. L'u. I 1.r11zlc: 01-ro IIn~n~ssuwrrz. i 7 1908. - - - .-. PRINTEDAT Tar YuKura YHINTINUCU., LT~..No. nl. YAUAYIIITA-CHO.YOKOHAMA, JAPAN. THE FOX AND BADGER IN JAPANESE FOLKLORE, Dr. M. W.de VISSER. THE FOX AND THE BADGER IN JAPANESE FOLKLORE. 6 From olden titnes down to tKe present day the fox has played the most important part in Japanese animal-lore. This clever brute is considered to be more skillful than any other ai~imalin taking human shape and haunting and possessing men. Moreover, the fox is the messenger of Inari, the Rice goddess, which, as we shall see below, is only a later expression of the fact that Inari, the Spirit of the Rice, was believed to have a vulpine shape. It is clear that this belief gave the fox a double character in the eyes of the Japanese people: that of a beneficent god, representing the Rice, the greatest blessing of the country, and, on the other hnnd, that of a wicked demon, haunting and possessing men. Not so important and complicated is the badger, of whose three kinds, the arnl~ki(@-I, mr~/i'~za(a) and 7tznrtzr (m,the first is the principal in folklore and is very orten combined with the fox in the term Lori (a@), or " foxes and badgers."' I. In Chinese the two characters were sometimes combined, with the meaning " foxes " only. So we find in .Shrrr slrrir Ki (a91 ZE) of Yij I'AO (3g), a work of the fourth century, referred to by Professor DE Gaom (Xrli&-io~u of Chirnr, Vol. IV. p. ~gr),the combitled term E, and even the s~nglec aracter 31&, used in the sense of simply " foxes." This explains why according to BAKIN(E,..jlsCki snssh;, Ch. V, nr 2, p. 11) the same legend was told nl;out a tanuki instead of foxes in the Chinese work Pni jrirrg ku.ku.ang ki (kP fc), written in the tenth century. It is remarkable that I,uou~ENKYS, who quotes Yij PAO'Stale (J>fUro~wkrrkc37', IV, pp. 183 sqq.) should give a quite different text although the story is the same. According to his quotntioll it was a single spotted fox which changed itself into n student, and the character fl does cot occur in the text. The zoBlogid name cf the tanuki is 'lwnis 1)rocynoides," the Raccoon dog," but, ah it is generally known under the name " badger," wc use this term for both tanu1.i and mujinn. 2 THE FOX AND THE BADGER The tanuki as well as the nlujina can change themsclvcs into nlen and haunt and possess mankind, but they are not so sl<illful or dangerous as the fox, since they lack the divinity which gives this aninla1 such a special position in the world of superstition. There is a very logical reason for the double and con- tradictory character of the fox in Japan. As stated at the beginning of my pnper on the Tengul, China's influence on Japanese folklore is enormous. \Ve shall soon sce that the Chinese ideas about the fox have all been taken up by this docile people, and we shall be able to draw a sharp line between original and borrowed property. The original is the divine rice spirit and perhaps the fox-sorcery, the borrowcd is all the rest. CHAPTER I. The fox in China. It is again from Professor DE GROOT'S" Iir,/igiozls .S~~SILVIJ of Chi~m" that ii7cget aniplc information on this subject. We read tllerc2 : " IColr I IUNGsays in tlle Poo Po/i-tsz2? ' Foxes and wolves may all attlin an age of eight hundred years, and when more than five hundrcd years old, they are able to metan~orphoscthen~sclvcs into beings shapcd like men.' " In the chapter entitled " \hTerefoxes "4 DE GROOT quotes four tales from YUPAD'S Shnr shnt k?, a work written in the first decades of the fourth century" The first story7 tells about I. Transactions, Vol. XSSVI. 2. vo1. IV, p. 182. 3. )p 3, a work of thc fourth century, Ch. I, Sect. 3. IIcrc we find again 3g combined. 4. Vol. IV, pp. 188-196. 5. See almve p. I, notc I. 6. Comp. Vol. IV, p. iS, notc I. 7. Vol. IV, p. 18s. IN Jr\P.+\NESE FOLKLOIZE. 3 a man who Imd run away and was found in an enlpty grave. To quote fuithcr fro~llDE G~our'stranslation : " His shape is quite that of a fox, and docs not in any respect correspond to the human form, and no other sounds does he utter but 0-tszi (m R,rcd), which is a name for foxes. After ten days or so he gradually recovers consciousness, and then he relates the following : ' When the fox came to nle for the first time, it assumed the shape of a lovely wonlan in a fowl-house standing . in a hidden corner of my dwelling. She told me she bore the name of 0-tszE, and called me ; and when she had done .so more than once, I followed hcr, and slic became my wife. At night I frequently accompanied her to her dwelling, without being perceived by the dogs we met ; the plcrisures I enjoyed with her were incomparably delightful.' A Taoist doctor declared that vixen to be a mountain-devil. Thc ' Description of Famous Mount2ins " says that the fox is a lewd wife, who lived in ren~otesttimes and bore the namc of 0-tszG ; she adopted thc fox shape, and hence it is that such spooks oRen call themselves 0-tszE." The second talea, quotcd also in a different fonnVy INOUE~,speaks about two foxes, over n thousand years old, which lived in the tomb of a king. They transformed them- selves into youtl~fulstudent5 with extraordinxry capncities and fine features, who, n1o;ntcd on horseback, wcnt to a very ' talented nlinister to argue with him, against the warning of the spirit of the glorification trcc which stood before the tomb. When the minister could not chccl<nlatc them for the space of three days, he got suspicious and tcmpted then1 with dogs, but they did not show thc slightest fcar. " To bc surc," he exclainlcd, Is they arc slxctres of thc true sort. If a hundred years old, they must change their shape at the sight of hounds ; 'a 4 DZ. 2. Vol. IV, p. 1%. 3. Comp. above p. I, note I. 4 fik;oizi;.nkri kZO1', $ :fi 3, Vul. IV, 1,. 18;. 4 THE FOX AND THE BADGER if they are spooks of a thousand years, they must change when fire produced by an animated tree of the same old age shines on them." So he sent some servants to the tomb in order to fell the glorification tree. They found the spirit of the tree-a young child in blue garments-sitting in a cavity in the tree's side, and whcn this spirit heard concerning the matter, he wept and lamented the ignorance of thc old foxes and his own fate, whereupon he vanished. Then when the servants fclled the tree, blood gushed forth from it. They took the wood home .and kindled it, whereupon it causcd th: foxes to turn into their own shape again. They were then caught and cooked by the minister. The third story1 runs as follows. A devout n~onk,who passed the night in a gravc copse, saw in thc n~oonlighta wild fox placing withered bones and a slcull upon its head, and whcn the animal after some practice succeeded in n~ovingits l~ead without dropping them, it covercd its body with grass and leaves and cha~<ed into a beautiful woman. Staying by the road-side she deludcd a man, who passed by on horseback, by hcr wccping and sad story, so that he was about to talce hcr with hi111 on his horse, when the monk came out of the grave copse and warned hinl that it was a fox. Tile monk, malting a mystic sign (mudra) with his fingcrs, uttcring a genuine formula (dhiirani), and brandishing his crosier, caused the woman to fall down, change into an old vixen and cxpirr. Nothing remained on the body of the fox but thc dry borlcs with the slcull, th:: grass and the lcavcs. In the fourth Iegcnd' a hoary-l~cndcdlearned man, whose name was IIu" and who once suddenly disapp-ared, ~vas discovered by his sti~dentsin the shapc of an old fox, explaining - a book to a pack of foscs, drawn up in filcs before him in an empty gravc. - - . -- - - I. Vol. IV, 11, 192, COIII~. ISIJ~J,:,1.1. IV, 1). 1S6. 2. VOI. IV, I>. Ivj ; (~IIOIC<Iby ISO~II:,1.1. IV, 1). IS^. 3. #j, ~IT~II~uI~~~Iill tllc +nttle w.ly a. z, &ax. IN JAPANESE FOLKLOHE. 5 Vol. IV, p. 194 of DE GROOTrefers to the Yiuyang lsrJr tsul, where we read : " It is an old saying that the wild fox bears the nanie of Tszi?, Red ( ). At night he strikes fire out of his tail. Whcn he desires to appear as a spook, he puts a human skull on his head and salutes the Great Bear constclla- tion, and the transformation is then effected as soon as the skull ceases to fall." On the same page we find a story from the / ywtzg con- cerning a nlan who always had a rank snlell about him and until his death had a great fear of dogs.