(To read Heinz's full essay on 'Fox Wives & Other Dangerous Women,' go here.) Popular media often report stories of young women possessed by demonic kitsune, and once in a while, in the more rural areas, one will run across positive reports of the kitsune associated with the rice god, Inari.' Tabloid media in Tokyo recently identified the negative influence of kitsune possession among members of the Aum Shinregyo (the cult responsible for the sarin attacks in the Tokyo subway).

Whereas the arcane aspects of fox lore are only known to specialists in other East Asian countries, the Japanese kitsune lore is more commonly accessible. The Japanese fox, or kitsune, probably due to its resonance with the indigenous Shinto religion, is remarkably sophisticated. 'Korean fox lore, which comes from China (from sources probably originating in India and overlapping with Sumerian lamia lore) is actually quite simple compared to the complex body of fox culture that evolved in Japan. They drain the men of their yang - their masculine force - and leave them dissipated or dead (much in the same way La Belle Dame Sans Merci in Keats's poem leaves her parade of hapless male victims). Fox wives, writes Korean-American folklorist Heinz Insu Fenkl, are seductive creatures who 'entice unwary scholars and travelers with the lure of their sexuality and the illusion of their beauty and riches.

Fox, kitsune (the Japanese fox wife), kumiho (the Korean nine-tailed fox), and other perfidious shape-shifters.įox women populate many story traditions but they're particularly prevalent across the Far East. but at the darker end of the fox-lore spectrum we find creatures of a more dangerous cast: Reynardine, Mr. Trickster foxes (whether comic, deadly, or, as is often the case, a combination of the two) appear in old stories gathered from countries and cultures all over the world - including Aesop's Fables from ancient Greece, the Reynard stories of medieval Europe, the Giovannuzza tales of Italy, the Brer Fox lore of the American South, and stories from diverse Native American traditions. The folkloric fox found trotting through the 'Reynardine' ballad in yesterday's post comes to us in a dark Trickster guise: both courteous and treacherous, creative and destructive, perfectly civilized and utterly wild.

The Fox Woman by Kij Johnson