On Taking a Fox as a Wife and Having a Child (1:2)
In the past, during the reign of Emperor Kinmei, a man from Oono in the province of Mino left by horseback, intent on finding a good woman to take as his wife. By chance, he happened upon an open field and met an exceedingly beautiful woman. Winking and acting overfamiliar, he asked her where she was going. “I went out to look for a good husband,” she replied.
Hearing this, he told her, “Why don’t you become my wife?” and when she agreed, he took her into his home and they were immediately married. After a short while together, the woman became pregnant and gave birth to a baby boy. Around the same time, the household’s dog gave birth to a pup on the fifteenth day of the twelfth month. Each time that newborn pup saw the mistress of the house, he barked ferociously and chased after her. Terrified, she asked her husband to kill the dog, however thinking this a lamentable thing, he could not do it.
Around the second or third month, when the yearly portion of rice was harvested, the wife went to the building where the rice was pounded and gave the women there some refreshments. The mother dog came after her, barking and biting. She was so startled and afraid that she turned into a fox! The master of the house saw this and said, “Since we have had a child together, there is no way I can forget you. Please always come back here and sleep together with me.” For this reason, the fox did as her husband asked and came nightly to sleep with him. This is the reason she is known as “kitsune,”* a fox.
Whenever she left, her scarlet skirt would rustle in the wind. Her husband, sick with love and seeing her face as she left, composed the following poem:
koi wa mina
wa ga ue ni ochinu tama kagiru
harakani miete
inishi
No one loves more deeply than I
After such a brief meeting
She has gone.
This is why their child was named Kitsune, and that Kitsune-no-atae became his surname. The child possessed incredible strength and ran as quickly as a bird might fly. He is the beginnings of the Kitsune-no-atae family in Mino Province.
* The pun here is illustrated in the title of this entry, “Come and sleep” in some form of pre-modern Japanese sounds exactly like the word for “fox” – kitsune. It’s possible the author of the Nihon Ryoiki wants to provide an etymology lesson, however, the idea that this is the true basis for the word is best treated with a grain of salt and left to the more whimsical.
Many of our stories of the fox in Japan are taken from various setsuwa collections, in particular, the Kon’jaku Monogatari. The above story is the first extant fox wife tale in Japan, although the roots of the story must certainly extend further back in order to justify its recording in this particular collection. This setsuwa is found in the Nihon Ryoiki and the enigmatic (1:2) by the title indicates that it is located in the upper volume and the second story in volume itself. My translation is taken from the Shinpen Nihon Koten Bungaku Zenshuu.
I’m embarrassed to say that I was re-typing this from a paper and the original translation I submitted was filled with typos! Terrible!
