Kitsune Story - FABLES IN IVORY
Japanese Netsuke and their legends.
By Adrienne Barbanson
At the age of fifty, the legend goes, the fox acquires the power to
transform himself into a woman, at one hundred, he can take the
guise of a pretty young girl. He see's everything, hears
everything, and knows everything that goes on within a radius of
hundreds of miles.
He can poison people or take possession of their bodies.
Only the intervention of a Yamabushi or warrior priest from the
mountains, says the legend, can force the fox spirit to leave the
body of the person possessed. Innumerable folk tales relate the
adventures, practical jokes, and sorcery undertaken by fox.
Among theses stories is the following....
A goldsmith who made decorations for swords had brought down upon
himself the wrath of foxs, whom he persecuted pitilessly. One day
a woman appeared at his shop and requested that she go with her to
show a number of his golden ornaments to a wealthy nobleman who was
a friend of hers and who wished to buy some of them.
The goldsmith prepared a handsome assortment of his works and
accompanied the woman to the entrance of a sumptuous mansion. There
he turned over to her all the ornaments he had brought, and she
requested him to wait while she took them inside. But hardly had
she passed through the door before the astonished goldsmith
suddenly saw the mansion crumble into dust and utterly disappear.
Nothing remained but an old abandoned water hole- and a fox that
went scurrying away, flashing his white teeth at the bewildered
goldsmith.
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