KITSUNE

Twenty-five Japanese tales of the kitsune — the fox that dens under the storehouse floor, holds an office at Inari’s shrines, and has standing business with the people whose road it crosses.

Of Japan’s uncanny beings, the fox lives closest to people. The serpent keeps to its water; the mountain things keep to their mountains. The fox crosses the road in open daylight and waits at the ford where the riders pass. The old records treat it accordingly — not as a marvel from somewhere else, but as a neighbour.

Not every fox here is an enemy, and remarkably few are monsters. Leave is asked before one works another’s ground. A penance is assessed and paid on schedule. The foxes of a whole island come in a body to petition a lord for a life, and an oath is drawn up fair between them, with divine names copied in for witnesses.