To the Japanese, the fox is a shape-shifter. Long thought to be a messenger from the harvest goddess, Inari, valued for killing the mice that would destroy the rice crops in the fields.Then the Chinese introduced the idea of the trickster fox that could transform itself at will, becoming a beautiful woman who bewitched men and made them act against their best interests.
Shimamura's fox appears serenely oblivious to the projections of self-centered humans, at home in the world with its own purposes.
White Fox (1914) by Kanzan Shimomura, Tokyo National Museum.
The Fox Wedding by Ogata Gekko.
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2 comments:
There's a Japanese folktale, The Fox Wife (no. 24 in The Yanagita Kunio Guide to the Japanese Folktale) in which a man does a kindness to a fox, who reappears to become his wife. She leaves, or is sent away, when he sees her tail. Also a very poetic variant, The Loving Fox (story 81 in Royall Tyler, Japanese Tales), in which the price of a man consummating his desire for a beautiful fox-women will be his death - but the fox chooses to die in his stead.
Thnak you for adding something special to this piece.
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