It is more than doubtful whether the popular notions about different
classes of foxes, and about the distinction between the fox of Inari and
the fox of possession, were ever much more clearly established than they
are now, except in the books of old literati. Indeed, there exists a
letter from Hideyoshi to the Fox-God which would seem to show that
in the time of the great Taiko the Inari-fox and the demon fox were
considered identical. This letter is still preserved at Nara, in the
Buddhist temple called Todaiji:
KYOTO, the seventeenth day of the Third Month. TO INARI DAIMYOJIN: My
Lord--I have the honour to inform you that one of the foxes under your
jurisdiction has bewitched one of my servants, causing her and others
a great deal of trouble. I have to request that you will make minute
inquiries into the matter, and endeavour to find out the reason of your
subject misbehaving in this way, and let me know the result.
If it turns out that the fox has no adequate reason to give for his
behaviour, you are to arrest and punish him at once. If you hesitate to
take action in this matter, I shall issue orders for the destruction of
every fox in the land.
Any other particulars that you may wish to be informed of in reference
to what has occurred, you can learn from the high-priest YOSHIDA.
Apologising for the imperfections of this letter, I have the honour to
be, Your obedient servant, HIDEYOSHI TAIKO [5]
But there certainly were some distinctions established in localities,
owing to the worship of Inari by the military caste. With the samurai
of Izumo, the Rice-God, for obvious reasons, was a highly popular
deity; and you can still find in the garden of almost every old shizoku
residence in Matsue, a small shrine of Inari Daimyojin, with little
stone foxes seated before it. And in the imagination of the lower
classes, all samurai families possessed foxes. But the samurai foxes
inspired no fear. They were believed to be 'good foxes'; and the
superstition of the Ninko or Hito-kitsune does not seem to have
unpleasantly affected any samurai families of Matsue during the feudal
era. It is only since the military caste has been abolished, and its
name, simply as a body of gentry, changed to shizoku, [6] that some
families have become victims of the superstition through intermarriage
with the chonin or mercantile classes, among whom the belief has always
been strong.
By the peasantry the Matsudaira daimyo of Izumo were supposed to be
the greatest fox-possessors. One of them was believed to use foxes as
messengers to Tokyo (be it observed that a fox can travel, according to
popular credence, from Yokohama to London in a few hours); and there
is some Matsue story about a fox having been caught in a trap [7] near
Tokyo, attached to whose neck was a letter written by the prince of
Izumo only the same morning. The great Inari temple of Inari in the
castle grounds--O-Shiroyama-no-Inari-Sama--with its thousands upon
thousands of foxes of stone, is considered by the country people a
striking proof of the devotion of the Matsudaira, not to Inari, but to
foxes.
At present, however, it is no longer possible to establish distinctions
of genera in this ghostly zoology, where each species grows into every
other. It is not even possible to disengage the ki or Soul of the Fox
and the August-Spirit-of-Food from the confusion in which both have
become hopelessly blended, under the name Inari by the vague conception
of their peasant-worshippers. The old Shinto mythology is indeed quite
explicit about the August-Spirit-of-Food, and quite silent upon the
subject of foxes. But the peasantry in Izumo, like the peasantry of
Catholic Europe, make mythology for themselves. If asked whether they
pray to Inari as to an evil or a good deity, they will tell you that
Inari is good, and that Inari-foxes are good. They will tell you of
white foxes and dark foxes--of foxes to be reverenced and foxes to be
killed--of the good fox which cries 'kon-kon,' and the evil fox which
cries 'kwai-kwai.' But the peasant possessed by the fox cries out: 'I am
Inari--Tamabushi-no-Inari!'--or some other Inari.