Now the belief in foxes does not affect persons only: it affects
property. It affects the value of real estate in Izumo to the amount of
hundreds of thousands.
The land of a family supposed to have foxes cannot be sold at a fair
price. People are afraid to buy it; for it is believed the foxes may
ruin the new proprietor. The difficulty of obtaining a purchaser is
most great in the case of land terraced for rice-fields, in the
mountain districts. The prime necessity of such agriculture is
irrigation--irrigation by a hundred ingenious devices, always in the
face of difficulties. There are seasons when water becomes terribly
scarce, and when the peasants will even fight for water. It is feared
that on lands haunted by foxes, the foxes may turn the water away from
one field into another, or, for spite, make holes in the dikes and so
destroy the crop.
There are not wanting shrewd men to take advantage of this queer belief.
One gentleman of Matsue, a good agriculturist of the modern school,
speculated in the fox-terror fifteen years ago, and purchased a vast
tract of land in eastern Izumo which no one else would bid for. That
land has sextupled in value, besides yielding generously under his
system of cultivation; and by selling it now he could realise an immense
fortune. His success, and the fact of his having been an official of the
government, broke the spell: it is no longer believed that his farms are
fox-haunted. But success alone could not have freed the soil from the
curse of the superstition. The power of the farmer to banish the
foxes was due to his official character. With the peasantry, the word
'Government' is talismanic.
Indeed, the richest and the most successful farmer of Izumo, worth more
than a hundred thousand yen--Wakuri-San of Chinomiya in Kandegori--is
almost universally believed by the peasantry to be a kitsune-mochi. They
tell curious stories about him. Some say that when a very poor man he
found in the woods one day a little white fox-cub, and took it home, and
petted it, and gave it plenty of tofu, azukimeshi, and aburage--three
sorts of food which foxes love--and that from that day prosperity came
to him. Others say that in his house there is a special zashiki, or
guest-room for foxes; and that there, once in each month, a great
banquet is given to hundreds of Hito-kitsune. But Chinomiya-no-Wakuri,
as they call him, can afford to laugh at all these tales. He is a
refined man, highly respected in cultivated circles where superstition
never enters.