Cats, foxes, and badgers are regarded with superstitious awe by the
Japanese, who attribute to them the power of assuming the human shape
in order to bewitch mankind. Like the fairies of our Western tales,
however, they work for good as well as for evil ends. To do them a
good turn is to secure powerful allies; but woe betide him who injures
them!--he and his will assuredly suffer for it. Cats and foxes seem to
have been looked upon as uncanny beasts all the world over; but it is
new to me that badgers should have a place in fairy-land. The island
of Shikoku, the southernmost of the great Japanese islands, appears to
be the part of the country in which the badger is regarded with the
greatest veneration. Among the many tricks which he plays upon the
human race is one, of which I have a clever representation carved in
ivory. Lying in wait in lonely places after dusk, the badger watches
for benighted wayfarers: should one appear, the beast, drawing a long
breath, distends his belly and drums delicately upon it with his
clenched fist, producing such entrancing tones, that the traveller
cannot resist turning aside to follow the sound, which,
Will-o'-the-wisp-like, recedes as he advances, until it lures him on
to his destruction. Love is, however, the most powerful engine which
the cat, the fox, and the badger alike put forth for the ruin of man.
No German poet ever imagined a more captivating water-nymph than the
fair virgins by whom the knight of Japanese romance is assailed: the
true hero recognizes and slays the beast; the weaker mortal yields and
perishes.
The Japanese story-books abound with tales about the pranks of these
creatures, which, like ghosts, even play a part in the histories of
ancient and noble families. I have collected a few of these, and now
beg a hearing for a distinguished and two-tailed[74] connection of
Puss in Boots and the Chatte Blanche.
[Footnote 74: Cats are found in Japan, as in the Isle of Man, with
stumps, where they should have tails. Sometimes this is the result of
art, sometimes of a natural shortcoming. The cats of Yedo are of bad
repute as mousers, their energies being relaxed by much petting at the
hands of ladies. The Cat of Nabéshima, so says tradition, was a
monster with two tails.]