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Lafcadio Hearn - Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan, 1
- unto the most ancient gods in English! Verily, the shyest love presumes much upon the forbearance of
the gods. And great indeed must be, either the patience of Take-haya-susano-wo-no-mikoto, or the
rustiness of the ten- grasp sabre that was augustly girded upon him.
Chapter Fifteen Kitsune
1
By every shady wayside and in every ancient grove, on almost every hilltop and in the outskirts of every
village, you may see, while travelling through the Hondo country, some little Shinto shrine, before
which, or at either side of which, are images of seated foxes in stone. Usually there is a pair of these,
facing each other. But there may be a dozen, or a score, or several hundred, in which case most of the
images are very small. And in more than one of the larger towns you may see in the court of some great
miya a countless host of stone foxes, of all dimensions, from toy-figures but a few inches high to the
colossi whose pedestals tower above your head, all squatting around the temple in tiered ranks of
thousands. Such shrines and temples, everybody knows, are dedicated to Inari the God of Rice. After
having travelled much in Japan, you will find that whenever you try to recall any country-place you have
visited, there will appear in some nook or corner of that remembrance a pair of green-and-grey foxes of
stone, with broken noses. In my own memories of Japanese travel, these shapes have become de rigueur,
as picturesque detail.
In the neighbourhood of the capital and in Tokyo itself-sometimes in the cemeteries - very beautiful
idealised figures of foxes may be seen, elegant as greyhounds. They have long green or grey eyes of
crystal quartz or some other diaphanous substance; and they create a strong impression as mythological
conceptions. But throughout the interior, fox-images are much less artistically fashioned. In Izumo,
particularly, such stone-carving has a decidedly primitive appearance. There is an astonishing
multiplicity and variety of fox-images in the Province of the Gods - images comical, quaint, grotesque, or
monstrous, but, for the most part, very rudely chiselled. I cannot, however, declare them less interesting
on that account. The work of the Tokkaido sculptor copies the conventional artistic notion of light grace
and ghostliness. The rustic foxes of Izumo have no grace: they are uncouth; but they betray in countless
queer ways the personal fancies of their makers. They are of many moods - whimsical, apathetic,
inquisitive, saturnine, jocose, ironical; they watch and snooze and squint and wink and sneer; they wait
with lurking smiles; they listen with cocked ears most stealthily, keeping their mouths open or closed.
There is an amusing individuality about them all, and an air of knowing mockery about most of them,
even those whose noses have been broken off. Moreover, these ancient country foxes have certain natural
beauties which their modem Tokyo kindred cannot show. Time has bestowed upon them divers speckled
coats of beautiful soft colours while they have been sitting on their pedestals, listening to the ebbing and
flowing of the centuries and snickering weirdly at mankind. Their backs are clad with finest green velvet
of old mosses; their limbs are spotted and their tails are tipped with the dead gold or the dead silver of
delicate fungi. And the places they most haunt are the loveliest - high shadowy groves where the uguisu
sings in green twilight, above some voiceless shrine with its lamps and its lions of stone so mossed as to
seem things born of the soil - like mushrooms.
I found it difficult to understand why, out of every thousand foxes, nine hundred should have broken
noses. The main street of the city of Matsue might be paved from end to end with the tips of the noses of
mutilated Izumo foxes. A friend answered my expression of wonder in this regard by the simple but
suggestive word, 'Kodomo', which means, 'The children'
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