Kuzunoha

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The Kitsune Kuzunoha. Note the fox's shadow on the screen. Color woodcut by Kuniyoshi , around 1845.

Kuzunoha ( Japanese 葛 の 葉 , "arrowroot leaf") is the name of a famous fox spirit in Japanese folk beliefs. As a good mother fox, Kuzunoha represents in a certain way the counterpart to the evil Tamamo no Mae , to which it seems to fit that it is a descendant of Kuzunoha's son Abe no Seimei (921-1005) - the Onmyoji Abe no Yasuchika - who is sometimes called Tamamo no Mae called "fox witch" unmasked.

Legend

The first traces of Kuzunoha can be found in Nihon Ryōiki (vol. I, ore. 2). The story takes place at the time of Kinmei Tennō (r. 539-571). It is also the oldest manuscript of a Japanese fox ghost story, but the name Kuzunoha has not yet been mentioned directly. Instead, the story contains a (folk) etymological explanation of how the Japanese word for fox, kitsune , came about:

A man from the land of Mino goes out to find a wife. In the fields he meets a beautiful woman who, it turns out, is also looking for a marital union. They get married and soon she becomes pregnant while the Lord's bitch is giving birth to a puppy at the same time. This puppy is always very aggressive towards you. One day, when the young dog has grown up, he attacks the woman, so that she suddenly takes on her fox form and climbs on a nearby fence. Her husband comes and calls: "Come ( ki ) you sleep with me as usual ( tsune )." And because she, who then follows him, is actually a vixen, the fox has been called kitsune ever since . The children she conceives are also called kitsunes. Then later she leaves her family and returns to the woods.

Different variants and folk tales grew out of this original legend, and later also plays. The first version in Nihon Ryōiki of the 9th century was later further embellished in Konjaku monogatari-shū (11th-12th centuries). In the earliest variants, the vixen comes to a man in order to marry him. It is later added that this is done in order to repay a debt through the marriage out of gratitude: Her husband, Abe no Yasuna, saved her from hunters. Their later return to the woods becomes an act of self-sacrifice.

In a variant, the man is looking for Kuzunoha, who has disappeared in the Shinoda forest of Izumi, and just when he desperately wants to kill himself and his son because he no longer wants to live without her, she appears one last time to give them one golden box and a crystal as a present. The box should enable one to understand the secrets of heaven and earth, the crystal to understand the language of birds and animals. That is why her son of the fox, the famous court official and scholar of astronomy, Abe no Seimei, had his outstanding knowledge.

Shrine of the Kuzunoha in Izumi

In Izumi there is a Kuzunoha Inari shrine , which was built on the place where Kuzunoha is said to have disappeared and left her farewell poem on tissue paper . There are different versions of this. One is:

“Do you long for me, oh
so come visit me!
I am the arrowroot in
Izumi's Shinoda forest.
Oh pain to leave you! "

In the area there is also the Kagami Pond, which is said to be linked to the legend and which is designated by the city as a historical site.

literature

  • Jacob Raz: Kuzunoha, the devoted fox-wife. A storyteller's version . In: Journal of Asian Studies. Madras, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1984, ISSN  0970-2806 pp. 63-93.
  • Ylva Monschein: The magic of the fox fairy. Origin and change of a "femme fatale" motif in Chinese literature. Univ. Heidelberg, Diss., 1987 (Ffm. 1988), ISBN 3-89228-204-8 .
  • Janet E. Goff: Conjuring Kuzunoha from the World of Abe no Seimei . In: Samuel L. Leiter (Ed.): A Kabuki Reader: History and Performance. ME Sharpe, New York 2001, ISBN 0-7656-0704-2 .
  • Klaus Mailahn: The fox in belief and myth. Münster 2006, ISBN 3-8258-9483-5 .

Web links

Commons : Kuzunoha  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mailahn 2006, p. 194; Mizuyo Ashiya: Japanese and German animal fairy tales, especially fox fairy tales, in their essence and according to their ethnographic basis. Univ. Cologne, Phil. Diss., 1939, pp. 37-38.
  2. ↑ Hermann Bohner: Legends from the early days of Japanese Buddhism. Textband, Tokyo 1934, pp. 65-66; Mailahn 2006, p. 171; see also Nihon Ryo-Wiki, I-02 (University of Vienna) from around 800
  3. ↑ Original wording: Tsune ni ki rite, ne yo. It is ultimately unclear whether kitsune should mean “come as always” or “come and sleep with me”. In any case, the etymology is not really conclusive.
  4. ↑ Mailahn 2006, p. 172.
  5. ↑ Mailahn 2006, pp. 179-180.
  6. ↑ a b Mailahn 2006, p. 181.