Talk:Kitsune

The Fox In The Brothel

In the time of our honorable forefathers, there dwelt in a mean mountain village of a faraway province a poor wood-cutter. This wood-cutter followed the way of the good man, taking no animal life for the solace of his belly and praying as a devout man should for the eternal welfare of his spirit.

One day in a ravine this good man came upon a lithe vixen, caught by the paw in a trapper's snare. The poor vixen seemed to implore him with many a beseeching moan and, with tears running down her muzzle, seemed to beseech him for succor with her dark fox eyes, so that in pity he would have released her. But being minded to rob no honest man, he trudged a long road down the mountain to his hut, and taking from a hiding place in the thatch a piece of silver, the fruit of weeks of toil, he returned to the ravine and set the vixen free.

After, he wrapped the silver piece in a bit of cotton cloth, tied it to the snare, and went on his way. The lithe vixen when he released her fled not, but watched as he paid the bit of silver for her life. Seeing this, as though understanding his heart, she fawned upon his feet and licked his hands and followed him limping to the mouth of the ravine, where she gave three sharp barks and sprang into the thicket.

The wood-cutter went home, more poor than ever in material things, but feeling gladdened in his spirit. The gamboling of the lithe vixen, her joy at living, was balm to his demeanor even as his belly grumbled at the price he had paid.

Now on the third evening thereafter, as the man squatted in the mouth of his hut resting from the sweaty labor of the day and contemplating the soul-purifying benefits of hunger, there appeared before him a damsel, clad in a plain brown-silk robe, swaying down the path to his mean dwelling like an aspen in gentle breeze. She demurely called to him, and he, looking upon her, realized that despite her simple garment she was possessed of a beauty to rival the Moon and the Heavens all together in their glory. Seeing her rare beauty and thinking her some great lady, wearing a rude disguise and strayed from her cavalcade, he prostrated himself before her and begged her pleasure.

Said she: "Abase not thyself, most handsome and good-hearted man! I am the fox which thy humanity set free the other night from the snare, and whose life thou didst purchase with thy silver piece. I have take this form in order to requite thy favor as I may, and I will serve thee with fealty so long as thou dost live." Her voice was as a silver bell, yet weighted with emotions as she offered herself, body and soul, to the poor woodcutter.

Abashed and dismayed, he cried: "Esteemed mistress of magic! Not for my unparalleled worthlessness is thy high consideration! I am eight times rewarded simply by this, thy visit. I am but a beggarly forester and thou a repository of all beauty. I could do your esteemed grace no honor, as I have nothing to give you, no mansion and no servants. I pray thee, make not sport of my low condition."

The beautiful fox maiden was taken aback at such perfect humility, but her clever wits saw her recovered in a flash. Said she: "Thou art a poor man, then? Suffer me at least to set thee on the way to wealth."

The wood-cutter was a good and humble man, but he was also no fool. When offered wealth by a fox spirit, it was wise to be cautious, but wiser still to hear her out. Asked he in his most diffident manner: "How may that be done?"

She replied: "Tomorrow morning don thy best robe and thy stoutest sandals and come to the mouth of the ravine where thou didst rescue me. There thou shalt see me in my true form. Follow whither I lead and good fortune shall be thine. This I promise on the word of a fox." At that he prostrated himself before the damsel in gratitude, and when he lifted himself she had vanished.

He did as she bid him, and next morning, when he came to the ravine, he found awaiting him the lithe vixen, who barked thrice and turning, trotted before him, leading him by paths he knew not across the mountain. In this manner they proceeded for strange days of travel, she disappearing in the thicket whenever a chance traveler came in view, and he satisfying his hunger with fruits and berries and slaking his thirst from the rivulets, and at night sleeping under strange stars.

So it came to be that the passage of the sun wound up the days till on the fourth noontide of this strange journey they descended into a mystical vale where lay a mystical city. At sundown they came to a grove hard by the city's outer barrier where was a shrine to the fox deity, Inari. Before this the vixen barked thrice, and bounded through its door. And presently the woodsman beheld the damsel issuing there from, robed now in rich garments decorated with bluebells, lavender, and fierce tiger lily. In truth, she was as beauteous as a lover's dream leaping from the golden heart of a plum blossom.

Said she: "Take me now - who am thy daughter - to the richest brothel in yonder city, and sell me to its master for a goodly price."

The goodly wood-cutter, even though tired from the hard journey, felt his heart quail with shock at her terrible words.

He answered: "Barter thee, to the red-hell hands of a conscienceless virgin-buyer? Never!"

Then, with a laugh like the silver voice of a fountain, she said: "Nay, calm thyself thou good-hearted, handsome, and gentle man, for thy soul shall be blameless. So soon as thou hast closed the bargain and departed, I shall take on my fox shape in the garden and get me gone, and thus the reward shall be thine and the evil intent of the virgin-seller shall be thwarted."

The wood cutter was not of a mind to partake in such an underhanded scheme, but a seller of virgins was a low and mean thing, and enriching himself at the expense of such a despicable rake seemed like a matter of good karma. So, as she bade him, he entered the city with her and inquiring the way to the quarter of houses of public women, came to its most splendid rendezvous. It was a proud and unabashed place of dissipation which was patronized only by brazen spendthrifts and purse-proud princes, where all night the painted drums spoke their mellow tempo and the samisen were never silent, and whose satiny corridors lisped with the whispers of the velvet-clad feet of scarlet-lipped courtesans.

As they approached this red house, so great was the damsel's beauty that a crowd trooped after them, and the master of the red house, when he saw her, felt his back teeth itch with the need to possess her. The wood-cutter told the master of the red house his tale, as he had been prompted, averring that he was a man whose life had fallen on gloomy ways so severely that he, who was a good man, was now constrained to sell his only daughter to bondage. At the hearing of this woeful tale the proprietor, his mouth watering at her loveliness and bethinking him of his wealthy clientele, seized ink-brush into his fist and plunked before him a bill-of-agreement providing for her three years' debased service for a sum of thirty gold ryo paid that hour into his hand.

The fox maiden said, "Oh my radiant father, preserve thou my hope in this dark time and place a provision that I might be ransomed by thee if providence dost permit?" The wood cutter nodded sagely at her advice, and the venal master of that red house did add such a phrase, chortling in his wicked heart that such provisions were worthless, as those luckless souls who were reduced to selling their daughters were lost to good providence.

At that the woodsman would dutifully have signed the hurtful document, but the damsel put forth her hand and stopped him saying: "Nay, my august father! I joyfully obey thy will in this as in all else, yet I pray thee bring not reproach upon our unsullied house by esteeming me of so little value." And, to the master of the place she said: "Methinks thou saidst sixty ryo."

The master of the red house was both astonished at her obedience to her father even in the face of such debased servitude, and abashed at her temerity in demanding a greater price for her charms. He answered, almost out of reflex: "Were I to give a rin more than forty, I were robbing my children."

Said she: "The perfume I used in our brighter days cost me ten each month. Sixty!"

Cried the red master, both appalled and delighted: "A thousand curses upon my beggarly poverty, which constraineth me. Have mercy and take fifty!"

At this she rose, saying: "Honorable parent, there is a house in a nearby street frequented, I hear, by a certain prince who may deem me not unattractive. Let us go thither, for this place seemeth of lesser standing and reputation than we had heard."

But the master of the red house ran and barred the door before their feet and, although groaning like an ox before the knacker, flung down the sixty gold ryo, and the woodsman set his name to the bill-of-agreement and bid her farewell and went home. As he traveled, even though he felt he should be rejoicing his fortune, his heart was troubled. The plan of the vixen seemed a good one, but laid all the risk at her feet, and the wood cutter was troubled for her safety. But she was a fox spirit, and the wood cutter resolved to let her do as fox spirits did, and banished his troubled thoughts, and went on his way.

Behind the woodcutter, in the mystical city in the vale, the master of the red house, glad at the capture of such a peerless pearl of maidenhood, gave her into the care of his madame to be robed in brocades and jewels. Once she was more resplendent than a thousand sunrises, he set her on a balcony, where her beauty shone so dazzling that she struck the senses of every man who passed by, the halted palanquins made the street impassable, and the proprietor of the establishment across the way all but slit his throat in sheer envy. Moreover, the son of the ruler of the province, hearing of the new-come marvel, sent to the place a vast gift of gold, requesting she be held in reserve from any other man, and her presence at a feast he was to give there that same evening.

Now this feast was held in an upper room overhanging the dark and raging river, and among the damsels who attended the noble guests, the fox-maiden was as the moon to a horde of broken paper lanterns, so that the princely host could not unhook his eyes from her and each and every one of his guests gave black looks of jealousy to whoever touched her sleeve. As the sake cup took its round, she turned her softest smile now to this one and now to that, flirting skillfully with first one, then another, beckoning each to folly till his blood bubbled with fiery passion and all were balanced on the thin knife-edge of a quarrel.

Once the party was inflamed with such tension that surely an explosion was imminent, the fox-maiden laid her weird upon the room. Influenced by her subtle magics, suddenly, the lights in the apartment flickered out and there was confusion, in the midst of which the damsel cried out in a loud voice: "O my Prince! One of thy guests hath fondled me! Make a light quickly and thou shalt know this false friend, for he is the one whose hat-tassel I have torn off."

Hers was a good gambit, and rage leapt in nearly every inflamed breast. In the darkness eager hands fell to weapons all through the room, but the Prince was made of finer cloth than most men, and he showed his mettle in the face of this crisis.

Cried out the Prince as his friends and courtiers did seize weapons in the darkness all about him (for he was true-hearted and of generous mind): "Nay, do each one of you, my comrades, tear off his hat-tassel and put it on his sleeve. For we have all drunk overmuch, and ignorance is sometimes better than knowledge."

Then after a moment he clapped his hands, and lights were brought, lo, there was no hat left with a tassel upon it.

The fox maiden, even in her straits in the red house of iniquity, was struck by the cool head and gentle wit of the Prince. But she weighed the goodness of the Prince, who reveled in a house of ill-repute with the purchased daughters of his lowborn subjects, against the goodness of the wood cutter, who went hungry to purchase the freedom of a lithe fox, and she found the goodness of the Prince was lacking.

More determined than ever to help the handsome wood-cutter and preserve her virtue, even though freely sold, she quickly seized a bolder plan, as direct and piercing as a thrust blade, which would not so easily be deflected by the Prince's wit.

And so the damsel artfully presented that she was outraged and insulted, her honor destroyed by the party of rakes and scoundrels. She sprang to her little feet, crying, " You make jest of my dishabille?! You leave me bereft of solace? You besmirch what little is left of my honor?! With this affront unavenged, I would not choose longer to live! Farewell, oh wretched despoilers!"

So crying, she darted into the next chamber as swift as a fox. Behind her arose a great hubbub and, stripping off her beautiful clothes in one great sweep, she cast them from the window into the swift current of the dark river. She herself, taking on her fox form, leaped down and hid in a burrow under the riverbank.

So quick was she that when the party of the Prince rushed in they found her vanished, with only a window facing out over the torrent of the dark river as the avenue of her flight. Finding the window wide and her vanished and seeing the splendid robe borne away by the rushing water, they deemed that she had indeed drowned herself. The Prince and his party made outcry, and the master of the red house plucked out his eyebrows in his distress, and both his folk and the gallants of the Prince put forth in many a boat, searching for her fair body all that night, but naught did they discover save only her loincloth.

Now on the fourth evening after that woeful night in the red house of iniquity, as the wood-cutter sat in his doorway, the damsel appeared before him, robed in a kimono of pine-and-bamboo pattern, with an obi of jeweled dragonflies tangled in a purple mist.

Asked she: "Oh, my good and handsome man, have I kept my fox-word? Have I not lead thee to wealth, as repayment for the good deed thou bestoweth upon me?"

He answered most humbly, "Aye, lovely spirit of the fox, you have kept your word eighty times over. This morning I purchased a plot of rich rice land, and tomorrow the builders, with what remaineth, begin to erect my good new house so I might work it and prosper ever after."

Said she then: "Thou art no wood-cutter henceforth, but a man of substance. No longer does your low stature restrain you from knowing me. Look upon me, thou gentle man. Wouldst thou not have me to wife?" Her tone was gentle and persuasive, her demeanor beseeching, as she said this and truly, she was as lovely and desirable as a virgin meadow in the morning of the world.

But he, seeing how her carriage was as graceful as the swaying of a willow branch, her flawless skin the texture of a magnolia petal, her eyebrows like sable rainbows, and her hair glossy as a sun-tinted crow's wing, and knowing himself for an untutored hind, scrambled up from his humble stoop and knelt in abasement before her and said: "Nay, wise one! I am poor no longer thanks to your intercession, but I am still a man of the earth, a humble, meager man of low blood and birth. Doth the bitter raven ever dare mate with the snow-white heron?"

Then she said, smiling: "Then do my bidding once again. Tomorrow return to the city and to the brothel where thou didst leave me, and offer, as the bargain provided, to buy me back. Since the master of the house cannot produce me, he must need pay over to thee damage money, and see that thou accept not less than what he was gifted for my time there." So saying, she became a fox and vanished in the bushes.

So next morning he took his purse and crammed it with copper pieces and betook himself across the mountain, and on the third day he arrived at the city. There he hastened to the brothel and demanded its master, to whom he said, jingling the heavy-laden purse beneath his nose: "Good fortune is mine, oh master of the red house! By providence I am bade to un-do the bargain we made only a week ago. So I am come to redeem my beloved daughter and to return thee thy price, as was agreed between us."

At that the master of the red house felt his liver shrink and sought to put him off with all manner of excuses, but the woodsman insisted the more, so that the other at length had no choice but to tell him that the girl had drowned herself.

When he heard this the woodsman's lamentations filled all the place, and he beat his head upon the mats, crying out that naught but ill treatment had driven her to such a course, and swearing to denounce the proprietor to the magistrates for a bloody murderer, till from dread to see his establishment sunk in evil repute, the man ran to his strongbox and sought to offer the bereaved one golden solace.

The good man, mindful of the fox maidens instruction, said: "I would not have you profit from the demise of such a fine girl! I demand from you every dram and mote you profited from her, twice over!"

The master of the red house became as pale as the foam upon the river at these words, and he did protest mightily. It was only when the magistrate of the mystical city did visit with his squad of soldiers that the buyer of virgins did pay the price he was asked. The Prince's golden gift went to the good man, and to match that vast sum the master of the red house was obliged to sell away nearly everything else he possessed, including the very brothel he had run so cruelly, and went away from the mystical city a poor man.

Thus, with two Prince's worth of golden bounty the woodsman returned to his village, with an armed guard of ten men for an escort, where he rented a strong house for the money's safekeeping.

The night of his return, as he sat on his fine new doorstep, thanking all the deities for his good luck, the fox-maiden again appeared before him, this time clad only in the soft moon-whiteness of her lovely skin, so that he was struck dumb at her boldness and beauty and was forced by his virtue to turn away his face from the sight of her.

Asked she: "Oh good and handsome man, have I kept my fox-word?" Her power was upon her in full measure, unleashed by her boldness, and as she was skyclad, unfiltered by any making of man upon her body. Her simple words rolled like gentle thunder, stirring the trees in all directions.

And he answered, stammering: "You have kept your word eight hundred times over, oh Lady Vixen! Today I am the richest man in these parts."

Said she in her voice of softest thunder: "You will not have me as wife, despite my softest entreaties. So I come to you like this, tempering my approach no longer. Look upon me. Wouldst thou not possess me as thy concubine?"

Then, peeping despite himself betwixt his fingers, he beheld the clear and lovely luster of her satiny skin, the generous swell of her snowy bosom, her narrow waist and the sweet curves of her hips and thighs, and all his senses clamored like bells, so that he covered his eyes with his sleeve to keep his wits about him.

And said he: "O generous bestower! Forgive the unspeakable meanness of this degraded nonentity. My descendants to the tenth generation shall burn richest incense before the golden shrine which I shall presently erect to thee. But I am a man and thou art a fox! We are different orders of being, oh benevolent beauty, and no matter what we may wish, different orders of being may not mingle! I may not knowingly consort with you, oh terrible and beautiful one, for to do so will break the strictures of the very world!"

Then suddenly he saw a radiance of the five colors shine rainbow-like around her, and she cried out in a voice of exceeding great joy, saying: "Blessing and benison upon thee, O incorruptible one! As a fox I have dwelt upon the earth for five hundred years, and never before have I found among humankind one whose merit had the power to set me free. Know that by the virtue of thy purity I may now quit this animal road for that of humankind. I say thee, I put aside now my nature as Fox, I am reborn naked as a babe, and I stand before you as human as thou art!"

So saying, her vast spirit power went out of her like a great rushing wind, and when it had passed, she stood before him as a human maiden, as beautiful as ever but no longer terrible and unworldly. She tumbled down in a faint as he leapt to catch her, and he laid her in a fine bed and saw her cared for, and in the fullness of time he took her honorably as his fine wife.

They lived in joy and peace for many, many years, and had many fine children together, as they were the happiest couple any had ever seen. They formed the beginnings of a great and good family, and together they built a shrine to the Fox Spirits in the mouth of the mountain ravine, and it is told that their children's grandchildren worship before it to this day.