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The Fox's craft in Japanese religion and folklore: Shapeshifters, transformations and duplicities
Abstract
For more than a millennium, the fox has been a ubiquitous figure at the margins of the Japanese collective imagination. In the writings of the nobility and the motifs of popular literature, the fox is known as a shapeshifter, able to assume various forms in order to deceive others. Focusing on recurring themes of transformation and duplicity in folklore, theology, and court and village practice, The Fox's Craft explores the meanings and uses of shapeshifter fox imagery in Japanese history. Michael Bathgate finds that the shapeshifting powers of the fox make it a surprisingly fundamental symbol in the discourse of elite and folk alike, and a key component in formulations of marriage and human identity, religious knowledge, and the power of money. The symbol of the shapeshifter fox thus provides a vantage point from which to understand the social practice of signification.
... Vercor's fable on the duality of being a fox wife and a human within the same body easily transposed into my mind, the conflicted binaries of being deaf and hearing. In later years, I further constructed the fox wife as a shapeshifter known as the kitsune according to Japanese folklore (Bathgate, 2004). Here, the shapeshifter shares a great deal with other forms of metamorphosis ( henshin ), a theme whose striking ontological repercussions make it a fundamental element in mythic discourse the world over (O'Flaherty 1984:3). ...
Using an arts based posthumanist lens, (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987; jagodzinski & Wallin, 2013) I examine my evolving beliefs about American Sign Language (ASL) through the analysis of arts based data (poetry) (Leavy, 2015). Central to my analysis is an examination of Western domination and control of the language used by ‘othered’ communities through the imposition of dualisms, binaries and categories in sign language ideologies (Canagarajah, 2013). This exploration traces the evolution of sign language ideologies embraced by the deaf cyborg subject featured in the poetry volume as she explores ways to survive and resist the effects of a monolingual language ideology embedded in an imaginary assemblage containing intra-actions between human, animal, earth and machine (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987).
This article explores the role of Japanese folktales in Angela Carter’s oeuvre, focusing especially on the figure of the Japanese fox trickster that appears in Fireworks, Love, and The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman. In these works, the shape-shifting body of the East-Asian fox becomes a site of conflict between contrasting categories (male/female, European/Asian, human/animal) and mirrors the process by which the characters are turned into commodified, fictionalized representations of gender and race. The trickster’s ability to shift across the animal–human border also provides Carter with a narrative device to interrogate the cultural boundaries that define both sexuality and humanity (as opposed to bestiality)—a topic that prefigures her critique of patriarchal and anthropocentric hierarchies in The Bloody Chamber.
Which is the identity of a traveler who is constantly on the move between cultures and languages? What happens with stories when they are transmitted from one place to another, when they are retold, remade, translated and re-translated? What happens with the scholars themselves, when they try to grapple with the kaleidoscopic diversity of human expression in a constantly changing world? These and related questions are, if not given a definite answer, explored in the chapters of this anthology. Its overall topic, narratives that pass over national, language and ethnical borders include studies about transcultural novels, poetry, drama and the narratives of journalism. There is a broad geographic diversity, not only in the anthology as a whole, but also in each of the single contributions. This in turn demand a multitude of theoretical and methodological approaches, which cover a spectrum of concepts from such different sources as post-colonial studies, linguistics, religion, aesthetics, art and media studies, often going beyond the well-known Western frameworks. The works of authors like Miriam Toews, Yoko Tawada, Javier Moreno, Leila Abouela, Marguerite Duras, Kyoko Mori, Francesca Duranti, Donato Ndongo-Bidyogo, Rībi Hideo, and François Cheng are studied from a variety of perspectives. Other chapters deal with code-switching in West-african novels, border-crossing in the Japanese noh drama, translational anthologies of Italian literature, urban legends on the US-Mexico border, migration in German children's books, and war trauma in poetry. Most of the chapters are case studies, and may thus be of interest, not only for specialists, but also for the general reader.
This article analyzes female principle reflected in the images of goddesses of Japanese and Chinese mythology associated with the solar cult and light symbolism. An attempt is made to trace the role of female principle in the mythological phenomenon of Sky and its connection with Earth. The subject of this research is the Japanese and Chinese myths and legends, iconographic images of goddesses and their resemblance in foxes (Kitsune) in the religious painting of the XIII – early XX centuries. In the course of this work, the author applies comparative-historical and iconographic methods of research that lean on scientific materials dedicated to philosophy, culturology and art history. The relevance of the selected topic is substantiated by the fact that in globalizing world, the countries of the Far East are more capable of retaining ideological paradigms and preserving their national cultural identity due to traditionalism and spiritual consciousness. The novelty of this work consists in examination based on the iconographic material and mythological themes of solar manifestations of goddesses as demonstration of the energy of female principle and its reflection in the phenomenon of Sky – Earth connection. The conclusion is made that for assessing Japanese and Chinese art, it is essential to consider multicultural interaction of these countries founded on the the harmony of existence of human nature. The goddesses of Sun, Moon and Earth seek to communicate with the Sky, as in particular the autochthonous deity Inari through their intermediaries, the foxes. The sun and moon goddesses and Earth goddesses seek communication with the Sky, as the autochthonous deity Inari through their mediators – foxes. The female principle, resembled in femininity of divine foxes, is described as the endless struggle for immortality and opportunity to be in Heaven surrounded by the steam light and reason. The light saturation of female images contributes to their spirituality.
This article proposes a reconstruction and analysis of the rokujikyoho (Ritual of the six-syllable sutra), a complex healing liturgy that enjoyed great popularity in Japan between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. Performed by an assembly of Buddhist monks and onmyoji (yin-yang masters), the ritual used various techniques, such as talismans, hitokata, incantations, and medicinal remedies, which provided a comprehensive solution to different types of ailments. In this article I discuss their characteristics, as well as their relationship, to argue that their conflation into a single practice may be underpinned by a layered understanding of the cause and nature of pollution and diseases.
Chang’an 長安, the political, economic, and cultural center of the Sui-Tang period, is of great scholarly significance for the study of medieval Chinese political, religious, and cultural change. The scholarly study of Chang’an has already achieved research advances focused on the study of urban space, as well as politics, religion, ritual, and literature as they were manifested in the space of the urban wards in the process of (larger) social transformations. There are a relatively large number of contemporary studies that discuss the concrete, actual urban world. However, in reality there are abundant sources on Sui-Tang Chang’an’s history that provide information regarding the spiritual world of Chang’an. The spiritual or mental realm also comprises an important aspect of historical research that must not be overlooked. In addition to the actual, concrete world, the mental realm of Chang’an’s clerical and lay elites, as well as that of the mass of the populace, was also reflected in Chang’an’s urban spaces. On the level of life and death, the minds of Chang’an’s residents were preoccupied with an underworld. Between the realms of ‘darkness’ 幽 (the underworld 冥界) and ‘light’ 明 (the realm of the living 生界) there existed mechanisms for mutual communication, and thus information from the underworld could be conveyed to the realm of the living.
Buddhism is often romanticized for promoting great kindness toward nonhuman animals, but while the tradition grants animals a degree of subjecthood and does not categorically deny them reason, morality, or the potential for salvation, there are also ambiguities and contradictions, even outright anthropocentrism. This overview of recent research on animals in premodern Japanese Buddhism demonstrates that animals shared with humans their status as sentient, living beings and were often attributed with superhuman, if not divine, powers; and yet as beasts, they also had a subhuman status. Because of their simultaneous kinship with and persistent otherness from humans, nonhuman animals were anthropomorphized for didactic purposes, delineating unwholesome and meritorious human conduct and its karmic effects and expressing tensions between competing ritual and religious systems. As spiritually hindered and potentially volatile beings, animals received ritual attention, but the objectives of such rituals often did not consist of bettering the lives of animals in the here and now. Instead, these rituals were often motivated by propitiatory and soteriological concerns and sometimes even served to condone violence against animals despite the persistent antisacrificial rhetoric in Buddhist discourse.
A study of scholarly discourse on shikigami reveals diverse understandings of what this thaumaturgical emblem of Onmyōdō (way of yin and yang) represents. From a metaphorical reference to shikisen (an augury using astrological calculations and an augury instrument called shikiban), to a type of magical curse, to a supernatural being, the various explanations offered by Japanese scholars highlight the ambivalent nature oí shikigami and demonstrate the difficulties in establishing the exact nature of this enigmatic being. Although such variations in definition are a result of changing textual constructions of shikigami in Japanese classical literature, literary narratives still function as a useful source of social and cultural studies of early Japanese society. Through my study of shikigami, I seek to highlight the significance of Onmyödö in Japanese religiosity and provoke further studies in Japanese folklore beliefs while examining the use of literary narratives in religious studies.
The name of ‘Swan Maiden story’ is given to tales of three kinds, of which only one is of direct concern in this inquiry.
I. There are stories of bird-maidens who may appear as a single element, sometimes as birds, sometimes as maidens, according to the laws of their being.
II. There is a story woven from several motifs in which a man forces a bird-maiden to become his wife by stealing her feather-robe while she is bathing, thus preventing her from flying off. The pair have children, and one day the bird-woman recovers her feather-robe and flies away with them. As a sequel, the man may pursue her to the other place to which she has returned.
III. The winning of a bird-maiden by stealing her feather-robe may appear as but one element of a long and intricate story.