Yanagita Kunio’s Studies of Japanese Fox Beliefs

Record summary

Kunio Yanagita collected and discussed Japanese beliefs concerning foxes, fox possession, deceptive apparitions, and the boundary between animals and humans in rural narrative. These materials offer a useful East Asian comparison for shape-changing beings because kitsune traditions combine transformation, social suspicion, illness explanations, and literary motifs. The precise relevant essays and editions require checking, since Yanagita’s folklore discussions appeared across journals and later collected works rather than in one uniformly titled case file. They represent historical belief and folklore documentation, not confirmation of literal metamorphosis.