depicting Kuzunoha's departure. A young nobleman,
Abe no Yasuna (安倍 保名), is on his way to visit a
shrine in Shinoda, in
Settsu Province, when he encounters a young military commissioner who is hunting foxes in order to obtain their livers for use as
medicine. Yasuna battles the hunter, sustaining several wounds, and sets free the white fox he had trapped. Later, a beautiful woman named Kuzunoha helps Yasuna to return to his home. She is the fox he saved, adopting human form in order to tend to his wounds. He falls in love with her and they marry. She bears him a child,
Seimei (childhood name Dōji), who proves prodigiously clever. Kuzunoha realizes that her son has inherited part of her supernatural power. Several years later, while Kuzunoha is viewing some
chrysanthemums, her son catches sight of the tip of her tail. Her true nature revealed, Kuzunoha prepares to return to her life in the wild. She leaves behind a farewell
poem, asking her husband Yasuna to come to see her in Shinoda Forest. Yasuna and his son search for Kuzunoha, and eventually she appears to them as a fox. Revealing that she is the
kami, or spirit, of Shinoda Shrine, she gives her son Seimei a gift, allowing him to understand the language of animals. ==Plays==