Kitsune are commonly portrayed as lovers, usually in stories involving a young human male and a kitsune who takes the form of a human woman. The kitsune may be a seductress, but these stories are more often romantic in nature. Typically, the young man unknowingly marries the fox, who proves a devoted wife. The man eventually discovers the fox's true nature, and the fox-wife is forced to leave him. In some cases, the husband wakes as if from a dream, filthy, disoriented, and far from home. He must then return to confront his abandoned family in shame.
Nihon Ryōiki The earliest "fox wife" () tale type, concerning a wife whose identity as fox is revealed after being frightened by the house pet dog, occurs in
Nihon Ryōiki, an anthology of Buddhist tales compiled around 822. The plotline involves a man who takes a wife, whose identity is later revealed to be a fox pretending to be a woman. In this story, a man from ,
Mino Province{{Refn|group="lower-alpha" --> found and married a fox-wife, who bore a child by him. But the household dog born the same time as the baby always harassed the wife, until one day frightened her so much she transformed back into a , construed to mean "wild fox". Although the husband and wife become separated (during the day), she fulfills the promises to come sleep with him every night, hence the Japanese name of the creature, meaning "come and sleep" or "come always", according to the
folk etymology presented in the tale. Alternate versions of the fox-wife tale appeared later during the
Kamakura-period in the works
Mizukagami and
Fusō Ryakuki of the 12th century. The fox-wife's descendants were also depicted as doing evil things by taking advantage of their power. According to the foregoing story, the fox-wife's child became the first ancestor of the surname . However, in another tale from the
Nihon Ryōiki, a story was told about a ruffian female descendant; the tale was also placed in the repertoire of the later work
Konjaku monogatari. Here, the woman nicknamed "Mino kitsune" (Mino fox), was tall and powerful and engaged in open banditry seizing goods from merchants. Seimei was purported to have been born a hybrid between the (non-historical) Abe no Yasuna, and a white fox rescued by him that gratefully assumed the shape of the widower's sister-in-law, Kuzunoha to become his wife, a piece of fantasy with the earliest known example being the
Abe no Seimei monogatari printed 1662, and later adapted into puppet plays (and
kabuki) bearing such titles as
Shinodazuma ("The Shinoda Wife", 1678) and ("A Courtly Mirror of Ashiya Dōman", 1734).
Konjaku monogatari Another medieval "fox wife" tale is found in the (c. 11–12th century), Book 16, tale number 17, concerning the marriage of a man named Kaya Yoshifuji, but the same narrative about this man and the fox had already been written down by
Miyoshi Kiyotsura (d. 919) in
Zenka hiki and quoted in the
Fusō ryakki entry for the 9th month of
Kanpyō 8 (Oct./Nov. 896), so it is in fact quite old.
Otogi zōshi Later the medieval novella
Kitsune zōshi (or
Kitsune no sōshi) appeared,
Edo Period Edo Period scholar
Hayashi Razan's ("Study of the Shrines of our Country", 1645) records the lore concerning a man from the Tarui clan, who wedded a fox and begot the historical .
Ancestral lines A number of stories of this type tell of fox-wives bearing children. When such progeny are human, they possess special physical or
supernatural qualities that often pass to their own children. As aforementioned, the fox wife in the
Nihon ryōiki tale gave rise to the ancestral line of the Kitsune-no-atae clan, and a woman of great strength named "Mino kitsune" belonged to that heritage. ==
Kitsune no yomeiri ==