Kitsune

Tamamo-no-mae.  She was a true beauty.  She could capture the hearts of men simply by walking into the room.  She came to the court some years ago.  She was merely a servant girl, but many of the members of the court expected her to become important.  They could already see the power and prestige spiraling around her.  One of the first things they noticed about her was how intelligent she was.  She knew practically anything and everything.  They were all so surprised when she answered their questions about the stars and even the Shinto religion.

One day Emperor Toba decided to test Tamamo-no-mae.  All of the members of the court were surprised by this.  The Emperor asked her many questions.  The questions ranged from the teachings of Buddha to riddles of all sorts.  She answered all of them perfectly.  We all asked her questions, gave her riddles, and her responses were always exceptional.  One day Emperor Toba decided to ask his final riddle.  He felt it was of the highest difficulty, and surely it would stump Tamamo-no-mae.

Darkness is my way, but I fill your mind with light.  You may find understanding in me, or I might fill you with fear.  Joy I give you; sorrow I give you, but my gifts are always beyond your reach.  My journeys will lead you astray and far from your home; and they will never end. What am I?

Once again, Tamamo-no-mae answered the riddle correctly, to the shock of everyone present.  None of them were able to understand it, and they all were at a loss.   None of the ministers had ever considered that the answer would be their dreams.

As the time passed, it turned out the Emperor was becoming ill.  He consulted with many people, including his fortune teller Yasunari.  Meanwhile, his Chief Physician claimed his sickness was caused by a great evil.  Prior to his illness, his relationship with Tamamo-no-mae had developed even further and there were rumors starting to circulate about their intimacy.  They had had many long conversations, and Emperor Toba was deeply infaturated with her.

One day the Emperor asked Yasunari to cast his fortune one more time.  Yasunari was very hesitant to cast his fortune yet again.  Eventually Yasunari succumbed to the pressure of the ministers, who were deeply worried about the Emperor.  During the Emperor's illness, they had been given increasingly more responsibilities.  Yasunari informed them that Tamamo-no-mae was the reason for the Emperor's sickness.  The ministers were shocked, and insisted on knowing more about this apparent temptress.

They looked into it further, and they discovered a shocking truth.  Tamamo-no-mae was actually a two-tailed kitsune who towered an astonishing forty-two feet in height.  This kitsune had disguised himself as a beautiful woman because he wanted to replace the Emperor so that he could gain more power.

The ministers debated about how to try and solve this horrible truth.  Eventually they encouraged the Emperor to pray to the gods of the Emperor's ancestors and Tamamo-no-mae was forced by the ministers to make an offering as well in an effort to trap her within holy rituals.  Just as the beauty was going to make her offering, she suddenly disappeared.  Emperor Toba was quite devastated, but now knew the truth about what sort of trap had awaited him.

The ministers sent out soldiers to hunt down Tamamo-no-mae and kill the dastardly kitsune.  One evening a beautiful woman appeared in the dreams of one of the soldiers.  She pleaded with him to save her, and begged him since they would likely kill her the very next day.  Although she was beautiful, the soldier resisted temptation and knew it was the kitsune once again playing its tricks.

The soldier awoke the next morning and immediately charged after the kitsune.  He saw it fleeing towards the mountains in its kitsune form, and drew back his arrow.  He let loose, and made a perfect strike on the kitsune.  As he approached the corpse, he was still amazed by it.  Despite being in an animal form, it still held an otherworldly beautiful, and none of the rumors could do it justice.  The soldiers returned to the capital and presented the body of the kitsune to the Emperor. 

The Emperor wistfully recalled his time with Tamamo-no-mae, but now knew the real story.  Despite the fact he misses her, he ordered his advisors to examine the body.  Eventually its supernatural powers allowed the creation of many artifacts.

Author's Note:  The kitsune of Japanese legends are very interesting.  In this case I stuck with a relatively corrupt kitsune, rather than one of the "good" kitsune I discussed in the introduction, such as the messengers for the God of Rice, Inari.  I really liked this story, because it displayed a variety of powers available to the kitsune.  The kitsune shape-changed into a beatiful woman, was inside of a soldier's dreams, and then also was able to make the Emperor sick in some way.  I really didn't like the part about hunting down the kitsune, however.  The story makes mention of how large the kitsune could become, and it doesn't seem reasonable that a forty-two foot tall kitsune would be very intimidated by human soldiers.  The story itself also had a few other vague points, which I simply ommitted or skimmed over.  It discussed a specific god, but not why he relates to the story and why the kitsune wouldn't want to perform the offering, so I downplayed this.  I ended up making up some of it, at the suggestion of multiple people.  The riddle I used was not the original riddle within the story.  The Emperor's riddle involved asking her what the Milky Way was, and I really had no idea how to keep it intact.  I also didn't like her answer, since it's not the scientific answer to the Milky Way we now have.  Obviously the kitsune wouldn't know that, but I don't think it showed how intelligent she was supposed to be, so I replaced it with another riddle.  One final odd part about the story is that Tamamo-no-Mae is often depicted in many different ways.  In the source I used for my story, the kitsune has two tails and is over one hundred years old.  In many other stories, the kitsune has nine tails, signifying a nearly omnipotent level of power and over one thousand years old.  Furthermore, many of the images I found show her as a beautiful woman, with nine tails arrayed behind her like the image I used.