Kuda-gitsune

Kuda-gitsune is a small fox yokai of the central mountain regions of Nagano, Yamanashi, and Shizuoka. The body is said to be slender enough to fit into a bamboo tube; the figure is kept by particular households (kuda-gitsune-suji, kitsune-mochi) and sent at the master's bidding to possess others, causing illness and misfortune. The figure stands as a representative possession spirit at the basis of the early-modern caste-like discrimination against the so-called possessing households. The figure is said to have been acquired by mountain ascetics through training on Mount Iizuna (1,917 m, Nagano City), sealed in a bamboo tube and carried, and sent at command to other houses. Those possessed report abdominal pain, agitation, refusal of food, and abnormal hunger; mountain ascetics and shamanesses perform the removal. Densities are recorded in northern and eastern Nagano, the Gunnai district of Yamanashi, and Fujigun in Shizuoka into the modern era, and the figure has been a central object of folkloric study as a social-history problem of household discrimination. Sources include Matsura Seizan's Kasshi Yawa (early 19th century), with figures and accounts of kuda-gitsune; the figural lineage carries through the Toriyama Sekien Gazu Hyakki Yagyo cycle. Yanagita Kunio's Santo Mintanshu (1914), Tono Monogatari Shui, and Hayami Yasutaka's Tsukimono-mochi Meishin (1953) form the basis of possession-household research. Murakami Kenji's Nihon Yokai Daijiten (Kadokawa, 2005) and the Nichibunken Strange Phenomena and Yokai Folklore Database systematize the cases. Adjacent possession spirits include Izuna in Shinshu, Inugami in the Shikoku mountains, kitsune-mochi in San'in/Sanyo, and gedo in Kyushu.