Fox Spirits (狐 hu) and Barbarians (胡 hu)

The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo

Prepare to get hungry!

Yangsze Choo’s new novel The Fox Wife takes place in 1908, when a female fox named Snow transforms herself into a young woman so that she can track down the loathsome human responsible for her child’s death. Filled with rage, Snow chases the man, first across Manchuria— and then on to Japan. Along the way, she crosses paths with an elderly detective named Bao, who is also investigating a murder. This detective is himself no stranger to foxes— having had a strange encounter as a child at a local fox shrine which left him with the unique ability to tell when someone is lying. Not a bad skill for a detective…

The Fox Wife is Yangsze Choo’s third novel. In a note in the back of the book, Choo explains that the ancestral home of the fox cult is in northern China—and it was from this ground zero that the cult spread to Korea and Japan.

kitsune 狐, きつね

Maybe even more than in China, fox folklore abounds in Japan, where fox shrines can be found throughout the country. Called Kitsune, fox spirits are thought to possess magical powers which allow them to shapeshift and play tricks on people. Long associated with Inari, the Shinto god of agriculture, kitsune statues are often found in shrines, where people leave abura-age tofu pockets as offerings to them because it is believed this is the favorite snack of kitsune. This is why noodles with abura-age are called kitsune soba or kitsune udon.

And sushi rice stuffed inside tofu pockets are called inari. I love inari sushi, but it is very sweet so I try to avoid them but by the end of the novel, I couldn’t stand it anymore and bought some from the local supermarket. Next time, I will make them myself to try and get a less sugary version…. they are so yummy though and it is obvious why foxes would love them so much.

As must be obvious by this point, these playful, endlessly hungry tricksters (not unlike tanuki badgers) are perfect characters to include in a novel.

Choo also explains that in China, the word for fox “hu” (狐) is a homonym for the barbarians (胡) originating in the far west—mainly the Iranian Sogdian peoples who were the great merchants, traders and entertainers of the legendary silk road. Known in Chinese as hu jen 胡人, their cultural influence among the Tang dynasty aristocrats was remarkable and this is something that informs the Tale of Genji from start to finish—in the music and dances, as well as incense. It is written in the Tang histories that “the food of the aristocrats was hu food, their music hu music, and women clothed in the most exotic hu robes that money could buy.” Indeed, in the words of one Japanese scholar, the Tang capital of Chang'an was “painted entirely in the colors of hu.” 

Like these foreigners of the Silk Road, fox spirits are also known to be great travelers— not just between the human and animal worlds— but also between cultures. In the novel, Snow can speak fluent Chinese and Japanese—and wear a kimono like the best of them!

The novel is set against the backdrop of the crumbling Qing empire, when revolution was in the air. With their country in the grips of the Empress Cixi, who resisted reform and progress, it was a time when many Chinese intellectuals traveled to Japan to study. Photography, which was a new technology at the time, drew several of the characters in the book to Japan, where Westernization was being more fully embraced. And unlike human beings, foxes are not much concerned with national boundaries. According to the novels foxy protagonist, “Some people think foxes are similar to ghosts because we go around collecting Chi but nothing could be further than the truth, we are living creatures just like you only usually better looking!”

Interesting article: The Fox and the Barbarian by Xiaofei Kang

An Lushan, the general whom Yang Guifei heaped favors upon leading to the downfall of the Tang dynasty was a hu jen 胡人of Sogdian Persian descent.

During this time, a Chinese identity characterized by the desire to return to the Confucian classics and Chinese antiquity gradually took shape in Tang intellectual life and forecasted the coming of the new Confucian age in the Song.ll By equating foxes with "barbarians" and other outsiders, the late Tang literati recognized the invigorating powers brought by the "barbarians" from outside China but also endeavored to subject them to Chinese supremacy. Connected to the marginal position of the fox were social elements that were just as alien as the "barbarians" in the essentially patriarchal and male-centered Chinese society.