Kitsunebi
Kitsunebi
The Kitsunebi (狐火 – Fire-Fox) is a type of yōkai said to have visited the Ōji Inari Shrine on the last day of the year. Foxes normally shapeshift by placing a human bone between their teeth.
Once there they would exhale fire from their nose and mouths, people watching this predicting the coming harvest by gauging the flames.
These creatures and their visitations to Ōji Shrine were popular subjects for artists, including Utagawa Hiroshige in his One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, and Toriyama Sekien in his gazu hyakki yagyō.1
External Links
- View the Gazu Hyakki Yagyō online here: Gazu Hyakki Yagyō Online.
Footnotes
1. Yoda, H. and Alt, M. (2016) “Japandemonium: Illustrated: The Yokai Encyclopaedia of Toriyama Sekien.”. New York: over Publications, Inc.
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