Fox Posession

In America, demons possess people. In Japan, that job is reserved for foxes! Fox possession isn't really all that different from demonic possession. If you're possessed by a fox, you act crazy (which may just mean that you are crazy, or that “fox possession” is a culturally-specific pre-modern way of talking about mental illness, or even that people tend tend go crazy when a fox possesses them), you “speak in tongues” (specific languages you've never been taught before, not Holy Roller stuff) and you need to be exorcized by a priest, but it's a Shinto priest rather than a Catholic one.

Female fox spirits also like to seduce otherwise upstanding men and lead them astray, just like succubi. So the whole legend is really pretty similar to its Western equivalent, except for that one little Japanese detail about it being a fox instead of a demon. As strange as that is, it does make sense if you consider the difference between Japanese and Christian mythology. Christian mythology includes an entire underworld of evil demonic beings hellbent (literally) on destroying human souls. Shinto mythology is more about the numinous powers inherent in the natural landscape.

 

When you look at it that way, it makes sense that Westerners would conceive of possession as being the work of malignant spirits, while the Japanese tradition saw the same phenomenon as being connected to the world of nature. In Ireland, possession was thought to be the work of fairies, but that's a topic for another blog.