“Liminal Entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial. As such, their ambiguous and indeterminate attributes are expressed by a rich variety of symbols in the many societies that ritualize social and cultural transitions. Thus liminality is frequently linked to death, to being in the womb, to invisibility, to darkness, to bisexuality, to the wilderness, and to an eclipse of the sun or moon.”
(Kang 2006)
The connecting theme seen in all fox stories is that the fox and its ambiguity represents an ancient power that counters and thus endangers the habitus of the mainstream, so they attempt to conceal it.
We, as humans, like our boxes. Be it a box the size of an elephant or of an ant, as long as they can be used to categorize the world around us, society will happily find a way to fill those boxes with judgemental definitions of how they have come to understand the world. As long as they create some kind of perceived order and understanding, the size of them doesn’t matter. Foxes show up as spiritual entities with no regard for these boxes that we hold so dear.
How badly we crave order and definition. How deeply uncomfortable we tend to be with things that can’t fit into our systems. How frightened we get when we acknowledge the things in this world that can’t be put into boxes, but instead roam free.
We want black and white because the obscurity of gray makes us uneasy. But as much as we try to avoid these gray areas, they exist, and they will always exist. Because of this constancy they must have some type of representation. Fox Spirits are this representation of the gray area and as long as there is a gray area, there will be fox spirits there to symbolize it.
Fox spirits represent the margins, the part of society that can’t be defined and bring with them a fear of the unknown and the unaccepted. This is why they are so often portrayed as malevolent entities- their ambiguity makes us uncomfortable.
“Both anthropologists and historians have emphasized the significance of the betwixt and between for the study of culture. Mary Douglas, for example, gives special importance to boundary crossing animals and spirits in addressing social and moral order. She argues that in a given society, what’s perceived to be ambiguous and marginal tens to be regarded as ritually unclean, hence defiling established principles. The marginality of such beings discharges both danger and power to the dominant patterns of the existing social structure.”
The Cult of the Fox
(Kang 2006)
(Wallen 2006)
Foxes are very “liminal” beings, meaning they shift between many different situations which makes them very difficult to pin down; and people like to pin things down. Being on the fringes of society gives fox spirits a power outside of everyone else, for they are, at the same time, a part of everything as well as a part of nothing. They are betwixt and between.
When living in the middle of a society, there is an inherent danger that comes with questioning the structures that form it. In the midst of these structures, no objectivity exists but if you are moving between all these different systems and seeing them as only a more passive player, this brings with it a power; and the power of the outside scares the people on the inside.
Power is everywhere. There are different types of power in every single relationship that occurs. Because power is everywhere, this means that resistance is everywhere too; the duality of life cannot be ignored.
One way that systems of power try to control people is by setting up clear and deep divisions between those being controlled. Dominating forces tend to try and suppress the liminal, not liking things that shift between those lines and divisions, because not only are they are harder to control but draw attention to inherent fallacy of these divisions. One example of this is the official suppression of “cults” and in particular the fox cult in China. Because fox spirits move freely between these divisions, it’s not hard to understand why they would be portrayed by those systems of power as something malevolent. Were we to embrace liminality and moving in the margins, those divisions wouldn’t be as clear or deep and people wouldn’t be as easy to control.
Foxes live in the shift of day to night, in a liminal moment of our everyday lives, so it makes sense they would have such a deep and historic connection to that which shifts and roams outside of convention. It follows that those benefiting from the dominant ideology would demonize these beings and explains why this narrative of omnipresence and concealment reappears in so many fox stories.
A Cross Cultural Comparison of Fox Spirits in Japan and China
As part of a disclaimer, I would like to mention that as an outsider, I am not capable of making a fully culturally respective and well-informed comparison. Going into my research with the knowledge of that, I decided to approach this barrier by reading the book, The Cult of the Fox, written by Xiaofei Kang, a scholar from China.
Using her perspective as an insider to help inform my own ideas and conclusions. I want to make clear that my cross cultural comparison has been done acknowledging that I am not able to fully understand the perspective of Fox Spirits as someone not born in the regions they are found.
In my cross cultural study of Fox Spirits in Asia, there are many things I could have chosen to focus on as being the connecting and contrasting feature, but in this case, my focal point is comparing the social significance of the fox in Chinese and Japanese culture.
(Kang 2006)
The natural liminality of the fox as an animal, along with its tendency in China to be related to more personalized and thus varied human forces, makes it an entity that could be portrayed in many ways as they say fit or could benefit from. When cracking down on cults, this makes the fox cult easier for the dominant forces in China to demonize and justify as they can pick and assign whatever narrative suited their intentions best.
In a society with as old and deeply defined official stances on morality’s meaning as China, it makes sense why a being like the fox, which moved outside of those definitions, would be enticing. Through the idea of the fox, Chinese people from all types of social backgrounds could explore the personally beneficial, the “amoral”, and issues that related more to their local everyday lives that any greater morality they should supposedly adhere to and constantly act in the name of. The omnipresence of these rigid principles set up personal desire as something of a forbidden fruit throughout all levels of Chinese society and explains the boundary transcending appeal of the fox. Thinking in this context also helps to explain the greater politicization of foxes in China; as deep as certain philosophies run the questioning of those values becomes more subversive.
(Depiction Of Daji In The Hokusai Manga 2008)
The marginal power of the fox, in conjunction with its multiplicity, also made it the perfect symbol to use in coping with almost any hardship in China- from illnesses to financial struggles, family troubles to gender divisions, moral predicaments to the political, the fox could provide something. Because of its ambiguity, one could take whatever they needed from fox spirits in almost any situation of hardship. This served marginalized groups especially effectively.
With the idea of power existing everywhere, needing only to be harnessed, Chinese fox spirits offered the marginalized groups much. With a fuzzier concept of the direct source of the foxes power, one can attribute it to many places and thus pull strength from almost anywhere on the edge. It also means the embodiment of this power is deeply versatile in what form of resistance it takes and to what end. It is nebulously subversive and thus even more dangerous to dominant ideologies. They are the perfect figurehead to almost any cause emerging from the fringes.
The fox spirits also provide a way for the Chinese people to navigate these divisions, a framework through which to discuss societal discord, almost paradoxically representing and bridging the splits that surrounded them. Foxes served as a symbol of the edge but simultaneously as something not completely defined by that, bestowed with the ability to shift between the fringe and the mainstream, the public and the private, some communal identity and some personal.
Given the greater official persecution of the fox symbol in China, and its affiliation with vices and insurgent thinking, it is harder to find images of foxes in Chinese temples, and they usually appear disguised in human form if at all.
Inari
“Inari worship varies both regionally and individually to the degree that Inari is worshipped under thousands of unique names chosen by the individual devotees.”
The Cult of the Fox
(Kang 2006)
(Wallen 2006)
Inari is an agricultural god associated with the harvest of rice and has been worshipped in japan since medieval times. Inari is also related to wealth and prosperity. The deity can be worshipped as a female or male. Inari can enter the bodies of humans and can exchange for shams assistance will offer divine foresight and healing. Through its entrance into human bodies it is also in effect given the ability to move between the human world and goings on and a more spiritual plane.
In Japan, the fox is a crucial symbol of Inari. Two fox statues grace the entrance of almost every Shinto Shrines found there. The Buddhist image of of the deity Inari is portrayed by a female bodhisattva astride a white fox. Buddhist priests stand firm with the belief that the foxes are the spirit messenger of Inari, but many Japanese worshippers will worship the fox as Inari itself.
(Wallen 2006)
While the versatility and personalization of Chinese fox spirits is mirrored in Japan, these same attributes lead to a different outcome. Through Inari’s connotations with everything from farming to business practices, from childbirth to fishing and countless things beyond, foxes are awarded more of an apolitical status in Japan. Inari shrines with statues of foxes are everywhere by roads and rice paddies, tombs and farmhouses, and the government makes no move to suppress these symbols. While ambiguity and individualization do still lend Japanese fox spirits power, this is not turned back on dominant institutions as much, trading the Chinese fox’s force in resistance for force in peaceful ubiquity.
There’s a balancing in the nature of Japanese identity between molding oneself into the larger consciousness (one that respects authority) and privately holding many diverse views and personal concerns. The innate multiplicity of this way of life would explain the prevalence of fox with its betwixt and between, multilayered qualities.
“It generates numerous interpretations, and no institution, social group, or scripture can claim authority to standardize Inari beliefs and practices.”
The Cult of the Fox
(Kang 2006)
Cross Cultural Conclusion
Based on the social factor I choose to research, it seems that in China, the fox is a more distinct representation of resistance to the system and what is perceived as vices by traditional Chinese dominant moralityー embodying something and everything not falling under a strict governing ideology. In Japan, given the history of Inari, the fox represents an array of things (wealth, women, men rice etc.) making the worship of the fox not directly affected to anything political.
“The similarities and dissimilarities of Japanese and Chinese fox worship promote the need for further research into how certain symbols can be used in different cultures to construct identity and to embody power relations. Symbolic representation is a central function of human consciousness and basic to our understanding of all human life. Through examining representations of the fox in an internal framework, we may be able to pursue traces of cultural transmission and transformation among different peoples in history and contemporary times”
The Cult of the Fox
(Kang 2006)
For Information on the Social Implications of Fox Spirits in Asia, Check Out These References
Kang, Xiaofei. 2006. The Cult Of The Fox: Power, Gender, And Popular Religion In Late Imperial And Modern China. New York: Columbia Univ. Press.
Wallen, Martin. 2006. Fox. London: Reaktion Books.
Image References
A Man Confronted With An Apparition Of The Fox Goddess. 2005. Image. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/02/A_man_confronted_with_an_apparition_of_the_Fox_goddess.jpg.
Depiction Of Daji In The Hokusai Manga. 2008. Image. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Hokusai_Daji.jpg.
Fox Wedding Ink Painting. 2013. Image. https://hyakumonogatari.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/fox-wedding-ink-painting.jpg.
Fox Wedding Kimono. 2013. Image. https://hyakumonogatari.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/fox-wedding-kimono.jpg.
Mizuki Shigeru Kitsune No Yomeiri. 2013. Image. https://hyakumonogatari.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/mizuki_shigeru_kitsune_no_yomeiri.png.
Pu, Songling, Herbert Allen Giles, and Victoria Baldwin Cass. n.d. Strange Tales From A Chinese Studio. Image.
Wallen, Martin. 2006. Fox. London: Reaktion Books. Image.
Page written and created by Billie D-M., Chloe W., and Lydia M.
