Our only competition was a family of cats led by a black-and-white spotted female. The grasses around our home were too long and dense for hawks, and the few humans who lived nearby chased off anything larger. Fortunately, the place where we lived was thick with mice and chipmunks and other small prey. We were amazed sometimes that she had survived long enough to bear us. My brother and I watched her sometimes catch and lose a mouse a half-dozen times before she remembered to bite it while she still had her paws on it. When I was little and first realized he didn't have the same toes I had, I asked him why, and he told me a tanuki-badger bit it off, but I think he was teasing. He was missing a toe on one of his front paws. His joints stiffened on cold wet days, and he liked to doze in the spring sunlight when he could. Gray ran along his narrow jaw and in a broad streak from his black nose to between his black-tipped ears it frosted his pelt so that he seemed almost outlined in gray light. Grandfather was an old fox, of perhaps eight or nine years. I need to start before that, I think.īOOK ONE: SPRING Neither waking nor sleeping I saw the night out, and now spend all day in thought, staring at these long spring rains -Ariwara no Narihira (825-880) translated by Burton Watsonġ. I am only a fox: I have no elegancies of language.

I say this and it is short and sharp, without elegance, like a bark but I have no idea how else to start. I saw him and I loved him, my master Kaya no Yoshifuji.

Men and women write their various diaries: I shall see if a fox woman cannot also write one.

These diaries (it is said) are often filled with grief, for a woman's life is filled with sadness and waiting. It is said there are also noble ladies who keep diaries, in the capital or on their journeys in the provinces. I know this, because I have seen one such diary. THE NEW YEAR This world- call it an image caught in a mirror- Real it is not, nor unreal, either -Minamoto Sanetomo (1192-1219) translated by Thomas Rimerĭiaries are kept by men: strong brushstrokes on smooth mulberry paper, gathered into sheaves and tied with ribbon and placed in a lacquered box. I am a lucky dog.ĬONTENTS THE NEW YEAR BOOK ONE: SPRING BOOK TWO: SUMMER BOOK THREE: AUTUMN BOOK FOUR: WINTER THE NEW YEAR

The Fox Woman by Kij Johnson