In 1892, a Dr. Shimamura visited Shimane Prefecture, a place where there were many reports of people
being possessed by foxes.
He was hoping to be the Charles Darwin of fox possession research.
He found 34 people who the locals claimed were possessed.
Many of the strange stories in this video were written down by Dr. Shimamura.
Everyone is familiar with foxes.
When I say the word fox, roughly the same image comes to everybody’s mind:
a pretty girl with furry ears and tails.
The fox has been a part of Japanese folklore since ancient times, and people believed that
they had all kinds of powers.
One of these powers is possession.
It’s called kitsune tsuki 狐憑き, or fox possession.
And today we’ll talk about a few strange cases of fox possession that were written
down in the recent past.
These weren’t just folk stories people told around the campfire okay?
They weren’t made up stories you heard from your sister’s husband’s mistress or something.
No, these were written down by doctors or newspapers.
Now you may think that only a few superstitious people believed in fox possession, but no,
for most of Japanese history, people saw it as a real disease, like smallpox or measles.
It became the go-to explanation for people with mental illness.
Now you also may think that only people in Japan’s medieval era believed this, not
people in modern times.
No, you idiot wanker, also people in modern times.
In fact, the cases in this video were recorded after Japan’s medieval period.
Let’s start small, with the tamer cases first, and work our way up
to stranger and stranger cases until we reach the climax of a very hard and serious case.
There was a fox possessed man who was obsessed with hair.
This man couldn’t sleep at night, and it got so bad that he tried to commit suicide.
He didn’t allow anyone to come near him when he ate.
He liked to hang around people who were dumber than him.
But the weirdest thing was that he had a habit of collecting hair.
They may have been his own hair or even other people’s, but he would collect them in the
sleeve of his kimono.
One day, someone picked up a pail that was lying on the ground, and discovered underneath it...
...hair. A lot of it.
He had been hiding hair under the pail.
It’s not clear why, but people thought he was hiding his fox fur.
Another one of Dr. Shimamura’s patients was a lady who had a fox in her head and stomach.
This woman attacked a child because she thought there was a dog in the kid’s stomach.
After that, she stopped eating, drinking, or even talking to others.
She always had this sinister smile on her face and talked to herself in a low voice.
The woman told doctors that a fox possessed her body.
She could hear its voice coming from her head and stomach.
It was sucking her blood.
Apparently, she got this idea in her head when she heard a rumor that a sorcerer was
using foxes in some magical rituals.
Luckily, she came to her senses and left the hospital cured, and feeling very stupid.
In the mid-1700s, a possessed man drew a picture of a fox, and wrote in perfect calligraphy
that he dedicated it to the great god Inari, the god of rice and agriculture.
Inari’s messengers were said to be foxes.
At first, this doesn’t seem strange, until you discover that the man was illiterate.
He could only write while possessed.
This piece of writing still survives until today in the hands of one Shinshi Kadowaki,
passed down to him by his ancestors.
Unfortunately, even though the writing definitely exists, we can’t be sure that this event
actually happened or it was just a story started by some drunk uncle to impress his niece that
he wanted to marry.
And then there was the guy who cut off his hand.
That’s right, he did.
It’s all fun and games until someone cuts off his hand.
The man was paranoid and kept repeating that he was the victim of a fox.
There were rumors at the time that people in a nearby village went insane or died from fox possession.
He was a hard worker, often going deep into the mountain to cut down trees.
But one day he stayed too long in the heat and got caught in a thunderstorm.
Sickness overcame him and he went to lie down.
The next thing he knew, he awoke 30 days later, missing a hand.
He had forgotten the last 30 days.
But his family didn’t.
Because he got sick after spending time in the mountains, his family actually did fear
that he was possessed by foxes.
They watched him day and night.
Strangely, they found short white hairs on his bedding and clothes, signs of a white fox.
The man gradually grew violent, attacking friends and family.
His family had to hide anything sharp from him.
One day, he declared that he regretted hurting the people around him,
and before anyone could stop him, the man took a hatchet and cut off his own hand.
The doctors were stumped.
They could not cure his missing hand, but they did manage to cure him of fox paranoia.
Then there was the case of a man who tried to commit ritual suicide.
He claimed that he could not speak, and all words that came out of his mouth were the fox’s words.
He felt the fox running all over the inside of his body.
Sometimes he himself ran on all fours, making fox sounds.
He became obsessed with hurting the fox, so he stuck his hand into a fire.
But that wasn’t enough.
He took a knife and stabbed his belly, intending to commit ritual suicide.
Luckily, he failed and the doctors saved him.
Unfortunately, the man left the hospital still believing he was possessed.
This next case, about fox exorcism, was reported in a newspaper in 1926.
A woman had been acting crazy for a long time, so her brother and daughter decided to help her.
They rubbed sulfur on her nose and eyes, hoping the smell would encourage the fox to get out of there.
They also did this to the woman’s mother, who also had mental issues.
Apparently they used just a tad bit way too much sulfur, and both women died.
Afterwards, the brother and daughter called the police and turned themselves in.
Some time in the early 1900s, a sorcerer was called in to heal a mad woman.
When he got there, this expert sorcerer concluded that she was possessed by a fox.
Great! Because that was his specialty.
He tried starving the poor woman, and rubbed pepper on her nose, eyes, and mouth
to irritate the fox out.
When that failed, he placed some metal tongs in fire until they became red hot, and burned
her body with it.
He stabbed holes in the woman’s breasts and belly.
After 3 days of torture, she died.
Cases of fox possession happened in Japan more than in any other country.
Why is that, and why did these people act like foxes?
It’s pretty simple really.
Most of these people suffered from mental illness, and because the public was superstitious,
and Japan has a thing for foxes, they labeled those people as being possessed by foxes.
And when everyone brands you that way, you’re more likely to believe them and start acting
more fox like.
In areas of Japan where people had strong superstitions about other animals, like wolves
or dogs, they blamed it on wolves or dogs instead.
For more about fox stuff, check out these videos on the right.
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