What is kitsunebi?
Kitsunebi are mysterious balls of fire that appear at night in the mountains, fields and riverbanks. They are characterized by appearing not singly but in rows, flickering on and off as they drift along. People said they were the glowing breath of foxes or their shining tails; in the past, these strange lights were thought to be the work of foxes.
A procession of fox fires was also said to be the lanterns of a fox wedding, and foxes were said to use them to lead people astray.
The New Year’s Eve fox fires of Oji Inari
In Edo, a famous place for fox fires was Oji Inari Shrine in today’s Kita City, Tokyo. Regarded as the head of all the Inari shrines in the Kanto region, it was said that every New Year’s Eve the foxes of the whole region gathered under a large nettle tree nearby, dressed themselves in formal attire and then visited the shrine. Farmers counted the fox fires they lit to predict whether the coming year’s harvest would be good or bad.
The scene is fantastically depicted in Utagawa Hiroshige’s ukiyo-e print “Fox Fires on New Year’s Eve at the Changing Tree, Oji” from One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Today, Oji holds the “Oji Fox Parade” on New Year’s Eve, in which people wearing fox masks march through the streets.
What are fox fires really?
Explanations include the lights of distant houses or fishing boats shimmering through a mirage caused by differences in air temperature, and burning gas from marshes. In an age with few lights on the roads at night, strange lights floating in the darkness must have seemed like the magic of foxes itself. Other well-known fox yokai include the yoko and the nine-tailed fox.
