What is a yoko?
Yoko is the general name for fox yokai with mysterious powers. In Japan, foxes have long been believed to bewitch people or to slip into the human world disguised as beautiful women and others. Many expressions involving foxes survive, such as kitsunebi (fox fire) and the fox’s wedding, the name for rain falling while the sun shines.
Foxes that grow more tails
In Chinese tradition, a fox’s spiritual power grows stronger the longer it lives, and after a thousand years it becomes the nine-tailed fox. In Japan, too, long-lived foxes were said to grow more tails and gain supernatural powers, and the highest-ranking foxes, called tenko (“heavenly foxes”), were thought to be close to gods. On the other hand, there was also the folk belief of kitsune-tsuki, fox possession causing illness or strange behavior, and wicked foxes that deceive people were called yako (“field foxes”).
Good foxes and bad foxes
Foxes are also treasured as messengers of the gods at Inari shrines. A well-known legend says that the mother of the Heian-period onmyoji Abe no Seimei was Kuzunoha, a white fox of the Shinoda forest. Being both a fearsome trickster and a sacred being is the hallmark of the Japanese fox. Together with the tanuki, the fox is one of the two great shapeshifting animals, called kori (“fox and tanuki”) together.
