Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/127

Rh Demoniacal Possession. Chinese notions concerning the superhuman powers of the fox, and in a lesser degree of the badger and the dog, entered Japan during the early Middle Ages. One or two mentions of magic foxes occur in the Uji Shūi, a story book of the eleventh century; and since that time the belief has spread and grown, till there is not an old woman in the land—or, for the matter of that, scarcely a man either—who has not some circumstantial fox story to relate as having happened to some one who is at least the acquaintance of an acquaintance. In 1889, a tale was widely circulated and believed of a fox having taken the shape of a railway train on the Tōkyō-Yokohama line. The phantom train seemed to be coming towards a real train which happened to be running in the opposite direction, but yet never got any nearer to it. The engine-driver of the real train, seeing all his signals to be useless, put on a tremendous speed. The result was that the phantom was at last caught up, when, lo and behold! nothing but a crushed fox was found beneath the engine-wheels. Nor has the twentieth century witnessed any abatement in the popular belief. Fox stories—not necessarily vouched for, of course, but still deemed worthy of mention—are related in the same newspapers which chronicle sober facts and new scientific inventions. In fact, the name of such tales is legion. More curious and interesting is the power with which these demon foxes are credited of taking up their abode in human beings in a manner similar to the phenomena of possession by evil spirits, so often referred to in the New Testament. Dr. Baelz, of the Imperial University of Japan, who has had special opportunities for studying such cases in the hospital under his charge, has kindly communicated to us some remarks, of which the following is a résumé:—

"Possession by foxes (Kitsune-tsuki} is a form of nervous disorder or delusion, not uncommonly observed in Japan. Having entered a human being, sometimes through the breast, more often through the space between the finger-nails and the flesh, the fox lives a life of his own, apart from the proper self of the person who is harbouring him. There thus results a sort