Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/131

Rh The fox-owners are avoided as if they were snakes or lizards. Nevertheless, no one ever asks another point blank whether or not his family be a fox-owning family; for to do so might offend him, and the result to the enquirer might be a visitation in the form of possession by a fox. The subject is therefore never alluded to in the presence of a suspected party. All that is done is politely to avoid him.

"It should be noticed, moreover, that there are permanent fox-owners and temporary fox-owners. The permanent fox-owners silently search for families of a similar nature to marry into, and can never on any account intermarry with outsiders, whatever may be the inducement in the shape of wealth or beauty. Their situation closely resembles that of the pariahs and outcasts of former times. But even the strictest rules will sometimes be broken through by love which is a thing apart, and liaisons will be formed between fox-owners and outsiders. When such an irremediable misfortune takes place, parents will renounce even their well-beloved only son, and forbid him to cross their threshold for the rest of his life. Temporary fox-owners are those who have been expelled from the family for buying land from a permanent fox-owner. These circumstances conspire to give security to the fox-owners (whether such in truth or imagination, we are not in a position to say); for no one will harm them by so much as a hair's breadth. Therefore they are all well-to-do; some are even said to count among the most affluent families in the province. The very poorest people that have borrowed money from them will strain every nerve to raise money to repay the loan, because failure to do so would make others regard them as fox-owners and shun them. The result of all this is that a nervous malady resembling possession is much commoner in this province than elsewhere, and that Dr. Shimamura, assistant-professor at the Imperial University, during his tour of inspection there this summer, has come across no less than thirty-one cases of it."