Sigh... :rolleyes:
Fox Spirits, can trancend into many different forms depending on their age:
At the age of 50 a fox can turn into a woman, at the age of 100, it can turn into a sorcerer/wizard a beautiful girl or a seductive man. When it reaches 1000 it gains the ability to commnuicate with heaven, and becomes a \"celestial fox\" or nine-tailed fox.
A \"celestial fox\" is sometimes called a \"nine-tailed fox,\" because it has just such a number of tails. The nine-tailed fox appears in myths from all over Asia. In Vietnam, a battle between the mythic founder of the Vietnamese people, Lac Long, and a nine-tailed fox led to the creation of West Lake in Hanoi, originally called the \"Sea of the Fox\'s Body.\" In Korea, the celestial fox, or Goo Mi Ho, is often of a more vicious complexion, as the fox would first horribly kill someone and eat them in order to take their form. And in Japan, the fox spirit or kitsune arrived from China during the T\'ang Dyansty (there is even a Japanese legend explaining that it flew over), where it joined the native tanuki (a shape-changing badger), and became an integral part of the national folklore. It continued to develop in its own style, until the kitsune was in many ways distinct from its original Chinese descendants. Kabuki plays, Bunraku puppet theater, and Ukiyo-e woodblock prints all feature the celestial fox in one guise or another.
*Edit: Ah, I forgot to mention that there was a particular wood-cut (form of art) that told the story of a nine-tailed fox suducing an emperor as a beautiful woman. Exactly who I\'m too lazy to remember right now
(I was going to write all of this in my own words, but I got lazy at the second paragraph
)
