Tanuki- Japanese CreatureCreature · Beast"Shapeshifting Raccoon Dog"

Origins

The earliest recorded shapeshifting tanuki appears in the Nihon Shoki (720 CE), which describes a mujina transforming into a human. In many regional dialects, mujina and tanuki are the same creature; in others they are distinct. The confusion has never settled. By the medieval period, tales of tanuki trickery had proliferated in collections such as the Konjaku Monogatarishū, and each province seemed to have its own celebrated tanuki with a name and a biography.

Masters of Transformation

Tanuki can transform into virtually anything: humans, household objects, even moonlight or the sound of distant drumming. In the most famous tales, tanuki transform leaves into coins and use them to purchase sake from unsuspecting merchants. The deception holds until the tanuki departs, at which point the coins revert to dead leaves.

Their transformations are often imperfect. A tanuki disguised as a human might retain a visible tail, or reveal its true nature when it becomes drunk and loses concentration. Tea kettles sprout fur and limbs when heated. Stone statues blink when no one is watching. They are tricksters undone not by heroes or exorcists but by their own appetites and inattention.

The most distinctive transformations involve the enlargement of their scrotum to fantastical proportions. In folklore and Edo-period woodblock prints, tanuki stretch this anatomy to serve as drums, blankets, and fishing nets. Utagawa Kuniyoshi produced celebrated print series depicting tanuki in these extravagant transformations with infectious comic energy.

The Belly Drum

On moonlit nights, tanuki were said to gather in clearings and drum on their distended bellies, producing a rhythmic booming that carried across the countryside. The sound, tanuki-bayashi, could be heard from a distance but the source could never quite be found. Travelers who followed the drumming wandered in circles through the forest, lured deeper by a sound that always seemed just ahead.

Kachi-kachi Yama

Not all tanuki tales are lighthearted. In "Kachi-kachi Yama" ("Fire-Crackle Mountain"), one of Japan's five great folk tales, a tanuki repeatedly raids an old farmer's fields. The farmer catches it, but while he is away the tanuki persuades his wife to release it and then kills her, cooking her remains into a soup that it serves to the unsuspecting farmer.

A rabbit, the old woman's friend, undertakes revenge. The rabbit lures the tanuki on a journey, setting fire to a bundle of sticks on its back (the "crackle" of the mountain), then treats the burns with a poultice of chili paste. Finally the rabbit challenges the tanuki to a boat race, providing it with a vessel made of mud that dissolves in the water. The tanuki drowns.

The Bunbuku Chagama

At the opposite end of the tanuki's range stands "Bunbuku Chagama" ("The Lucky Tea Kettle"). A tanuki transforms into a fine tea kettle, which is acquired by a temple priest. When the kettle is placed over a fire, it sprouts fur, legs, and a tail as the tanuki cannot hold its shape under the heat. The priest, alarmed, sells the kettle to a junk dealer.

The tanuki befriends its new owner and proposes a partnership: it will perform acrobatic tricks while disguised as a half-kettle, half-animal figure, and the two will charge admission. The show becomes a great success. Both the tanuki and its human partner prosper.

Bake-danuki

While ordinary tanuki play small tricks, bake-danuki ("transforming tanuki") possess tremendous supernatural power accumulated over centuries of life. These ancient creatures can create entire illusory landscapes, possess humans, and command armies of lesser tanuki.

Danzaburō-danuki of Sado Island was regarded as the chief of all tanuki in Japan, governing the island's population and rewarding or punishing humans based on their treatment of his subjects. Yashima no Hage-tanuki of Kagawa Prefecture in Shikoku competed with a local kitsune for territorial supremacy, a conflict that became one of the great animal-spirit rivalries in Shikoku folklore. Shikoku in particular developed elaborate tanuki traditions, with local accounts describing organized tanuki societies complete with hierarchies and courts of justice hidden within the island's forested mountains.

The Shigaraki Statues

The ubiquitous tanuki statues found outside shops, restaurants, and homes throughout Japan originated in the pottery town of Shigaraki in Shiga Prefecture during the early twentieth century. These ceramic figures are rotund and smiling, often holding a sake bottle and wearing a straw hat, with oversized bellies for decisiveness and oversized testicles for financial luck.

The statues gained national prominence after Emperor Hirohito visited Shigaraki in 1951 and was reportedly charmed by rows of tanuki figures bearing small flags to welcome him. The imperial visit generated widespread press coverage, and demand surged. Today millions of Shigaraki tanuki stand throughout Japan as folk art and commercial talismans, the rotund guardians of doorways fired in clay.