Fox spotted in Tokyo’s 23 wards, Japanese Internet wonders if it’s a shapeshifting spirit [Video]

Foxes rarely venture this close to the Tokyo city center…unless kitsune spirits are here all the time.

You can spot lots of representations of foxes in Tokyo. Fox spirit sculptures often guard the entrance to shrines, and with the Japanese word for fox, “kitsune,” also being a way to describe soba or udon noodles served with fried tofu as a topping, it’s not unusual to come across illustrated foxes on restaurant signs, menus, or instant noodle packaging.

▼ You might even spot a fox tail accessory on someone keeping classic gyaru fashion alive.

But a real-life fox, walking around on the streets of one of Tokyo’s 23 central wards? The deforestation of the downtown and downtown-adjacent area over the past few generations means that’s something you won’t see very often at all, but that’s exactly what appears in this video recorded in Tokyo’s Nerima Ward on the night of September 13.

Nerima is more or less the northwest of the congregation of Tokyo’s 23 wards, but while it’s not as developed as, say, Shinjuku, Shibuya, or Toshima Wards, it’s not a rural outpost either, especially in the neighborhood shown in the video. Much of Nerima consists of residential housing for people who commute deeper into downtown for school or work, and deforestation means it’s been many years since foxes were a common sight in the area.

▼ Nerima Ward

Now, the scientific explanation for the fox seen in the video is that it’s what zoologists call an “urban fox,” meaning a fox that’s adapted to finding food and shelter in ab area primarily habituated by humans. However, several online commenters have floated alternate theories drawing on Japanese folklore. According to legend, Japanese fox spirits have the ability to transform, and they sometimes take on the guise of humans and walk among us without anyone noticing, until they have a lapse in concentration and reveal their true form. With those stories in mind, comments on the video have included:

“Gotta be a young fox who’s still getting the hang of his transformation powers.”
“I bet he spends his afternoon as a hardworking salaryman.”
“Maybe he had a busy day and now he’s tired and forgot to keep up his transformation.”
“Probably changing back from his human form at the end of the day so that he can go do fox stuff.”
“I bet if you chased after him, you’d end up at a shrine.”
“Much happier to hear about this than another bear sighting.”
“’Urban Fox’ sounds cool! They should make a clothing brand called that.”
“Just like tanuki, there are kitsune who pretend to be humans living in the city.”
“It’s like something out of the Pompoko Ghibli anime.”

▼ For reference, the Ghibli movie Pompoko, about a group of shapeshifting tanuki losing their habitat due to the construction of a human housing development in the early 1990s, is set in the Tama New Town area, which is farther from the Tokyo city center than where the Nerima fox was seen.

▼ Tama New Town

The comments are most likely meant more as tongue-in-cheek jokes than actual belief in transforming spirits, but in all seriousness, as cute as foxes may be, it’s important to remember that foxes can be carriers of parasitic tapeworms which can be transmitted to humans and lead to the growth of harmful tumors on internal organs, and incubation periods of up to 15 years can complicate diagnosing a patient’s condition once they do start to show symptoms. In other words, contacting with a wild fox could be just as harmful as running afoul of the sinister fox spirits in the darker legends about them so if you do happen to come across a Tokyo kitsune, make sure to keep a respectful distance.

Source: YouTube/日テレNEWS, World Health Organization
Top image: Pakutaso
Insert images: SoraNews24, Studio Ghibli
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