2012/05/01 by Adrian Burton · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Japanese History and Culture #Tinker #Depiction #Wife #Folklore #Art #Art history #Pride #Literature #Surprise #History #Philosophy #Sociology #Archaeology #Communication #Theology
paper · pdf · doi:10.1890/154-9295-10.4.224
openalex publication_date 2012/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/15
Every child in Japan knows that the forest is home to a furry little canid that can turn into a teakettle or a farmer's wife – although sometimes it must first place a leaf on its forehead. What strange creature could perform such feats? You and I know it by its workaday name of Nyctereutes procyonoides, or the raccoon dog. The Japanese, however, have bestowed upon it the infinitely more enchanting appellation, “tanuki”. You might be forgiven for thinking its transformation tricks the stuff of folklore – but fact can sometimes be stranger than fiction. Tales of shapeshifting tanuki have long been told around the hearths of Japan, the stories themselves eventually morphing into different versions. Many variations of the story Bunbuku Chagama (often translated as “happiness bubbling over like a teapot”) exist, but all have a transforming tanuki at their heart. In his Tales of Old Japan, first published in 1871, Algernon Bertram Mitford recounted a version he entitled The Accomplished and Lucky Teakettle. In Mitford's depiction, a priest at the temple of Morinji sets a teakettle to boil, but to his surprise it turns into a tanuki and runs about the room. After the priest and his novices catch the animal, it becomes a teakettle once more. Not keen on such troublesome kitchenware, the priest sells the teakettle to a tinker. That night, it again turns into a tanuki, only to turn back again before the startled tinker's eyes. A shrewd friend suggests the tinker set up a street show, with the tanuki shifting shape, dancing, and walking a tightrope. News of the tanuki's routine spreads far and wide, and the tinker becomes rich, and having to work no more he returns the teakettle to the Morinji temple, where it is worshipped as a saint. The real tanuki-san. Unfortunately, Mitford himself transformed the animal somewhat by mistranslating tanuki as “badger”, an error also made by Yei Theodora Ozaki in her retelling of the more gruesome tale Kachi-Kachi Yama (which she called The Farmer and the Badger) in The Japanese Fairy Book, first published in 1903. In that story, a malicious tanuki comes nightly to spoil a farmer's vegetable patch and rice field, but the farmer eventually manages to capture the animal alive and decides to cook it in a soup. However, the farmer has to go out, and leaves his wife in charge of the encaged tanuki until his return. But the tanuki tricks the woman into letting it out, just for a little while, by feigning sadness for her heavy workload, whereupon it kills her and makes a soup out of her! The tanuki then assumes her form and tries to feed this awful meal to the farmer by way of revenge. But fear not, the farmer doesn't eat the soup, and an outraged rabbit avenges the poor man. In modern Japan, the tanuki is regarded as a much more lovable (if still mischievous) character, and its statues beckon customers into restaurants all over the country. However, quite unlike the real thing, they show the tanuki transformed into a bipedal, pot-bellied, sake-carrying, bamboo-hatted something-or-other holding a promissory note and endowed with huge testicles symbolizing financial luck (in Japanese, “testicles” and “gold nugget” sound similar and gold sheet production once involved tanuki skin). Interestingly, the statues in the town of Shigaraki get the day off on November 8th – a bit of fun organized by the local tourism association. For their hard work bringing in customers during the year, they are placed in water baths, wet towels are laid on their brows and sleeping masks placed over their eyes. All this shapeshifting of lore, legend, and now popular culture has, however, an unexpected parallel in real life. The tanuki may be a canid but it seems to be doing all it can to appear not to be a dog. Not only does it make sounds like a cat and occasionally climb trees, it lives almost entirely on fruit in the autumn and, unlike any other of the canine kind, it hibernates – all this while doing its utmost to impersonate a raccoon. The tanuki is even radically shapeshifting its genome, thereby distancing itself from the four subspecies of raccoon dog (N p ussuriensis, koreensis, orestes, and procynoides) of continental East Asia; the latter have a chromosome number of 2n = 54, but the Japanese raccoon dog – tanuki – has just 2n = 38, the result of chromosomal translocations. In fact, the tanuki itself has transformed into two subspecies, N p albus on Hokkaido and N p viverrinus (which has shorter, darker fur, and shorter hind legs) on Japan's other islands. Next time you are in Japan, keep an eye out for these delightful, bizarre little creatures. But do be careful to check your teakettle before putting it on the stove, and when eating out make sure you inquire about the content of the soup, especially if a tanuki was at the door.