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Japanese fairy tales The Ghostly Vixen There once was a prince who wanted to marry though he was still young. But after much searching he was unable to find a girl who could suit him so a few years passed without his getting married. One day he went out of the palace carried by eight servants in a splendid kago with numerous servants around him. As he was traveling thus he met another train which was as long and as magnificent as his. Surprised he looked at the other kago and saw a beautiful young lady within it. As her eyes fell upon him she quickly hid her face behind one of her subjects. She was so beautiful that the prince fell in love with her the moment he saw her and so he sent one of his servants to ask if he could meet her. She granted his request and so the Prince went to meet the lady who was just as graceful and entertaining as she was beautiful. So he decided to ask for her hand in marriage. But first he enquired about her family. She replied to his questions by saying that she was of a noble house but that her father was in the remotest parts of the country. They did however have close relatives in another province to which she was heading now because of a serious illness in the family. The prince was ready to marry her at that moment so he asked her to marry him. The lady had some objections and wanted to wait for the consent of her father before agreeing. The prince did not want to wait so long, however, so she consented at last and married him. The prince devoted himself entirely to his young wife, spending every hour to her instead of to his business, hunting or his other important duties. For the time he spent to her felt rich, full and satisfying. One warm summer day he went to her room unexpectedly and was surprised when he saw that a large fox was asleep on his wife’s bed instead of her. Quietly he stepped back away from the fox, drew his bow and shot the fox. He had intended to shoot the fox in the middle of the forehead but he shot the arrow with such haste that he didn’t have the power to penetrate the foxes skull and so bounced off. The fox sprang from the blankets and ran out escaping the palace. The prince tried to track the fox down but failed. When he returned home he found that his beloved wife had a wound on her forehead in the exact same spot and in a similar way which the fox had. Confused by this he stopped short of her, but after some reflection he thought that it could also be a coincidence. One of the foxes which hung around the palace gardens could have come in to rest. He therefore asked his wife quietly, without letting any suspicion of evil into his voice where her wound had come from. But he was taken aback when his otherwise gentle wife grew furious with rage. Her eyes sparkled with wild vindictiveness. She however gave him no information about her injury and so the prince realized that his wife must surely be a fox. He immediately called his guard and had his wife taken to prison. He sent for a priest who had experience with all kinds of yokai and other evil spirits as well as incantations to remove spells. No sooner had the priest begun his spells when the woman vanished before their eyes turning into the great fox which the prince had shot in the head. Still they needed to be careful because if they killed the fox its powerful spirit could likely do more damage than the animal had been able to with her magic arts. So the priest sealed the fox in a room, burned it to ashes and then scattered these ashes in running water so that fox would never be heard from again.