Tanuki

Japanese raccoon dogs have a long history in Japanese legend and folklore. Bake-danuki are a kind of supernatural beings found in the classics and in the folklore and legends of various places in Japan. Although the tanuki is a real, extant animal, the bake-danuki that appears in literature has always been depicted as a strange, even supernatural animal. The earliest appearance of the bake-danuki in literature, in the chapter about Empress Suiko in the Nihon Shoki written during the Nara period, there are such passages as "in two months of spring, there are tanuki in the country of Mutsu,[19] they turn into humans and sing songs."[20][21][22] Bake-danuki subsequently appear in such classics as the Nihon Ryōiki[21][23][24] and the Uji Shūi Monogatari.[21] In some regions of Japan, bake-danuki are reputed to have abilities similar to those attributed to foxes: they can shapeshift into other things or people,[21][24] and can possess human beings.[21][25] Many legends of tanuki exist in the Sado Islands of Niigata Prefecture and in Shikoku, and among them, like the Danzaburou-danuki of Sado, the Kinchō-tanuki and Rokuemon-tanuki of Awa Province (Tokushima Prefecture), and the Yashima no Hage-tanuki of Kagawa Prefecture, the tanuki that possessed special abilities were given names, and even became the subject of rituals. Apart from these places, tanuki are treated with special regard in a few cases.[26]