玉藻前

The tradition & historical record

Tamamo-no-Mae (玉藻前, 玉藻の前, also 玉藻御前) is a legendary figure in Japanese mythology. One of the stories explaining the legend comes from Muromachi period (1336 to 1573) genre fiction called otogizōshi. In the otogizōshi, Tamamo-no-Mae was a courtesan under the Japanese Emperor Konoe (who reigned from 1142 through 1155). ¹

Stories of Tamamo-no-Mae being a legendary kitsune fox spirit appear during the Muromachi period as otogizōshi (prose narratives), and were also mentioned by Toriyama Sekien in Konjaku Hyakki Shūi. Edo period folklore then conflated the legend with similar foreign stories about fox spirits corrupting rulers, causing chaos in their territories. ¹

In the story told by Hokusai, formed in the Edo period, the nine-tailed fox first appeared in China and possessed Daji, a concubine of the Shang dynasty's last ruler King Zhou. She enchanted the king and brought on a reign of terror that led to a rebellion that ended the Shang dynasty. The fox spirit fled to Magadha of Tianzhu (ancient India) and became Lady Kayō (華陽夫人), concubine of the crown prince Banzoku (班足太子; based on Indian tales of Kalmashapada the man-eater), causing him to cut off the heads of a thousand men. It was then defeated again, and fled the country. The same fox returned to China around 780 BC and was said to have possessed Bao Si, a concubine of the Zhou dynasty King You. It was again chased away by human military forces. The fox stayed quiet for some time. Then she appeared in Japan as Tamamo-no-Mae, the most favoured courtesan of Emperor Konoe. She was said to be a most beautiful and intelligent woman, being able to answer any question asked. She caused the Emperor to be extremely ill and was eventually exposed as a fox spirit by the astrologer Abe no Yasuchika, who had been called to diagnose the cause of the Emperor's poor health. ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Tamamo-no-Mae”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

Tamamo-no-Mae is heroine in Japanese legend, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 6 external registers, which can be verified through the citation. ²