ABSTRACT
According to a public opinion survey carried out by Japan's national broadcasting service (NHK), contemporary Japanese people show a strong interest in a variety of religious and mystical phenomena, including gods and buddhas, the other world, miracles, and fortune-telling. This chapter introduces this phenomenon in the light of more general characteristics of Japan's modern folk beliefs. Stories telling of a time when foxes lived in close association with the human world are source texts for the popular beliefs infox oracles, fox possession, fox enchantment, and so on. Japan, from the perspective of the history of religions, is an animistic country. A variety of spiritual beings are found abundantly throughout the Japanese archipelago, and one of the major features of folk religion, which is part of Japan’s basic cultural heritage, is its exceedingly rich animistic beliefs.
