ABSTRACT
In many respects, Lady Tamamo might be described as the most dangerous fox wife in Japanese myth-history, exploiting the always uncertain social politics of the bedchamber and the family at a time and place calculated to wreak the most havoc over the nation as a whole. It was her malevolent influence, after all, which laid the groundwork for the epochal conflicts that marked the end of the Heian period and brought about the rise of warrior rule. But this is not the only episode in which the figure of the fox can be found closely associated with the civil discord and political conflicts of this period. According to the Gukanshō —a polemic history and memoir composed by the prominent Tendai priest Jien (1155-1225)— foxes were also to blame for troubling signs of spirit-possession that began to manifest themselves at the impe rial court in the years after the death of the Retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa. On two separate occasions-in 1196 and 1206-women with close ties to Go-Shirakawa’s widow claimed to be possessed by the angry spirit (onryō ) of the deceased ruler, exclaiming “Build a shrine in my honor! Have the income of a province set aside for its upkeep!” (Brown and Ishida 1979:169).
