ABSTRACT
During the Edo period (1603-1867), the repertoires of popular printing houses and professional raconteurs (rakugoka ) alike regularly featured a story that would later be collected by the folklorist Seki Keigo under the title of “The Lucky Teakettle” (bunbuku chagama ). It tells of a fox saved from certain death by the mercy of a human being, and the marvelous exploits by which it repays that kindness. Using its shapeshifting powers, the fox assumes a variety of different forms, each of which the man is able to sell for a tidy sum. After each sale, the fox eventually returns to the man, to assume a new form and be sold again. Each transaction earns the man more than the one before, and he is soon able to take his place among the prosperous elites (chōja ) of village society.1 Even as the man grows ever more wealthy, however, it is the fox who pays the price. In the episode from which the tale
takes its name, for example, the fox assumes the form of a teakettle, in order to be sold to a local priest. Not realizing the true nature of his new acquisition, the priest places the foxkettle over a fire. Badly burned, the fox reverts to its original form and races away, yelping in pain. In another episode, the fox assumes the form of a horse, a handsome animal that is sold to a nearby feudal lord. Once again, the buyer uses his purchase in a fashion appropriate to its outward form, but disastrous for the fox. Unable to bear a human rider like a genuine horse, the fox quickly succumbs to exhaustion and collapses under its load, and is unceremoniously dumped into a muddy ditch at the orders of its angry rider.
