Flash-style drawing of a leaping brown fox with a teal wash swirl, next to a bold black kanji character meaning fox, on a white background.

Leaping fox beside a kanji character

Japanese · Mixed · Flash

A brown fox leaps upward with its tail curving down the left side, drawn with soft pencil-like shading and white highlights on the chest and tail tip. A large black brush-stroke kanji character meaning fox sits beside its body, with the strokes bold and calligraphic. Pale teal wash lines swirl behind the fox and tail, and the composition is set on a plain white background.

Japanese Fox Kanji Calligraphy Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, the wind up here takes half of what I say and the crows keep the rest. You want the fox? Then mind the broken steps, because the keep fell on the fox's account, or so my grandmother swore, and she never lied about a wall.

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Lord Tadashi of this hill had a wife who was not quite a wife. She came to the gate each night in a grey kimono, carrying a lantern that burned blue, and every morning the rice in the storehouse was a little heavier. The garrison grew fat and the steward grew suspicious. He laid a trap of rope and rice wine beside the old well, and on the ninth night he caught her by the tail, which was the only part of her that would not change.

She did not beg. She pulled, and the tail came away in his hands like a torn silk banner, while she went over the wall in one leap, white throat and fire-red back, the lantern swinging down into the valley where it still burns on wet nights. The steward kept the tail. It is said he kept it dry for years in a lacquer box, and it never once stopped smelling of cedar smoke and wild mint.

That is how the teahouses tell it, and they tell it wrong. The fox never wanted the lord's rice. She wanted her tail back. Count the stones on the third wall if you doubt me. Eleven, one for each winter she waited there. Now mind the step, the stones are cold and the tea is colder.