No. 8 — Kyozobo

A loyal fox named Kyozobo lived on Mount Kyusho at Tottori castle, and served as the lord's messenger, making the round trip of two hundred ri between Edo and Tottori in just a few days. One time, in the province of Harima, he noticed the smell of roasted rat, and though he knew it was a trap, he could not resist and ate it, was caught in the trap, and lost his life. The lord felt pity for this, and had a small shrine built on the slope of Mount Kyusho to enshrine Kyozobo.

Source: Inpaku Shiwakai (ed.), Inpaku Mukashibanashi (1911) — National Diet Library Digital Collections (Japanese text)
Land: Inaba and Hoki
Setting: Tottori City, Tottori
Type: Gods and Belief, Shape-Shifting Animals
Beings: fox

This is an English rendering of our short Japanese summary of the source tale — a summary translated from the Japanese, not a translation of the original text. The summary was drafted and translated with AI assistance, and names and numbers were checked against our records. Tale numbers for this book follow the order in which the tales appear; they are ours, not the book's.