Tale 21 — Magozaemon and the Inari fox
Magozaemon, who had a scholar's temperament, wishing to grow close to a fox, a shape-shifting fox, and to enrich his family's fortune, built an Inari shrine in his garden and obtained for it, from Kyoto, the divine rank of senior first rank. As he went on offering fried tofu every day, the fox grew tame and drew near, until it could be stroked on the neck.
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.