Here's a taste of those Japanese Mediaeval short stories. This is the opening of a short story about the mythological kitsune, the magical fox.
FIREFOX
Such a sweet young man, smooth peach-gold skin, dark almond eyes and lustrous hair with that blue-black gleam of Yatagarasu’s wing, although that Raven messenger, he who brings divine intervention into human affairs, would not approve of the form of intervention I intended. Each day I followed that young man as he walked to the shrine and prayed. Such a reverent goodly young man praying for the gods to soften the heart of his beloved’s family. It was such a pity that I was neither good nor godly. In two days’ time, I achieved my one hundredth birthday, and then the fun would begin. Shape changing, foxfire, oh so much a century of living bestowed upon a silver fox.
A kitsune I might be, messenger of Inari, my goddess of rice and prosperity, but when my goddess removes her eye from me, oh the tricks I would play then.
p.d.r lindsay
