Gumiho, huli jing and kitsune, the fox spirits of Korea, China and Japan

In the folklore of East Asia, a fox that lives long enough becomes something more than a fox. It grows wiser and stranger. It gains extra tails, up to nine. And it learns to take human shape, most often the shape of a beautiful woman. Korea calls this creature the gumiho (구미호), China the huli jing (狐狸精, “fox spirit”) or jiuweihu (九尾狐, “nine-tailed fox”), and Japan the kitsune (狐). They share a family tree, but each country raised its fox in its own way.

Where the nine-tailed fox began

The nine-tailed fox first appears in ancient China. The Classic of Mountains and Seas (山海經), a book of strange lands and creatures compiled more than two thousand years ago, describes a fox with nine tails living in a faraway country. In early China, the creature could be dangerous, but it was also seen as an auspicious sign. A 2025 study of the Japanese fox by the scholar Chen Xiyu notes that when the nine-tailed fox first reached Japan it was likewise regarded, as in China, as a lucky, sacred beast.

What changed the fox’s reputation was a story about a queen. In Chinese legend, Daji, the wife of the cruel last king of the Shang dynasty, was really a fox spirit in disguise, and her wicked influence helped bring the dynasty to ruin. The idea at the heart of the story, that a ruler could lose his kingdom by falling under the spell of a beautiful woman, became attached to the fox again and again.

China, the huli jing

China’s fox spirits are the oldest and in many ways the most varied. They can be seductive dangers, draining the life of the young men they bewitch. They can be tricksters, or spirits to be bargained with. And in some stories they are loyal, loving companions. The tale of Daji gave China its most famous evil fox, but Chinese literature also contains a great many fox women who are clever, kind and sympathetic.

Japan, the kitsune

Japan’s foxes have the widest range of all, from wicked tricksters to devoted wives, and Japan is the only one of the three countries where foxes are closely linked to worship.

The Kokugakuin University Encyclopedia of Shinto explains that the cult of Inari, the god of rice and food, became deeply associated with foxes. One of Inari’s names, Miketsukami, “the god of food”, sounded the same as the characters for “three fox gods”, which helped tie Inari to foxes, and people also believed that foxes could deliver oracles or possess people, giving rise to shamans known as fox handlers. Inari worship spread so widely that an old saying listed Inari shrines among the most common sights in any Japanese town, and today foxes guard countless Inari shrines across Japan.

Japan also has its own famous evil fox, Tamamo-no-Mae, a beautiful court lady revealed to be a fox. Chen Xiyu’s study shows how her story changed over time. In medieval works, Tamamo-no-Mae is a fox monster of unclear origin, and the story stays inside Japan. In the early modern period, her legend was merged with the Chinese story of Daji and with the nine-tailed fox, and it grew into an international tale of a fox who ruins kingdom after kingdom through her beauty. That merger, the study argues, was the turning point that changed the Japanese nine-tailed fox from a sacred beast into an evil monster.

Korea, the gumiho

The Korean gumiho is the most consistently dangerous of the three. She is almost never worshipped and rarely kind, and her classic stories are about a family or a community discovering the monster in its midst.

In the tale of the fox bead, told all over Korea, a schoolboy falls for a lovely young woman who will not let him kiss her. She turns out to be a gumiho, and when he finally kisses her he takes the magic bead hidden in her mouth. In a darker version, she is trying to kiss a hundred schoolboys to death so that she can rise to heaven. In the terrifying Fox Sister, a couple who longed for a daughter discover that the girl born to them is a fox who eats the livers of their cattle, and then of their family, until her brother destroys her with three magic bottles.

These stories give the gumiho her signature features: a beautiful human disguise, a hidden animal nature, a magic bead that holds her power and a hunger for livers. They also give her something the other foxes rarely have, a longing to cross over and become fully human, a theme that modern Korean dramas have made the heart of almost every gumiho story.

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How the three compare

The three foxes share the same basic idea: a long-lived fox gains tails and power and takes human form, often a woman’s. They differ mainly in what their cultures did with that idea.

China gave the world the original nine-tailed fox and the archetype of the kingdom-ruining fox queen, but also a rich tradition of sympathetic fox women. Japan kept both sides alive at once, with foxes honoured as messengers and spirits of Inari on one hand and feared as possessors and seductresses like Tamamo-no-Mae on the other. Korea’s gumiho stayed closest to the monster, a predator in human form, though modern Korean storytelling has given her a heart and a longing that keeps audiences coming back.

Quick facts

The nine-tailed fox began in ancient Chinese texts such as the Classic of Mountains and Seas, where it could be an auspicious sign. The Chinese legend of Daji, a fox spirit who helped ruin the Shang dynasty, attached the idea of the kingdom-wrecking fox woman to the creature. In Japan, foxes are linked to the worship of Inari, while the evil fox Tamamo-no-Mae merged with Daji’s legend in the early modern period. Korea’s gumiho, known from tales like the Fox Bead and the Fox Sister, is the most consistently dangerous of the three.

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