"Working Backward From Nine Tails"

Tamamo-no-Mae is remembered as a nine-tailed fox explicitly linked to China's Daji — but neither detail is in the oldest version of her story. This episode works backward from an 18th-century artist's illustration through a 1653 sequel and a Noh play to the original 15th-century tale of a two-tailed fox with no Chinese connection at all, then asks who she was really based on: a real Heian-era empress consort at the center of a succession crisis that helped trigger two civil wars. Episode 10 of an animated series exploring the darkest myths of East Asian history.