“Why Do Dogs Expose Foxes?”

In the oldest Japanese fox-wife tale, a barking puppy forces the bride back into her true form. In a Tang romance, hunting hounds end a fox woman’s life. This episode takes a walk through an old village, from the bedroom to the road, the shrine gate, the field, and the storeroom, and asks why dogs keep unmasking foxes. Along the way: komainu replaced by foxes at Inari shrines, a medieval dog-shooting sport, dog-spirit families called inugami, and a Buddhist word that makes the fox a kind of wild dog. Episode 21 of an animated series exploring East Asian fox legends, with the sources checked.