神河当時 - 文化的背景：狐

The Kitsune
Messengers of the Gods: The white kitsune of Kamigawa are based on the "Inari kitsune," the fox spirits that act as messengers and couriers for Inari, the kami of the rice fields. Shrines to Inari are still commonplace in Japan, even in Tokyo where you’ll find them wedged in between the high-rise buildings. You can tell an Inari shrine immediately by the stone fox statues on either side of the entrance. Here’s an example from an Inari shrine near me:

The shrines serve as a convenient place to pay respect to the natural world and the kami governing things like crops and rain. When a petitioner comes to the shrine to ask Inari for a good harvest, it is the fox who accepts the offering (traditionally a gift of food and money) and takes it to the kami on man’s behalf.

The Many Colors of Kitsune: Kamigawa’s foxes weren’t always white. In the initial stages of world development, there were a number of ideas for kitsune of different colors. Shape-changing foxes (bakegitsune), who appear in some of the earliest recorded folktales in Japan, would have fit comfortably into a blue role, while the wild fox-spirits (nogitsune), known for creating illusory banquets out of garbage in abandoned temples made to look like fabulous palaces could have evolved into a blue illusionist kitsune, or even a malicious black kitsune--though there they would run into competition from fox-mages (kitsune-tsukai) who command evil fox-spirits to steal from others, or the dreaded possessing foxes (tsukimono-gitsune) who possess people and make them do malicious things like eat other people’s rice cakes. Suffice it to say there was a lot to choose from, though I think that the white kitsune rose to the top as they best represent the dilemma of Kamigawa’s mortal inhabitants: once servants of the kami, they seem closer to the spirit world than their human counterparts, yet tragically they are forced by the war to defend themselves against their former masters or perish.

Whence the Tails?: We already know how Eight-and-a-Half-Tailsgot his tails, but why should foxes have any business running about with more than one tail, anyway? It turns out that there was a long-standing belief in some circles of the Imperial court that the appearance of a kyubi-kitsune (nine-tailed fox) was a good omen for the reign of the current Emperor. Indeed the earliest court documents in Japan mention seeing this strange creature frolicking around on the palace roof at the beginning of a new Emperor’s reign in a sort of Imperial publicity stunt. Though not directly related to the Inari kitsune, the nine-tailed fox is traditionally white in color--tailor-made for inclusion with the kitsune of Kamigawa.

引用元
TRUTH IN FANTASY Posted in Feature on March 7, 2005
https://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/truth-fantasy-2005-03-07

神河のモチーフである、日本神話や民間伝承について解説した記事です。長いので、分けて取り上げてみましょう。

まずは狐です。最初に、「神々の使者」としての側面があります。日本に、狐が祀られている「稲荷神社」が少なくないことがその表れでしょう。

また、最初は、神河の狐は白だけではありませんでした。民間伝承では狐がさまざまな姿に変化する様子は、青に相応しいでしょう。また、廃寺で宴を開く野生の狐の精は、青の狐・イリュージョンになっていたかもしれない、とのことです。他にも、悪い狐の精に命じて人のものを盗む狐使いや、人に憑依して悪事を働く狐など、日本民話にはさまざまな狐が語られています。最終的に狐が白だけになったのは、神河においては、何よりも神との繋がりを重視して「神に仕えるもの」という点が理由のようです。

宮廷の一部では、九尾の狐が現れることは天皇の治世にとって吉兆であるという考えが古くからありました。それゆえに、神河の狐には複数の尻尾を持つようになったようです。和風モチーフの創作物では「九尾の狐」は定番ですが、このような謂れは初めて知りました。また、この「九尾の狐」が白であることも、神河の狐が白単色である理由の一端のようです。