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Title | The Fox Woman
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Author | Kij Johnson
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Cover Art | Susan Seddon Boulet
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Publisher | Tor - 2000
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First Printing | Tor - 2000
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Title | Fudoki
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Author | Kij Johnson
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Cover Art | Michael Dringenberg
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Publisher | Tor - 2003
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First Printing | Tor - 2003
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Category | Fantasy
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Warnings | Explicit sex
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Main Characters | Yoshifuji, Shikujoki, Kistune, Kagaya-hime, Harueme
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Main Elements | Spirits, gods
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Website | kijjohnson.com/
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 The Fox Woman
Kij Johnson has created an achingly beautiful love story, a fable wrapped in smoke and magic set against the fabric of ancient Japan. Johnson brings the setting lovingly to life, describing a world of formalities and customs, where the exchange of poetry is a form of conversation and everything has meaning, from the color of the silks one wears to how one may address others.
Yoshifuji is a man fascinated by foxes, a man discontented and troubled by the meaning of life. A misstep at cour forces him to retire to his long-deserted country estate, to rethink his plans and contemplate the next move that might return him to favor and guarantee his family's prosperity.
Kitsune is a young fox who is fascinated by the large creatures that have suddenly invaded her world. She is drawn to them and to Yoshifuji. She comes to love him and will do anything to become a human woman to be with him.
Shikujo is Yoshifuji's wife, ashamed of her husband, yet in love with him and uncertain of her role in his world. She is confused by his fascination with the creatures of the wood, and especially the foxes that she knows in her heart are harbringers of danger. She sees him slipping away and is determined to win him back from the wild...for all that she has her own fox-related secret.
Magic binds them all. And in the making (and breaking) of oaths and honors, the patterns of their lives will be changed forever.
The Fox Woman is a powerful first novel, singing with lyrical prose and touching the deepest emotions. A historically accurate fantasy, it gives us a glimpse into, and an understanding of, the history that shaped the people of one of our world's greatest nations. But it is also a story about people trying to understand each other and the times they live in, people trying to see through illusions to confront the truth of who they are.
Fudoki
Enter the world of Kagaya-hime, a sometime woman warrior, occasional philosopher, and reluctant confidante to noblemen - who may or may not be a figment of the imagination of an aging empress who is embarking on the last journey of her life, setting aside the trappings of court life and reminiscing on the paths that lead her to her death.
For she is a being who started her journey on the kami, the spirit road, as a humble tortoiseshell feline. Her family was destroyed by a fire that decimated most of the Imperial city, and this loss renders her taleless, the only one left alive to pass on such stories as The Cat Born the Year the Star Fell, The Cat with a Litter of Ten, and The Fire-Tailed Cat. Without her fudoki - self and sould and home and shrine - she alone cannot keep the power of her clan together. And she cannot join another fudoki, because although she might be able to win a place within another clan, to do so would mean that she would cease to be herself.
So a small cat begins an extraordinary journey. Along the way she will attract the attention of old and ancient powers, Gods who are curious about this creature newly come to Japan's shores, and who choose to give the tortoiseshell a human shape.
The Fox woman is a beautifully written book. While it would be nearly impossible to capture fedual Japanese culture without writing in lyrical form, Johnson almost made it poetry. I've always been fascinated by the kitsune, the trickster, the shape-shifting fox-spirit, and this book did it justice. This is a tale of a fox that fell in love with a human, and using the lore of her kind, used fox magic to create a world built entirely out of illusion to seduce and then ensnare the adrift Yoshifuji. For a while the reader is convinced of the reality of the world created by Kitsune, but in the end, illusion is all it was, and her beautiful home was a den under a fence, brief moments when the magic faltered would give us glimpses to the truth of what Yoshifuji was living. You wanted them to be together, but you knew it was killing him and it couldn't continue. And then there's Shikujoki, the wife of Yoshifuji, whom at first seemed so cold and formal but deep down truly loved her husband.
Oddly, while I was completely engrossed with the start of the book, when the magic finally kicked in I found it was a bit harder to keep reading, though I got back into it towards the end.
Beware however, if unusual sexual practices make you uncomfortable (incest, homosexual, beastiality) there's a little bit of every combination in this book, each one brief, some poignant, some intentionally disturbing.
Fudoki on the other hand I didn't like as much, though again Johnson excelled at seeing the world through the eyes of another creature that does not think like a human. Though it was the "war" part of the trilogy, war entails a lot of death, and given the story is being told by a dying princess, it seemed it was covering to major points at the same time. Though the tale is nearly standalone, I would recommend reading The Fox Woman first for there is a character that crosses over into this second book. It did however have a unique style, where the cat is just an invention of the dying princess (or is she?) and we jump back and forth between the lives of the two.
In both cases, if you love Japanese culture, you must read these books. I may not want to live under such strictures, but there is a kind of beauty and cruelty in it, that it is a pleasure to imagine that world.
I was told the third book was to involve a monkey, however given that it's been nearly 15 years since Fudoki was written I'm unsure if that final installment will ever be written. But if it ever is, I will definitely be reading it.
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