In the reign of Emperor Kinmei, a man of Ono District in Mino rode out on his horse in search of a good wife. On a wide plain he met a beautiful girl. She came up to him in a friendly way, and he gave her a look and asked, "Where are you going?" She answered, "I am going to look for a good husband." When he said, "Will you be my wife?", she answered, "I will."
He took her home, and they became husband and wife; before long a boy was born. In the same month the family dog had a puppy. This puppy always barked fiercely at the wife. She was frightened and begged her husband, "Please beat that dog to death," but he felt sorry for it and did not.
In the second or third month came the season for pounding the rice owed as tax. The wife went into the hut where the mortar was, to give the women pounding rice their meal. The dog came chasing after her, trying to bite her. Startled and terrified, she turned at once into a yakan, a fox, climbed onto the fence and sat there.
Her husband saw this and said, "You and I have a child together. I will not forget you. Come whenever you like, and sleep with me." Just as he said, she kept coming and sleeping there. So she was called kitsu-ne, "come and sleep," and that is the word kitsune.
Once she went away dressed in a crimson skirt, graceful in her bearing. Watching her go, her husband composed a poem in his longing:
All love's pain has fallen on me, for the one who, glimpsed faintly, has gone far away.
(All the sorrows of love in this world have fallen on me, because of her, who showed herself faintly and went far away.)
The child was named Kitsune, and the family's clan name became Kitsune no Atai. They say the child was very strong and ran as fast as a bird flies.