The legend of Kuzunoha

 KUZUNOHA, a japanese legend.

"A young nobleman, Abe no Yasuna (安倍 保名), is on his way to visit a shrine in Shinoda, in Settsu Province, when he encounters a young military commissioner who is hunting foxes in order to obtain their livers for use as medicine. Yasuna battles the hunter, sustaining several wounds, and sets free the white fox he had trapped.
Later, a beautiful woman named Kuzunoha helps Yasuna to return to his home. She is the fox he saved, adopting human form in order to tend to his wounds. He falls in love with her and they marry. She bears him a child, Seimei, who proves prodigiously clever. Kuzunoha realizes that her son has inherited part of her supernatural power.
Several years later, while Kuzunoha is viewing some chrysanthemums, her son catches sight of the tip of her tail. Her true nature revealed, Kuzunoha prepares to return to her life in the wild. She leaves behind a farewell poem, asking her husband Yasuna to come to see her in Shinoda Forest.
Yasuna and his son search for Kuzunoha, and eventually she appears to them as a fox. Revealing that she is the kami, or spirit, of Shinoda Shrine, she gives her son Seimei a gift, allowing him to understand the language of animals."

In Izumi there is a Kuzunoha Inari shrine, said to be built upon the place at which Kuzunoha departed, leaving her farewell poem on a silk screen.

The poem itself has become famous:
"If you love me, darling, come and see me. / You will find me yonder in the great wood / Of Shinoda of Izumi Province where the leaves / Of arrowroots always rustle in pensive mood."

 

And this is my illustrations: