変化（へんげ）
Henge
Shapeshifting; above all the animals that take human form.
Henge is the act of changing shape, and in folklore the word belongs mostly to animals. The fox and the tanuki are the great shapeshifters, and the cat, the otter and the badger-like mujina join them. A fox becomes a beautiful woman or a priest; a tanuki becomes a tea kettle, a monk, a whole procession; an old cat stands up and dances in a towel; an otter asks a traveller the time and runs off laughing.
The animal usually shows through the disguise. A fox woman has a tail under her skirts or a face reflected in water; the disguise fails when the animal is tired, drunk or startled, and a dead fox or tanuki is found in the morning where the apparition stood. The faceless noppera-bō is often explained as a mujina or fox playing a trick.
Related yokai
Kitsune
狐（きつね）
A 1930 account from Toyooka describes blurred blue or red foxfire moving restlessly from beyond the mountain to somewhere close by.
Bake-danuki
化け狸（ばけだぬき）
Morinji tradition tells of the monk Shukaku, an inexhaustible iron kettle, and the mujina or tanuki form revealed while he slept.
Bakeneko
化け猫（ばけねこ）
Stories of old cats that speak, perform, dress like people or take human form—and the separate cat yokai they keep getting confused with.
Nekomata
猫又（ねこまた）
A 1931 Kagawa record describes an aging cat whose tail divides in two and that rises to dance on its hind legs.
Kawauso
川獺（かわうそ）
In Gunma in 1956 the kawauso was a figure on a riverside road at dusk who glances back and beckons — not a traveler, but an otter in human form.
