白蔵主僧に化けて狐釣りを止める白狐・白蔵主

Hakuzosu, disguised as a monk, is a particularly theatrical yokai even among tales of fox transformation. Foxes often transform into beautiful women, travelers, or close family members, but Hakuzosu chooses the form of a monk. That choice holds the power not only to reassure the other person but to move them with words. The old fox in Tsurigitsune^[1] disguises himself as the hunter's uncle and preaches on the sin of fox trapping. The persuasion succeeds to the point of making him throw away his traps, but the bait on the way home destroys that victory. Hakuzosu does not lose because he deceived a human. Because the fox, who spoke using human ethics, is ultimately pulled back into the fox's own hunger, he is comical, pitiful, and terrifying.

This form does not render the yokai called a fox a simple villain. Hakuzosu is on the side whose clan was killed; he is an avenger, and a preacher. His words contain a protest against killing, while simultaneously containing deception through transformation. If Kuzunoha of Shinoda Forest is remembered as a fox mother unable to sever ties with humans, Hakuzosu is an old fox breaking down between human law and a fox's body. Both are stories of foxes entering human society, but while Kuzunoha is a story of love and parting, Hakuzosu is a story of eloquence, traps, desire, and exposure.

The Hakuzosu of Tsurigitsune undergoes a double transformation on stage. The first transformation is within the story, where the fox transforms into the monk named Hakuzosu. The second transformation is in the actor's body, where the kyogen master adopts the fox's posture and movement, yet hides it beneath the behavior of a human monk. The struggle between intellect and instinct, pointed out as a key element of appreciation, appears not only in lines but in the way of walking, the way of looking back, and the spacing as he is drawn to the bait[1]. Therefore, Hakuzosu is a yokai that is read as well as a yokai that is performed. The true identity of the fox is not exposed at the end; it becomes visible as the body gradually returns to a fox.

On the other hand, the Hakuzosu of the Ehon Hyaku Monogatari^[2] lineage makes the monk-shaped fox look even darker as a ghost story accompanied by the place name of Kai Province. As seen in the National Diet Library bibliography, the book is a ghost story art collection written by Momosanji and illustrated by Takehara Shunsen, and late-Edo readers received this fox through a combination of pictures and captions. While the stage Hakuzosu returns to a fox through a momentary failure, the picture book Hakuzosu lurks long within human settlements. What becomes problematic here is not only how skillfully the fox transforms. It is how much people believe in the institutions of monk's robes, temples, and sermons. Hakuzosu exploits that form of trust.

The white fur of the fox and the human status overlap in Hakuzosu's name and notation. The variant spellings Hakuzosu (白蔵主, 伯蔵主, 白蔵司, 伯蔵司) gently oscillate readings between the fox's white hair, a monk's name, and a fox disguised as a human. While the names of transforming foxes often remain attached to lands or people's names, in Hakuzosu's case, the very act of "the fox borrowing a name" becomes the core of the apparition. To give one's name is to acquire a role in society. By taking a monk's name, Hakuzosu enters the inside of the temple, enters the inside of the hunter's house, and finally returns to a fox in front of the audience.

Placing Hakuzosu within the genealogy of foxes, he is not a great demon fox like the Nine-Tailed Fox or Tamamo-no-Mae that shakes royal authority. Nor is he a fox woman who leaves behind a child like Kuzunoha. Hakuzosu concentrates the point of contact between fox and human into "persuasion" and "traps." Humans catch foxes with traps, and foxes catch humans with words. Both are techniques reading the opponent's weakness, and those techniques succeed for just an instant. However, when the smell of bait, the desire for prey, and the logic of revenge overlap, the fox approaches his own trap. The reason the story of Hakuzosu has survived so long is that it depicts not a fox's cunning, but a weakness that is harder to escape the wiser one is.

Hakuzosu on an encyclopedia acts as a keystone expanding fox-type yokai horizontally. If the Nine-Tailed Fox bears the nation and calamity, Kuzunoha parent and child and parting, and the wild fox possession and marginality, Hakuzosu connects performing arts and narrative, monk's form and fox's body. The fox is not a single mold; it can be a divine messenger, a mother, a calamity, or an actor. By placing Hakuzosu, an axis of "the performed fox" is established within the vast yokai group called foxes.