Folk Lore is one of the most dense pieces of literature in the world filled with myths, legends, fables, and fairy tales, all individual to a group of people. Folklore is a collection of stories that tell the history and culture of a group of people and that explain the background of those people. Myths are tales that explain things in the world from natural phenomenons and origins of humans. These stories are full of deities that cause these events. Legends are stories that are retold and revised to stories of heroes overcoming amazing feats. These stories are embellished until the no longer resemble their original state. Fairy tales are stories, often full of mystical creatures, are told to tell a lesson and often provide a clear stance between …show more content…
This is one of the stories that place the kitsunes as trouble making tricksters that like to prank humans. There are other spirits in japanese culture however and not all like to cause trouble for humans. Some life for more questionable reasons, one such spirit, and this is a real spirit not a prank, Akaname a spirit that licks the filth off of untidy bathrooms. There is little more than that on the mysterious spirit. And while these stories seem like fairy tales they are more akin to myths in that they actually lay the ground of some of the cultural trends of japan, laying their foundation the religion of shinto. The kitsune has been pointed as the cause of bad days where nothing seems to be going right, and the akaname is pointed as the reason as for why we keep our bathrooms clean.
These myths are found in the religion of shinto. There are much more spirit like the kitsune in the religion of shinto, and all of them have found a way of influencing the culture, however myths are hard to find evidence for an actual cause to these events since most of these stories are told from prophets as words of god(s)/goddess(es) making them almost incredible.