I mentioned Megitsune in passing when talking about Babymetal‘s other song Karate, specifically that I actually enjoy it more than Karate.
I bring it up now, because in several of the posts I’ve done for the anime website I’m freelancing for, I’ve mentioned that Babymetal‘s concert film is coming to US theatres. Also, I’m running out of Music to Write Realmgard to posts and I need some new ones. So, since Babymetal’s been on my mind lately, here’s more about Megitsune.
“Megitsune” literally means “female fox”, so “vixen” might be a translation that better reflects how people actually talk in English, but in Japanese, “Megitsune” is literally a combination of “female” and “fox” — the Japanese word for fox is “kitsune”, the k sometimes turns into a g in compound words. As, for example, in “megami”, goddess — again, literally “female god”, well, kami… the exact nature of kami is hard to pin down/represent in English.
See, for example, the original Japanese title of the manga/anime series Oh My Goddess! “Aa! Megami-sama”
In addition to being the word for completely mundane foxes (i.e. members of the genus Vulpes), kitsune is also the word for the shapeshifting fox spirits of Japanese folklore, and that’s probably the more common use of the term outside of Japan…
For example, the header image I used is an ukiyo-e print of Kuzunoha, the mother of the historically-verifiable but heavily-mythologised Heian-period mystic Abe no Seimei, who was said to be a kitsune who fell in love with a human man.
Note the fact that Kuzunoha is casting a shadow shaped like a fox despite being in human form:
Image via Wikimedia Commons. Public Domain.
And it’s clear that the fox-spirit metaphor is what Babymetal is going for in the actual lyrics of the song. I think the lyrics are about the difficulties of being a woman in Japan, and probably especially about being a female celebrity in Japan:
Ancient maidens
You dance in the transient dream
Getting over thousands years
You live todayAh, it’s right. Always women are actresses
We’re not foxes, not deceiving
But maiden-like female foxesAh, girls are becoming more like an ideal woman
Smiling at face, crying at heart
Saying “It’s right”, we never show our tearsA fox, a fox, I’m a female fox
Women are actressesLyrics via Genius.
Like with Karate, I’m not sure if it’s issues with the translation that are making the lyrics hard for me to parse, or if they’re just that cryptic, but my read is that the song using the myth of (usually female) shapeshifting fox spirits to draw parallels to life as a woman in Japan, which requires constantly pretending to be something you’re not, or, at the very least, not displaying your real, inner emotions, while also being constantly suspected of having ulterior motives.
Of course, I’m not Japanese or a woman, so my perception of what life as a Japanese is actually like could be way off base…
It still is probably my favourite Babymetal song, though, even if I’m missing what the point is supposed to be.
Take a listen here:
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