Japan Comics

Naruto is one of the most popular manga and anime series around. It features a young boy, Naruto, whose body actually contains the spirit of a fox with nine tails that had been feared the terror of his village a dozen years earlier. At that time, this nasty fox was captured and its spirit was sealed in the body of a little boy (our Naruto).

Jump ahead twelve years and you have the star of the story, now a hyperactive and mischievous young ninja with great aspirations. Both Naruto anime (animated television shows) and manga (comic book series) go through episodes of high-flung adventures battling monsters, other ninjas and last but not least, the reviews do ninja .

Both the manga and anime have spawned numerous fan sites and forums, all sorts of products available online (screen savers, online games, etc.) and for sale (clothing, DVDs, and more) . But what is behind this popular series is an interesting fact: the story of Naruto is based solidly on traditional Japanese culture.

Author and artist Masashi Kishimoto was born in Japan in 1974 and is an area rich in history. Kishimoto won Shonen Jump magazine Step Hop Award for manga artists with his manga Karakuri again, but it does not stop there. His version is the first Naruto story of fox spirits and the story grew. It quickly became a popular ninja manga, making it one of the most popular in Japan.

What may have escaped some western Naruto fans is the interesting history of the Fox. Fox myths abound in Japanese culture, going back as far as the fifth century BC Stories portray foxes as intelligent beings who possess magical powers that increase with age and wisdom to gain. One of their tricks is their ability to shape shift and sometimes they take the form of a human being. Some tales are encouraging others in transforming itself into a human form while others describe them as friends or guardians or even women.

A kitsune (the Japanese word for fox) can have up to nine tails, like the fox of evil in the past Naruto. And stories of old, it seems that the more tails it has, the more powerful it is. Most popular stories indicate that the fox will grow more tails only after he has lived for a thousand years.

Interestingly, Japanese folklore originally portrayed as having the fox only good attributes, and traits evil and mischievous arrived with tales of Chinese and Korean. Some consider that the kitsune as a deity and they will make offerings to them. There are a few stories about kitsune, both good and bad, with foxes variable geometry in human form (a power they acquire only after the age of 100), then secretly living in a family until finally been discovered (they often seem to have difficulty hiding their tails when assuming human form!).

A common belief is that foxes do without beautiful women. In early Japanese history, it was thought that any woman alone, especially at night, might actually be a fox. Other stories tell of the spirits that inhabit the human fox there is even a word, Kitsunetsuki, which means "state of being possessed by a fox." It has been said that humans possessed by the spirits Fox tend to go mad and run naked through the streets, among other things.

However, our Naruto is not evil or wicked. It is easy to see, however, how he fared so poorly. A People's History and adventurous, it will be this way for generations to come.