Daji
Chinese · deity · shang · deity
She is the most famous fox spirit in East Asia and the origin of a whole genre: the huli jing who takes a beautiful woman's shape and destroys a household or a state runs from her through Chinese, Korean and Japanese literature to the present. The registry held Nüwa, who sent her, and not her. The one detail that keeps the story from being simple misogyny is the errand — she is the instrument of a goddess's judgment on a king who had insulted her, and the novel is quite clear that the commission came first.
Domains
- seduction
- shapeshifting
Relations
- consort of: King Zhou of Shang
- subordinate to: Nüwa
- killer of: Bo Yikao
Sources
- Reference treatments of Daji and of the Fengshen Yanyi.