Daji

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 ShangReference treatment of Da Ji as King Zhou's concubine. (secondary)
• subordinate to: NüwaShe is on an errand, which is the part of the story most often forgotten: the corruption of the Shang is commissioned from above.Reference treatment of Daji as sent by the goddess Nüwa to seduce and corrupt King Zhou. (secondary)
• killer of: Bo YikaoReference treatment of Daji's ordering Bo Yikao to be cut alive and baked into pies after he refused her. (secondary)

Sources

• Daji is, in the Fengshen Yanyi, a thousand-year-old nine-tailed fox spirit possessing the woman Su Daji, sent by Nüwa to corrupt King Zhou of Shang, and the killer of Bo Yikao.: Reference treatments of Daji and of the Fengshen Yanyi. (secondary)