Kana Washino, the high school senior who was murdered last week by a twitter acquaintance and his jealous wife, was a very talented illustrator. Here is a better view of the banner she drew for her twitter profile.
So am I the only one who thinks this illustration resembles a love triangle? For the record, I still believe the victim is as innocent as her school picture suggests, but I can’t deny that there is a real, geometric triangle here, with one male and two females on each side of him. It really begs the question: Does Law and Order: SVU imitate life, or does life imitate Law and Order: SVU???
This morning, with my kids back in school for the week, I finally got the chance to look more closely Kana’s twitter profile. Or rather, the profile of her virtual alter ego.
“I am a fox spirit,” she writes.
So if you don’t already know, fox spirits are a pretty big deal in Japanese mythology (and in popular culture derived from such legends.) In Japanese folklore, foxes are extremely clever, magical beings. They easily outwit villains, conjure illusions and shape-shift with ease. What I call a “fox spirit” (妖狐) is also sometimes translated as “fox ghost” or “fox demon”. Still, I don’t believe this implies anything sinister about the girl. In fact, I sort of want to add ‘fox demon’ to my own profile right now.
“I am a six-tailed, second-ranking fox spirit who betrayed my fox-spirit family.” she goes on. “My name is is Tenda Oreo. I am being hunted, so I hide out in a shrine in the shadow of the mountains.”
As it turned out, this hunt was not entirely fictional. In reality, Kana was picked up near her home in Tokyo last week and brought to the mountains, where she was killed. I almost want to believe her profile, and think of her as simply hiding out there, still.
RIP, little fox girl.
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