Tanuki.

A tanuki (狸, たぬき) may appear simply as a Japanese raccoon dog or as a transformed figure disguised as a monk, traveler, or household object. Folklore does not require one fixed monstrous body. Instead, the tanuki's appearance changes to suit the joke, the fraud, or the lesson being staged. In visual culture this flexibility makes the creature especially adaptable, slipping between animal realism and comic exaggeration.

Later popular art adds a stable set of humorous features: a round belly, straw hat, sake flask, ledger, and oversized scrotum used as a visual shorthand for magical transformation and comic abundance. Those details are culturally important, but they belong mainly to later popular iconography rather than to every older tale.

Tanuki deceive by changing shape, imitating voices, and making cheap illusions look briefly convincing. They may pass as monks to collect alms, transform leaves into coins, or turn an ordinary object into something marvelous just long enough to embarrass a greedy or gullible human. The tone is usually comic. Tanuki trouble people, but they are less often framed as murderous predators than many other yokai.

That comic edge does not make them trivial. Tanuki stories test perception and expose vanity, haste, and appetite. In that sense they belong to the same broad world of transforming animal spirits as foxes, but their social role is lighter. Where kitsune tales often turn uncanny or erotic, tanuki tales more often end in laughter, surprise, or a lesson about foolishness.