@with-love-maddie asked: 

Hi, I’m a Spanish writer who needs help. I’m writing an urban fantasy book where some of my characters are mythical creatures. Two of them are Japanese-American siblings (Kaito and Mei) who are kitsunes in human form, but can shape shift. Is it offensive to use kitsunes? I really don’t want to insult anyone by being ignorant. Thank you very much!!! ❤

It isn’t inherently bad for a non-Japanese person to use kitsune in their work. However, there are a few things you should keep in mind: 

1) The plural of kitsune is kitsune. 

2) Traditionally, kitsune aren’t humans who can shapeshift into foxes—there’s a superstition in Japan that all foxes have the ability to shapeshift into humans, and the word “kitsune” in Japanese literally just means fox. 

3) Most modern-day Japanese people don’t believe that foxes can shapeshift, any more than modern-day Greek people believe in the Greek gods.

So, if your characters are Japanese-American humans who can shapeshift into foxes, they wouldn’t really be kitsune. But you could still have Japanese-American people who can shapeshift into foxes, and in principle, that would be fine. 

However, if white people can be regular humans, and your fox-shapeshifters are the only Japanese characters in your story, that isn’t very cash money of you. But if almost everyone in your world is a supernatural being, or there are also regular Japanese humans, you’re probably fine.

—Mod Ixia