Yakan

A werewolf creature from Japanese folklore.

In the Japanese dictionary of 1688, it is said with reference to a Chinese work that yakan is a word applied to a fox by mistake. A yakan is a small animal with a large tail that can climb trees, which a fox cannot. It was also believed that yakan resembles a dog and it was assumed that the word yakan got into Japanese from Buddhist sutras, where it meant "bad animal".

Already at the end of the XVII century, yakan was considered one of the most vicious and dangerous varieties of kitsune.