Editing ROTE:Inari Jiro (section)

==Inari Clan==
The Inari family claims to be descended from an ancient ninja scion who fell in love with a beautiful kitsune spirit, who he married and who bore him nine beautiful daughters, one for each of her tails.  Before disapearing one moonlit night, she taught her children the secret of "fox magic": how to thread moonlight through the eye of a needle and sew it into dreams, how to pull their shadow around them, to hide from sight, how to tear off a piece of that shadow, and blow life into it, and even the greatest secret of all, how to find strawberries in winter.

Traditionally, the Inari were the chosen messenger corps of the Kurosawa family. Small, plucky, and loyal, the "dogs" of Inari were trusted to deliver the most important and secretive missives of the royal family. Though not physically strong, with their proficiency with illusions and their natural craftiness, the ninjas of of the Fox clan were notoriously difficult to track or pin down. Often, after days of pursuit, an enemy would finally get their hands on an Inari messenger only to discover that they grasped nothing but shadows and the laughter of the clever foxes.

The Inari family participated only tangentially in the war against the Betrayers. Being a small clan whose abilities did not lend themselves to decisive combat, the Inari were relegated to scouting and messenger services, leading many of the larger families to accuse them of cowardice, to which the family's matriarch is said to have replied, "We are foxes; not wolves."  Despite this, they suffered heavy losses as dozens of messengers were intercepted during the height of the shadow war.  After the war, the Inari family continued to serve the Kurosawa dynasty in their own peculiar, fey manner.  

Jiro lives alone, with his mother; his father is... no longer around.  Since his mother is more interested in chugging beer, watching baseball, and pursuing another in a long string of serial boyfriends than she is in being a ninja, he was trained by his grandfather, Aito, a stern but mercurial old man who likes to speak in Mr. Myagi-esque aphorisms.