Tanuki-san, Tanuki-san, asobou ja nai ka?

Ima gohan no massaichu

Okazu wa nani? Umeboshi gobou? Hito kire choudai!

Ara anta chotto ga tsukine!

For most Westerners’ other exposure to the Tanuki, we need go no further than Mario 3’s “Tanooki” suit, which is obviously based off of the mythology of the tanuki (and also spelled wrong). Mario 3’s lesser racoon suit power-up is also a tanuki reference, specifically the act of one placing a leaf on its head as a focusing aid for its shapeshifting powers. This is presumably why the power-up itself is a leaf, although Miyamoto and others have always been somewhat cagey about giving straight answers in interviews as to why they chose the raccoon/tanuki angle in the first place. This is arguably one of the first widgets of the Mario series, which up until then was pretty universally understandable across cultures.

The “Tanooki”/Tanuki suit’s signature ability is, of course, that it allows Mario to turn into a Shinto shrine statue:

The raccoons in Pom Poko, above, directly reference this multiple times: