Once upon a time in the rustic village of Ōji, in the suburbs of Edo—present-day Tokyo—stood a tall tree known as Shōzoku Enoki, or the "Garment Hackberry." It was so named due to a well-known local legend: it was said that foxes from all across the Kantō region would gather here on New Year's Eve, dress up and make a half-mile pilgrimage to Ōji Inari Shrine.

Lanterns were carried by the paranormal pilgrims along the way and appeared to the villagers as fox-fires, a New Year tradition immortalized by ukiyo-e artist Utagawa Hiroshige in his One Hundred Famous Views of Edo.

The tree was cut down in 1929 to make room for the construction of a road, and an Inari shrine was later founded on the site in its honor. In 1993, locals started to parade the pilgrimage route wearing fox masks on New Year's Eve, which has since grown to be a popular annual event, attended by tens of thousands of people, a majority of them foreign tourists.