 The 23rd chapter of the Nihon Shoki , written in 720 , is generally held to contain the first recorded mention of tengu in Japan . In this account a large shooting star appears and is identified by a Buddhist priest as a " heavenly dog " , and much like the tiāngoǔ of China , the star precedes a military uprising . Although the Chinese characters for tengu are used in the text , accompanying phonetic furigana characters give the reading as <unk> ( heavenly fox ) . M.W. de Visser speculated that the early Japanese tengu may represent a conglomeration of two Chinese spirits : the tiāngoǔ and the fox spirits called <unk> jing . 
