People in the Legends
Matsuo Basho was a poet of the early Edo period. He raised haikai poetry to the level of an art and is revered as Japan’s greatest haiku master.
In 1689 he traveled through northern Japan with his disciple Sora and wrote the travel journal The Narrow Road to the Deep North. On this journey he visited the Killing Stone in Nasu, Tochigi Prefecture, and wrote a haiku about it. The stone is said to be the transformed nine-tailed fox.
A rock at Nasu-Yumoto in Nasu, Tochigi Prefecture, long feared for killing any living thing that approached it. Legend says it is the nine-tailed fox Tamamo-no-Mae turned to stone after being unmasked and slain. In 2022 the stone was found split in two.
A fox yokai with nine tails. Legend says it took the form of the beautiful Tamamo-no-Mae to win over the retired Emperor Toba, was unmasked and killed on the plain of Nasu, and turned into the "Killing Stone". The stone split in 2022.
