What is the Sessho-seki?
The Sessho-seki is a large rock in a valley filled with the smell of sulfur near Nasu-Yumoto Onsen in Nasu, Tochigi Prefecture. Since ancient times, birds, beasts and even people who approached it are said to have died, so it was feared as the “Killing Stone.” It is said to be the transformed body of the nine-tailed fox.
The nine-tailed fox and Tamamo-no-Mae
According to legend, at the end of the Heian period there was a beautiful lady-in-waiting named Tamamo-no-Mae, beloved by the retired Emperor Toba. When the emperor fell ill with a mysterious disease, an onmyoji diviner discovered that she was really a golden nine-tailed fox that had brought ruin to nations in China and India.
Exposed, the fox fled to the plain of Nasu, where the imperial army killed it, and its grudge turned into a great rock that breathed poison. Later the monk Genno smashed the stone to pacify its spirit, and the fragments are said to have flown to various parts of Japan. The large hammer used to split stone is called a “genno” in Japanese, supposedly after this monk.
Matsuo Basho and the Killing Stone
The Edo-period haiku poet Matsuo Basho visited the stone on the journey recorded in The Narrow Road to the Deep North and wrote that its poisonous vapors had not yet died away, and that bees and butterflies lay dead in heaps so thick the sand beneath could not be seen. Volcanic gases, including hydrogen sulfide, seep from the ground around the stone, and are thought to lie behind the legend of the stone that kills those who come near.
The stone splits in 2022
In March 2022, the Sessho-seki was found split in two, and social media buzzed with posts saying the seal on the nine-tailed fox had been broken. In reality, it is thought to have split naturally after rainwater seeped into a crack the stone already had. The split stone can still be seen today, with a row of a thousand jizo statues nearby.
