The Nine-Tailed Fox and the Killing Stone of Nasu: The Legend of Tamamo-no-Mae

In Nasu, in Tochigi Prefecture, there is a stone that people long feared would take the life of any bird or beast that came near it. Its name is Sessho-seki, the "killing stone." It's said to be the nine-tailed fox that once bewitched the imperial court, turned to stone after it was struck down. A beautiful woman, a great fox, and a poisonous rock: let's follow Japan's most famous fox legend, where all three become one.

A beautiful woman at the palace

The story begins in the capital at the end of the Heian period. A beautiful woman named Tamamo-no-Mae came to serve at the palace of the Retired Emperor Toba. She wasn't only lovely: she was said to be astonishingly learned, able to answer any difficult question without a pause. The retired emperor grew so fond of her that he kept her always at his side.

But before long, he fell ill with a sickness no one could explain. When an onmyoji, a court diviner, read the signs, he saw the truth: the source of the illness was Tamamo-no-Mae herself, and her true form was an ancient fox with nine tails. In the middle of a purification rite, the fox revealed itself, fled the palace, and vanished far to the east, or so the story goes.

The fox hunt on the plains of Nasu

The fox ran to the plains of Nasu, in what was then Shimotsuke Province, today's Tochigi. The court ordered the warriors of the eastern lands to hunt it down. The fox darted across the wide plains and was hard to catch, but after great effort the warriors finally brought it down with their arrows, it is said.

That wasn't the end of it. The fallen fox turned into a large stone, and the birds, beasts, and even people who came near it began to die, one after another. A stone that kills living things: people called it the Sessho-seki, the "killing stone," and kept well away. Perhaps they felt the fox's grudge had lived on, even inside the rock.

The monk who split the stone

The one who finally calmed the stone, legend says, was a Zen monk named Genno. Coming to Nasu, he performed a memorial rite before the stone and struck it. The stone cracked and burst apart, and at last the fox's spirit was set free.

This scene became the Noh play "Sessho-seki." A traveling monk meets a village woman who tells him the stone's story, and in time the fox's spirit appears before him. The play is still performed today.

There's also a theory that "genno," a type of heavy hammer used by Japanese carpenters, takes its name from this very monk. The name of the man who broke the stone became the name of a tool for striking things.

What made the stone deadly

So were the stories of creatures dying around the stone pure invention? The Sessho-seki sits at the foot of a volcano, where hot springs bubble up. In places like this, volcanic gases can seep out of the ground, enough to weaken insects and small animals. People long ago, it's thought, told of that invisible poison as the nine-tailed fox's grudge.

In the Edo period, the poet Matsuo Basho visited the stone on the journey he wrote about in The Narrow Road to the Deep North. He noted that its poison had not yet faded, and that dead insects lay heaped around it. Then in 2022, the stone, wrapped in a sacred shimenawa rope, was found split in two, and it made headlines across Japan. A legend told for so many centuries can still stir people today.

You'll find the nine-tailed fox's look, and its other face as a spirit beast from China, on the Kyubi page of our Yokaipedia. For a gentler side of Japan's fox yokai, visit the Yoko page too. And you can find Nasu's killing stone in Tochigi on the Yokai Map.