Sesshōseki, the Killing Stone

What is there

Above the hot-spring village of Nasu Yumoto the trees stop and the ground turns to grey rock and sulphur. A wooden walkway leads across the hollow to the stone, a boulder fenced with a sacred rope, and hundreds of small stone Jizō stand on the slope beside it. Gas seeps from the ground here, and the smell is the reason birds and insects were said to die near the stone; in 1689 a travelling poet wrote of bees and butterflies heaped dead on the sand. The hollow was named a national Place of Scenic Beauty in 2014. In March 2022 the stone was found split in two, and the halves lie as they fell. Warning signs close the walkway when the gas is strong.

Why here

The tale says the fox that had been Tamamo-no-Mae fled the court and was hunted down on the plain of Nasu, and that its body became a stone that killed whatever came near it, until a monk struck it with a hammer and broke its curse. The stone’s fragments were said to have flown to other provinces, and other “killing stones” are shown elsewhere in Japan. The court lady and her unmasking are told in the article; the stone is where the tale ends.

Yokai you will meet

• Tamamo-no-Mae 玉藻前 — The stone the fox became after its death on the plain of Nasu.
• Kitsune 狐 — The nine-tailed fox of the court; Tamamo Inari Shrine in Ōtawara, half an hour away, keeps the same tale.

Getting there

Nasushiobara Station (JR Tōhoku Shinkansen). Bus about 50 minutes to Nasu Yumoto Onsen, then ten minutes on foot.

The hollow is a short walk above the Yumoto bus stop, past the shrine gate of Nasu Onsen Shrine. The hot-spring baths of the village are the other reason to come.

• Open in Google Maps (external link)
• Open in OpenStreetMap (external link)
• Official site (external link)