Short Stuff: The Killing Stone
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Hey,

Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. Josh here, Chuck here. Let's giddy up all the way to Japan. That's right. We're going to Japan to talk about a very famous rock in Japan that split in two in 2022.

And there was a tweet that kind of got big that featured a picture of that broken rock that said, and this is translated from Japanese, I came alone to the killing stone where the legend of the nine-tailed fox remains. If it's a manga, it's a pattern that the seal is broken and it's possessed by the nine-tailed fox. And I feel like I've seen something that shouldn't be seen.

Let's go. Let's talk about this famous rock. Okay. So, yeah, this person who tweeted that was a tourist in Togichi Prefecture in Japan. And she was visiting this very famous giant rock that supposedly was the dead form of the fox spirit Tamamo no Mai.

And supposedly Tamamo Noma'i had been trapped for centuries in this rock that people like the tweeter would go visit. The thing is, when the tweeter went to visit it, this rock had been split in two. And that meant possibly that Tamamo Noma'i had escaped. Right. And the idea was that Tamamo Noma'i was trapped in this stone called the Shesho Seki. Is that right?

Sessho. Sessho, Seki? Mm-hmm. All right, which is killing stone. Yep. And here's the thing is the internet kind of got it wrong. If you look at the original lore of the story, Tamamo no Mai was actually the stone and not trapped in the stone. Sure. So let's talk about this.

Okay. Even further. I'm going to just keep doing setups. Right. Tamamo no Mai was a very famous spirit, a nine-tailed fox spirit in Japanese folklore. And she showed up in a number of different myths and tales in Japanese folklore. But there's one in particular that

that concerns this story. And it involved the Emperor Toba, the 74th Japanese Emperor, who was a very real person who lived from 1103 to 1156 CE. And during this reign, allegedly, according to folklore, Tamamo no Mai, the fox spirit, showed up disguised as a woman and said, I think you're going to like me. Check me out.

That's right. The idea was to just sort of preoccupy and bewitch this emperor and then overthrow the emperor. What happened, according to lore, once again, is that the emperor was enthralled, sort of neglected his duties, and then fell very, very sick around the same time. So a soothsayer came along and said, wait a minute. I suspect that you, Tamama Nomai, are behind this whole thing.

And so she fled into, you know, the land surrounding there. Basically, it's Mount Nasu. And the legend was that they caught up to her. She was slain and that her body turned into the stone at that very spot. Right. So it's very significant that it was a group of samurai who tracked her down and killed her, shot her with an arrow.

because folklorists believe that this tale of Tamamo no Mai enchanting the emperor and basically causing him to stop paying attention to his duties is some sort of allegory, I guess, for what's called the Hōgen Rebellion, this time when the emperor's rule gave way to rule by the samurai, which lasted for centuries afterward. And so that this was kind of a...

about that story maybe justified it. I'm not sure, but the essential ingredients are that the emperor was bewitched and helpless and had to be saved by the samurai. Yeah, and it was, you know, there were a lot of, this is just one of many, many stories in Japanese folklore wherein monsters would appear, a hero would rise up to save somebody. It was usually a metaphor for, you know, something politically that was going on. Right. And maybe I say we take a break?

I think I agree with you, sure. All right. We'll be right back. Did you know Tide has been upgraded to provide an even better clean in cold water? Tide is specifically designed to fight any stain you throw at it, even in cold.

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Ooh, but not so much of that. Sign up at WorkMoney. Get money-saving tips. Skip the rent. Get more rich. Sign up at WorkMoney.org slash MoreRichContest for your chance to win $50,000. Okay, Chuck, so where we left off, Tamamo Namai has turned into a giant stone. And this stone that people would go visit was something like 6 feet tall and 25 feet in diameter.

It was no small stone. It sounds like it was shaped kind of like Slimer from Ghostbusters. Yeah, and I think that was circumference, by the way.

What did I say? Diameter. Circumference. Mm-hmm. Thanks. So people would go visit this, and one of the reasons why this stone in particular came to be identified as the Sessho Seki, the killing stone, is because it really kind of stood out from the other stones in the area. You could just pick it out and be like, that looks cool. And then the actual area itself on the mountain, what was the mountain's name?

Numatsu? Nasu. Yes, Mount Nasu. It's like a volcanic plain. There's active volcanoes in the area, so there's like poison gas like spewing up out of the earth around the stone. It's quite menacing in that sense, especially if you know what the legend is and you're looking at the stone as if it were the killing stone. Yeah, so there are potentially some poisonous gases there.

sulfuric gases that seep out of the ground in that area. While it's nothing that would hurt a human, if you went to this stone, which really stands out and looks weirdly out of place there, and you found some dead squirrels laying around, it could lend itself to the idea of

that either Josh was nearby. Or that an evil spirit could radiate death from that spot. And this is a very, very well-known story. I don't think we said that it was, you know, it was part of folklore and there are a lot of these stories, but this seems to be one of the bigger ones. And it's kind of like a universally known tale in Japan. Yeah. So it's a very, very famous story. And so, you know, when this thing split, it was...

You know, the Internet goes a little hog wild for a short time talking about whether or not the evil spirits will be unleashed and whether or not this is all coming to fruition. Apparently, if you do like on the ground research and talk to Japanese people, they're like, we don't really think that. Of course we don't. This is the Internet being the Internet.

Yeah. And in addition to that, over the years, initially Tamamo no Mai was depicted as just nothing but evil, a corruptor of men and usurper of male power. Yeah. And then as Japanese society kind of softened and rejuvenated,

Progressed. Progressed in its stance on women. She actually evolved along with that, interestingly, so that now today when she's used in like manga or anime or something like that, she's usually kind of like a proto-feminist antihero is how this article from How Stuff Works put it, I think, perfectly. Yeah, totally. And, you know, of course nothing happened because it's folklore. Right.

But I imagine it's still – and apparently this is a big thing in Japan to, like, go visit this thing in the woods, right? Yeah. That seems like a dumbed-down way of saying it because we visit plenty of –

great things in the woods as well. But, you know, smaller things like, you know, this rock in the middle of this national forest becomes like a pretty standard tourist attraction. Yeah, and I didn't realize there was a term for that kind of tourism, contents-based tourism, where it's just the one thing that you're going out of your way to go see to a place you probably wouldn't have otherwise gone, like the giant ball of yarn or something like that, you know? Yeah. Well, except this isn't a national park, which I imagine is beautiful. Sure. Yeah.

I think it is, too. I have nothing else except I want to go on the record as correcting you. I love the squirrels now, and I have for years and years and years. I know. I'm just kidding. Okay. Well, Chuck was kidding, everybody. That means short stuff is out. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.