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Nikko NP, Tochigi
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After an old crack opened the stone in two in March 2022, authorities judged a natural split likely. The local tourism association held a fox-spirit memorial and peace prayer, hoping the “release” would be a good omen.
The “killing” was not only legend: in 1919, 3 sightseers were overcome by fumes near Sesshoseki; 2 died and 1 survived. The gas came from volcanic vents around the boulder, not from the stone itself.
Edo-era farmers trapped “hot-spring flowers” (yunohana) from cooling steam at nearby fissures. The crystals became bath salts—and were valuable enough that some paid annual taxes with them instead of rice.
Nasu’s tourism-association mascot lives at Sesshoseki and now serves as a reformed town ambassador. Its favorite snack is Kyūbi Inari: inari sushi filled with 9 ingredients, including local beef and vegetables.
Bashō visited on June 6, 1689, and wrote a haiku about the stone’s sulfur scent, red summer grass and heavy dew. The landscape he described became a National Place of Scenic Beauty in 2014.
Noh turns the stone into a ghostly encounter: a woman tells monk Gennō its story, then the fox spirit emerges and vows to stop harming people after Buddhist rites. The play appears in all 5 major Noh schools.
Nasu Town dates the fox tale’s first written appearance to 1445, in the Muromachi-period Shōgakushū, even though the legend is set in the much earlier Heian court. Its “ancient” story is medieval on paper.
Each May, torchbearers walk from Nasu Onsen Shrine to Sesshoseki for the Goshinka Festival, praying for Mt. Chausu’s calm, good health and harvests; masked drummers play Nine-Tailed Fox Taiko.
The “1,000 Jizō” beside the path began in 1978 with one stonemason’s donated statue. By 2021, local craftsman Yutaka Kushida had hand-carved about 960, each with prayerful hands larger than its body.
The rocky hollow is also Sai no Kawara, where Buddhist folk belief places children who died young stacking stones for merit under Jizō’s protection. The little stone piles and red bibs here are devotional offerings, not decoration.
A nearby Jizō belongs to a different local story: monk Kyōden berated his mother, then flames and boiling water burst from the ground at Sai no Kawara and swallowed him. The memorial warns against filial disrespect.
Legend says monk Gennō split the cursed boulder with a hammer. One tradition traces the name of the heavy, flat-faced Japanese hammer—the gennō—to his stone-breaking feat.
