Tamamo-no-Mae Legend

The Tamamo-no-Mae legend is a late-medieval cycle in which a nine-tailed fox is exposed at the court of Emperor Toba (1103-1156). Appearing as a peerless court lady known as Tamamo-no-Mae, the figure wins the retired emperor's favour, but he falls ill; the onmyoji Abe no Yasunari (or Abe no Seimei, in variants) discovers that she is a fox who has earlier toppled dynasties in China and India. Exposed, she flees east and hides on the plain of Nasu in Shimotsuke. The court dispatches Miura-no-suke Yoshiaki and Kazusa-no-suke Hirotsune, who, after training in inu-oumono mounted archery, kill the fox. Her resentment turns the rock into the Sessho-seki, which gives off toxic gas and kills nearby animals and birds, until the Soto monk Gen'o Shinsho splits the stone and quiets the spirit. The setting moves from the imperial palace in Kyoto to the Nasu plain in Tochigi; the Sessho-seki at Nasu hot springs is a designated National Place of Scenic Beauty, and a real fumarole of hydrogen sulphide underlies the story. The stone split in two in March 2022 in widely reported geological collapse. Sources include the late-medieval otogi-zoshi Tamamo-no-Mae and Tamamo Soshi, the noh Sessho-seki by Kanze Kojiro Nobumitsu, Takai Ranzan's Ehon Sangoku Yofu-den (Bunsei era) and the kabuki Tamamo-no-Mae Asahi no Tamoto (Tenpo era).