Tamamo-no-Mae

Tamamo-no-Mae is a celebrated beauty said to have served the cloistered Emperor Toba in the late Heian period. The figure is the human form of a golden, nine-tailed fox, said to have charmed the emperor in an attempt to topple the realm. Her true nature was discerned by the onmyoji Abe-no-Yasunari (or Abe-no-Yasuchika), and she fled to Nasuno in Shimotsuke Province (now Nasu, Tochigi), where she was struck down by Miura-no-Suke Yoshiakira and Kazusa-no-Suke Hirotsune and turned into the Sessho-seki ("Killing Stone"). The figure is widely developed in the otogi-zoshi Tamamo-no-Mae Monogatari, the Noh play Sessho-seki (attributed to Komparu Zenchiku), the early-modern joruri Tamamo-no-Mae Asahi no Tamoto (1751), and in kabuki and ukiyo-e. The medieval-late and early-modern transmission, in which the figure transmigrates through India (Lady Huayang), China (Baosi, Daji), and Japan (Tamamo-no-Mae), as a fox that brought down three kingdoms, positions the nine-tailed fox at the apex of the East Asian fox-yokai lineage. Sources include the Shinmei-kagami (Nanboku-cho), Kagakushu (Muromachi), the otogi-zoshi Tamamo no Soshi and Tamamo-no-Mae, the Noh play Sessho-seki, and the illustrated early-modern Ehon San-goku Yofu Den (Takai Ranzan, 1804). The Sessho-seki remains at Nasu, Tochigi, and its splitting in two in 2022 brought it back into wide attention. The stone-splitting tradition of Geno Zenji (Geno Shinjo, Soto sect) and Eichi-ji in Aizu-Takada also connect with the figure. The exterminator-monk Geno (Geno Zenji, Soto sect) is widely connected with the breaking of the stone, and the term "geno" for a striking hammer is etymologically derived from his name. Earlier fox-bride traditions in the Konjaku Monogatari-shu and Uchigiki-shu include cognate ancestresses, and adjacent transforming foxes include Kuzunoha and the fox of the Shinoda Forest.