"The stone has been consistently well documented in Japanese literature," Kapur says. The long-lasting legacy of the stone probably has partly to do with the fact that many scholars and artists have written about it over the years in plays and a Japanese travelogue by haiku poet Matsuo Basho titled " The Narrow Road to the Deep North." "Tamamo-no-Mae is almost universally known in Japan," Meyer says. King says Tamamo-no-Mae has become an "incredibly popular" figure in the mobile games "Fate GO" and "Onmyoji," among others. She was the stone," Meyer says.īut the story of Tamamo-no-Mae isn't just local legend, but also a tale told throughout Japan, appearing in many video games, anime and manga. "Tamamo-no-Mae was never 'trapped' in the stone. "I was a bit dismayed at how so many Western media sites got the facts wrong and didn't seem to look beyond Twitter for the actual story behind the superstition," says Matthew Meyer, a folklorist based in Japan who runs, which is an illustrated database of Japanese ghosts and monsters.Īs it turns out: An evil spirit probably didn’t escape from the stone after all. With the stone split in half, internet denizens and scholars began to speculate about what might happen now that the spirit of Tamamo-no-Mae was potentially let loose in the Japanese countryside, free to terrorize unsuspecting citizens.īut it seems there's more to this story than the media initially reported.
The stone was called Sesshō seki, or the "killing stone" in English. As news outlets reported at the time, Tamamo-no-Mae had allegedly been trapped for centuries in a volcanic rock on the plains of Mount Nasu in Japan. The "nine-tailed fox" is a reference to the devious fox spirit, known in Japan as Tamamo-no-Mae.
After some additional details, the tweet ominously concludes: "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."
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