The Japanese Poem That Will Kill You If You Read It
The story behind the curse of Tomino’s Hell
Any fan of the Japanese horror genre knows that curses play a big part in their movies, manga, and storytelling in general. On that long list of “don’t do this” you will find the poem Tomino’s Hell which, according to popular culture, will kill you if you read it aloud.
But not if you read it to yourself. Which is fortunate for me.
The poem is grim. Written by Saijō Yaso in 1919, the piece features horrific imagery as it depicts the young boy Tomino’s journey to the lowest level of Buddhist hell. This could be why anyone who reads it gets those creepy vibes and immediately connects the poem with a death curse. Needle mountains don’t exactly inspire dreams of frolicking through candy hills.
As Reddit and other sources that explain this curse can tell you, the proof that anyone died as a direct result of this poem is based purely on hearsay. A boy getting hit by a truck after performing the poem in front of the class, a girl who suddenly passes due to sicknesses, the author of the poem himself succumbing to a liver disease — all either fictional or coincidental deaths that add credence to the rumor. Yet when you have a poem as dark as Tomino’s Hell, it doesn’t take much more than those kinds of coincidences to…
