How a Japanese Legend Might Be The Next Big Crisis
The world, and humanity overall, has experienced some rather interesting things in the past few years.
From the evil clowns chasing us down the street in 2016 to the global pandemic that emerged in 2020 and is yet to stop affecting our lives, it seems as though it would be difficult to think of anything else that could make us worry about our daily lives more than we already do. Well, it seems that there actually might be a way — a rock in Japan.
According to Japanese legend, Tamamo-no-Mae is a nine tailed fox spirit who was first spotted in China and then in other Asian countries such as Ancient India and Japan. As told by Hokusai, the artist known for The Great Wave off Kanagawa, the fox first possessed a concubine of the Shang Dynasty’s last ruler, King Zhou, who was given the name Di Xin posthumously. The possessed concubine, Daji, seduced the king and caused the Battle of Muye that brought the end of the Shang Dynasty.
Bewitched by Daji, Di Xin came to neglect his people. King Wu of Zhou took this opportunity to overtake Di Xin and he attacked the capital. This battle, with Di Xin’s loss, brought the end of the Shang Dynasty. Unable to handle the loss, Di Xin killed himself by burning his castle and Daji’s plans of attaining power died along with him.
The fox later fled to Ancient India where she disguised herself as a concubine of the crown prince, calling herself Lady Kayō. Here, the fox bewitched the crown prince to behead thousands of men, then fleeing back to the Zhou Dynasty in China to act as another concubine for King You, yet she was recognised this time and chased off by military forces. Ths caused her to disappear for a while — but at last, she came back once again, this time in Japan.
The fox was now known as Tamamo-no-Mae, a woman so beautiful and clever that even Emperor Toba, the ruler at the time, could not resist her. He was so infatuated that when he first saw her, he had immediately been enchanted by her beauty and refused to leave her side.
One summer night, though, everything changed. It suddenly started raining during a gathering and hot wind blew out all of the lights. The noblemen who were present grew fearful and this fright grew even more when Tamamo-no-Mae started glowing faintly, shooting monstrous creatures made out of light into the sky. That same night, Emperor Toba fell very ill, but no court physician or doctor could heal him. Their last resort was to call Abe-no-Yasunari, also known as Abe-no-Yasuchika, who was a famous astrologer. He immediately recognized Tamamo as the cause of the emperor’s sickness, identifying her as the fox spirit that caused the peril around Asia. With her plans of killing the king and becoming a ruler exposed, Tamamo-no-mae turned back to her fox form and fled the city. The king soon got better, but he refused to rest until the fox was killed. His soldiers, along with Abe-no-Yasunari, searched for her for forty days.
When found, the fox transformed herself into a rock that would kill anything that touched or came near it. Word of the rock spread and a monk named Gennō Shinshō made it his duty to cleanse it; and in the end he achieved his goal, trapping the fox into the rock forever. The rock was named “sessho-seki”, meaning the killing stone, and it went untouched for many years, seemingly harmless apart from occasional surrounding animal corpses.
Or so we thought until the rock broke a month ago.
On the 5th of March, the rock spontaneously split in half. It had naturally formed cracks for years, but the fact that it broke on its own caused a wave of concern across Japan. Some, believing the original legend, were scared for their lives.
Twitter user @/Lily0727K, in their tweet that currently sits at almost 200,000 likes claimed,“I feel like I’ve seen something that shouldn’t be seen,”
https://twitter.com/Lily0727K/status/1499998963193499652?s=20&t=CnyCfgtbHs_sNhIz-lMvDQ
Others tried to pass it off as a good omen. Some even claimed that the Nine Tailed Fox would contest the Coronavirus and bring luck to the world.
However, many simply believed the scientists who claimed that the “aura” surrounding the rock was the fumes caused by hot springs. According to them, the thing that enabled the rock to kill anything that came near it was not an evil spirit trapped inside of it, but rather sulphur gas released from the hot springs.
This incident brings up another issue, something deeply rooted in the nature of the story: misogyny. The story of the fox spirit was told throughout history as one where an evil woman caused the fall of dynasties and the death of many men. This was the case until very recent times when the Nine Tailed Fox became a more favourable character in the entertainment industry including features in anime, manga, and video games. The shift of interpretation from perceiving the fox as a fearsome woman to finding Tamamo as a somewhat respectable character shows the progress society has made in terms of this issue, but it is still not resolved; there are still several evil characteristics that define the fox and such misogynistic ideas continue to fuel discussion in society.
The question of whether the tale of Tamamo-no-Mae is just that, a tale, or at least, a real historical event that will never be certain unless the cracked rock truly does let her out. Until then, we can only hope that she won’t come out of that rock to let a demon run loose.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/18/world/asia/killing-stone-japan.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_spirit
https://twitter.com/edmundedgar/status/1500681068206518273?s=20&t=lnehcBqLWK2oiTrMtYdjxw
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_spirit
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Muye
https://www.history.com/topics/ancient-china/shang-dynasty#section_6
