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Short Stuff: The Killing Stone · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the short stuff, Josh heir Chuck here,
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: let's get it up all the way to Japan.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: That's right. We're going to Japan to talk about a
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: very famous rock in Japan that split in two in
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: twenty twenty two. And there was a tweet that kind
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: of got big that featured a picture of that broken
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: rock that said, and this is translated from Japanese, I
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: came alone to the Killing Stone where the legend of
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: the nine tailed Fox remains. If it's a manga, it's
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: a pattern that the seal is broken and it's possessed
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: by the nine tailed Fox. And I feel like I've
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: seen something that shouldn't be seen. Let's go, let's talk
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: about this famous rock.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Okay. So yeah, This person who tweeted that was a
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: tourist in Togichi Prefecture in Japan, and she was visiting
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: this very famous giant rock that supposedly was the dead
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: form of the fox spirit Tomamo no Mai, and supposedly
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Tomamo no Maai had been trapped for centuries in this
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: rock that people like the tweeter would go visit. The
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: thing is, when the tweeter went to visit it this
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: rock had been split in two, and that meant possibly
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: that Tomamo no Mai had.
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: Escaped, right, And the idea was that Tomama no Mai
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: was trapped in this stone called the Shesho siki. Is
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: that right?
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: Uh? Sessho sessho seki, all right.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: Which is killing stone. And here's the thing is the
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Internet kind of got it wrong if you look at
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: the original lore of the story. Uh, Tomamo no Mai
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: was actually the stone and not trapped in the stone. Sure,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: so let's talk about this, okay, further so doing setups right.
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: Tommo no Mai was a very famous spirit of nine
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: tailed fox spirit in Japanese folklore, and she showed up
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: in a number of different myths and tales in Japanese folklore.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: But there's one in particular that concerns the story, and
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: it involved the Emperor Toba, the seventy fourth Japanese Emperor,
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: who was a very real person who lived from eleven
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: oh three to eleven fifty six CE, and during this reign, allegedly,
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: according to folklore, Tmomo Nomai, the fox spirit, showed up
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: disguised as a woman and said, I think you're gonna
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: like me, check me out.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: That's right. The idea was to just sort of preoccupy
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: and be which this emperor and then overthrow, overthrow the emperor.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: What happened, as according to the lore once again, is
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: that the emperor was enthralled, sort of neglected his duties
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: and then fell very, very sick around the same time.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: So a soothsayer came along and said, wait a minute,
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: I suspect that you Nomai are behind this whole thing.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: And so she fled into you know, the land surrounding there,
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: basically it's Mountain Nasu, and the legend was that they
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: caught up to her, she was slain, and that her
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: body turned into the stone at that very spot, right.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: So it's very significant that it was a group of
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: samurai who tracked her down and killed her, shot her
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: with an arrow because folklorists believe that this tale of
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: Tomamo Nomai enchanting the emperor and basically causing him to
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: stop paying attention to his duties is some sort of
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: allegory I guess for what's called the Hogan Rebellion, this
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: time when the emperor's rule gave way to rule by
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: the samurai, which lasted for centuries afterward. And so that
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: This was kind of a about that story. Maybe justified it,
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: I'm not sure, but the essential ingredients are that the
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: emperor was bewitched and helpless and had to be saved
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: by the samurai.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it was you know, there were a lot
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: of This is just one of many, many stories in
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Japanese folklore wherein monsters would appear, a hero would rise
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: up to save somebody. It was usually metaphor for you know,
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: something politically that was going on, right, and maybe I
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: say we take a break.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: I think I agree with you. Sure, all right, We'll
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: be right back, okay, Chuck. So where we left off,
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Tamamonamayi has turned into a giant stone. And this stone
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: that people would go visit was something like six feet
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: tall and twenty five feet in diameter. It was no
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: small stone. It sounds like it was shaped kind of
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: like Slimer from Ghostbusters.
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that was circumference, by the way,
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: what did I say, diameter circumference?
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: Thanks, So people would go visit this and one of
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: the reasons why that this stone in particular came to
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: be identified as the Sessho Seki the killing Stone, is
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: because it really kind of stood out from its it's
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: the other stones in the area. You could just pick
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: it out and be like that looks cool. And then
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: the actual area itself on the mountain what was the
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: mountain's name, uh Namatsu Nasu mount Yes, mountain Nasu is
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: it's like a volcanic plane. There's active volcanoes in the area.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: So there's like poison gas like spewing up out of
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: the earth around the stone. It's quite menacing in that sense,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: especially if you know what the legend is and you're
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: looking at the stone as if it were the Killing Stone.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so there are potentially some poisonous gases, sulfuric gases
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: that seep out of the ground in that area. While
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: it's nothing that would hurt a human, if you went
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: to this you know stone which really stands out and
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: looks weirdly out of place there and you found like
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: some dead squirrels laying around, it could lend itself to
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: the idea that either Josh was nearby no or that
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: an evil spirit could radiate death from that spot. And
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: this is a very very well known story. I don't
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: think we said that it was you know, it was
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: part of folklore and there are a lot of these stories,
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: but this seems to be one of the bigger ones,
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: and it's kind of like a universally known tale in Japan,
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: so it's a very very famous story. And so you know,
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: when this thing split, it was, you know, the Internet
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: goes a little hog wild for a short time talking
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: about whether or not the evil spirits will be unleashed
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: and whether or not this is all coming to fruition.
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: Apparently if you do like on the ground research and
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: talk to Japanese people, they're like, we don't really think that.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: Of course we don't. This is the Internet being the Internet.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And in addition to that, over the years, initially
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: Tamamunamai was depicted as just nothing but evil, a corruptor
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: of men and usurper of male power. And then as
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Japanese society kind of softened and progressed, progressed and it
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: stands on women, she actually evolved along with that, interestingly,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: so that now today when she's used in like manga,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: anime or something like that, she's usually kind of like
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: a proto feminist anti hero. Is how this article from
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: how Stuff Works put it, I think perfectly.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, And you know, of course nothing happened because
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: this folklore. But I imagine it's still and apparently this is
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: a big thing in Japan to like go visit this
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: thing in the woods, right, yeah, yeah, And that seems
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: like a dumb down way of saying it, because we
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: visit plenty of great things in the woods as well,
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: but you know, smaller things like you know, this rock
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: in the middle of this national forest becomes like a
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: pretty pretty standard tourist attraction.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And I didn't realize there was a term for
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: that kind of tourism, contents based tourism, where it's just
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: the one thing that you're going out of your way
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: to go see to a place you probably wouldn't have
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: otherwise gone, like the Giant Ball of yarn or something
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: like that.
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: You know. Yeah, well, except this is in a national park,
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: which I imagine is beautiful.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Sure, I think it is too. I have nothing else
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: except I want to go on the record as correcting you.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: I love the squirrels now, and I don't have years
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: and years and years I know.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: I'm just kidding.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, Chuck was kidding everybody. That means short stuff
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: is out.
• 9:09
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• 9:12
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• 9:17
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