Kurozuka (Black Tomb)

Recognized across Japan for centuries, the legend motivated numerous works of dramatization and literary works, consisting of the preferred 15th-century noh play Kurozuka and its sci-fi retelling Adachi-ga-hara created in 1971 by manga legend Osamu Tezuka.

In the past, over a thousand years earlier, a Buddhist monk called Yūkei was traveling across the Adachi-ga-hara plain when he looked for an accommodations for the evening and discovered a cavern inhabited by an old female. She accepted suit him on problem that he does not look inside the chamber at the back while she was away to fetch some fire wood.

As always anticipated in such tales, nevertheless, interest got the best of Yūkei. What he located was a scene of scary– a mountain of human bones. Keeping in mind the reports of a cannibal hag, Yūkei fled from the cave, only to be found by the hag herself and sought. As he will be killed, the monk prayed to Cintamicakra, who materialized as a beam that annihilated the monster. To thank the bodhisattva, Yūkei started a temple on the site and built a mound for the hag which would become known as Kurozuka, or the Black Burial place.

Today, the fabled Black Tomb can be discovered in the city of Nihonmatsu, Fukushima Prefecture, simply off the grounds of Kanze-ji Holy place started by Yūkei. The mound is covered by a number of funerary stelae and a high tree, standing by the Abukuma River as spookily as can be.