- “Tomino’s Hell” was written in 1919 by Saijō Yaso and published in the book Sakin.
- In 2004, Yamota Inuhiko popularized the urban legend that reading the poem out loud kills you.
- While the poem is enigmatic, there’s a strong possibility that it’s about the experience of war.
The Curse of “Tomino’s Hell”
Legend has it that reading “Tomino’s Hell” out loud will cause you to die. “Tomino’s Hell” is a poem turned urban legend that’s been floating around the internet since the early 2000s. The general belief is that if you read the poem out loud, you’ll meet an untimely death. It’s just a myth…but maybe skip the dramatic reading, just to be on the safe side.
There are a handful of deaths widely considered to be caused by the poem. The “Tomino’s Hell” legend needs some proof to back it up, and many believers cite the deaths of a university student, a young boy, and a film director as results of reading the poem out loud. Some even think it caused the author, Saijō Yaso’s death as well. In reality, the stories of the university student and the little boy are just hearsay, and Yaso and the director both died years (decades, in Yaso’s case) after their involvement with the poem.
The legend really kicked off in 2004, after a statement by Yamota Inuhiko. Yamota Inuhiko is another Japanese author and poet, born in the 50s. In his book “Kokoro wa Korogaru Ishi no you ni,” (The Heart is Like a Rolling Stone) Yomota claimed: “If you by chance happen to read [“Tomino’s Hell”] out loud, after you will suffer from a terrible fate which cannot be escaped.” Another common misconception is that Yamota Inuhiko himself wrote the poem.
History of “Tomino’s Hell”
“Tomino’s Hell” was written by Saijō Yaso in 1919. The Japanese author, Saijō Yaso, published “Tomino’s Hell” in Sakin, a poetry collection. Saijō Yaso wrote many songs and children’s stories, often in a similar creepy style to this poem. He studied English literature at Waseda University, before studying French at the Sorbonne in Paris. There’s some argument as to why Yaso wrote this poem. A popular story is that he came up with it after the death of a family member, probably a sister or his father.
“Tomino’s Hell” is now a popular creepypasta. Due to the legend of “Tomino’s Hell,” it now circulates the internet as a supposedly cursed poem. It has many fan translations (unofficial translations)—some of which miss the meaning of the poem entirely—as well as made up backstories (it was written by Tomino himself, it was written by Inuhiko, etc.) Creepypastas are scary stories that get copy/pasted across the internet. “Pasta” is a holdover from another Reddit term, “copypasta,” which is any popular copy/pasted text.
The works of Saijō Yaso inspired the 1974 film Pastoral, To Die in the Countryside. The Japanese director Terayama Shuji was a fan of Yaso’s and made a movie very loosely based on “Tomino’s Hell.” Instead of focusing on the relationship between a boy and his sisters, however, it’s about a man and his younger self’s relationship to their mother. There’s a common misconception that “Tomino’s Hell” also inspired the painting “I Can’t be a Bride Anymore” by Yuko Tatsushima. This painting is often associated with “Tomino’s Hell,” but more likely the long necked figure depicts an abstraction of death by hanging, the most common method of suicide in Japan.
"Tomino’s Hell" Poem Translation
His older sister throws up blood His younger sister spits fire, And innocent Tomino vomits his soul.Alone, Tomino falls into the darkest of hells Where even flowers don’t bloom. Does Tomino’s older sister crack the whip? The crimson lash weighs on his mind Beating and striking yet not breaking him entirely, On the infinite eighth hell’s only road. I pray for guidance in this darkest hell To lead sweet Tomino toward the golden sheep, the nightingale. Put all you can into the leather sack To journey into the deepest hell. Spring awakens in the forests and the valleys, And to the seven twisting valleys of dark hell. The nightingale in the cage, the sheep in the cart, And tears in the eyes of dear Tomino. Sing, nightingale, scream in the rainy forest, For the beloved little sister. The cry sounds out all through hell, And the fox-peony opens its petals. Around the seven mountains and seven valleys of hell, Innocent Tomino makes his journey alone. If they too are in hell, bring them, The mountain of needles and pins. The red pins don’t pierce, But merely mark sweet Tomino.
Interpretations of “Tomino’s Hell”
“Tomino’s Hell” is most likely a metaphor for war. Throughout the poem, there are allusions to war that would be difficult for an English speaker to pick up. The fire and blood from the sisters' mouths are fierce encouragement for Tomino to fight, and therefore enter the hell of war. Other allusions to wartime practices, like the sewing of senninbari, cement this view. The poem was also written right at the end of WWI, when Japan entered the world theatre as an international power.
Many translations of this poem lack the cultural understanding of the words. Part of the allure of “Tomino’s Hell” is the mystery behind its meaning. Why is Tomino in hell? What’s up with his sisters? If you’re reading it in English, however, grasping the meaning is even more difficult. In translation, the cultural allusions and alternate readings of the words are often lost. Japanese has a few writing systems, one of which is pictorial. The characters, or kanji, are borrowed from Chinese and have different meanings depending on context and what other characters they’re paired with.
In the first stanza, English translations miss that Tomino spits up his soul. The beginning of the poem is often translated as “Elder sister vomits blood/ younger sister’s breathing fire/ while sweet little Tomino/ just spits up the jewels.” This is a confusing start, but part of that is the loss of the kanji for soul, hidden in the word for jewels. A Japanese reader would recognize an illusion to something precious as well as the soul. This sets the scene for Tomino’s descent into hell, as he’s lost his soul—another metaphor for going off to war.
The last stanza refers to senninbari, a stitched cloth given to soldiers. The image of needles and pins gets confused here, as the deepest level of Buddhist hell has a needled mountain, but it’s more likely that Yaso was alluding to senninbari, a long white cloth with 1000 red stitches, sewn by 1000 women. Senninbari were given as encouragement, but also as identification for the dead. The lines “akai tomehari date niwa sasanu/ kawaii tomino no mejirushi ni,” directly translate to “cute Tomino is recognized through the red pins,” but are often mistranslated as “the red pins are guideposts for cute Tomino.” The red pins here are the stitches of the senninbari.
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