S P O T ／ SPOT-366

Tateishi (The Standing Stone of Marumori)

立石たていし

Deep in the wooded hills of the Hanyu district of Marumori, in southern Miyagi, a single slab of granite rises out of the forest like a black gravestone thrown up by the earth — roughly 12.5 meters tall and 25 meters around. Locals call it Tateishi, the "standing stone," and, with a straight face, "Japan's greatest dosojin" — the roadside guardian deity usually represented by a small stone figure at a village boundary, here inflated to the size of a five-story building. Follow the mountain trail up from the Hanyu community hall and the monolith appears suddenly through the trees, dwarfing a boulder the size of a person crouched at its foot. This is no mere geological curiosity. Pottery fragments scattered around its base — some said to be Yayoi-period — mark it as an iwakura, a sacred rock worshipped since prehistory. Layered on top are the war legends of ancient Tohoku: the rebel lord Abe no Sadato is said to have stood on its summit around 1050, and the legendary archer Minamoto no Yoshiie is said to have loosed an arrow from here across the valley to a distant "target stone." One rock, holding down both the animist deep past and the samurai epic — and doing it while looming over you like a wall.