  We study one pion emission decay of the first excited state of the nucleon
with negative parity $N(1535) \equiv N^*$ in the holographic model of QCD. The
excited state is described as a vibrational mode along the extra $z$ direction
in the five-dimensional space-time of the model. We have obtained an analytic
formula for the axial coupling of $g_A^{NN^*}$. The off-diagonal axial coupling
is obtained at the decaying pion momentum $|\boldsymbol{k}| = 448$ MeV as
$g_A^{NN^*} \sim 0.32$, and hence a partial decay width $\Gamma_{N^* \to \pi N}
\sim 30$ MeV, which is smaller than but reasonably compared to the experimental
data.
