2.b Sources of inauspiciousness: Imikotoba, yakudoshi, katagae,and other perceptions of inauspiciousness

References to inauspiciousness appear in discourses concerning taboo words (imikotoba). These are usually related to Buddhist practices in the contexts of funerals. The word kegare, ‘pollution from death and blood’,[47] and the word hotoke, Buddha, are taboo in Shinto ceremonies. Homophone associations to numbers nine and four, which sound like the word for painful (kyu) and death (shi) respectively also occur as imikotoba, called imikazu; actions that mimic funeral movements are also sanctioned. Japanese spend much time counting and calculating as ways of forecasting and defining auspicious and inauspicious occasions. This is not mere superstitious attachment to numbers. Crump (1993: 2) following Geertz (1973) has argued that these calculations provide ‘internal models of reality’, involving specific cultural patterns that guide meaning in daily life. Numbers, which are the base for the phonetic associations of auspicious and inauspicious names and words, are metonyms, they reflect some attribute of the thing they reflect. References to misfortune, fuun, are made through reference to unfavourable numerical associations. References to yaku, misfortune, appear in discourses concerning unlucky years (yakudoshi) (Lewis 1986). Unlucky years are said to affect men and women twice in life, making the individual more vulnerable to external influences, illness, bad luck and so on. The yakudoshi years are for Kamikatsu, 25 and 42 for men and 19 and 33 for women. They last the whole year. The years before are known as maeyoshi. The years before and after a yakudoshi are perceived as potentially unlucky or critical years. The ages of 42 and 33 are perceived as the most critical of all. There are also two other critical years, 61 and 70, which some people believe to be yakudoshi while others do not. During yakudoshi there is a strict observance of visiting temples and acquiring adequate amulets for protection and to ward off evil, with petitions to deities known as gankake. Like all observances against misfortune, they start with the making of prestations of folded papers to deities and finish with a celebration of longevity in the form of festivals, when auspicious foods are given to the yakudoshi people to mark the end of the crises. In general, yakudoshi are perceived as ‘shikata ga nai’ (things that can’t be helped). All misfortune during the year is blamed on them and people are advised not to start a new business at that time.

Inauspiciousness also affects places and directions. Katagae or taboo directions happen during the procession of ritual offer in of food and gifts to the deity at harvest festivals. I consider this more extensively in Chapter Five. References to inauspicious animals, are ethnographically common in other parts of Japan (see Ohnuki-Tierney’s (1987) concern with monkeys). The animal which is perceived as ‘dangerous’ and evil in Kamikatsu is the tanuki or racoon dog. Representations of tanuki, pictographic references, statuettes in parks, grafitti in roads, and statuettes at entrances to houses are many, and they are used as ‘charm’, or ‘talisman’. Again, as in setsubun, auspiciousness and inauspiciousness are not opposed but related. The basis of the relation is the ‘domestication’ of the racoon dog, like the domestication of the individuals that are lazy and evil in setsubun.

Misfortune is also associated with crossroads and bridges. Powerful kami are said to inhabit rivers and crossroads in mountain passes. A passage from a field note reflects this:

There are two statuettes of a guardian kami, each in one of the main bridges in town. The two different statuettes are both said to have been found in the river. They are placed at strategic points on the bridge, one on its left, the other in the middle to protect both sides from evil. These statuettes are protective, but also are extremely powerful. Mr. Oue says that the one in Fukuhara village is so powerful that it causes misfortune if one looks directly into the eyes of the kami from the other side of the river. Weekly donations are made to these deities by a few elderly women who live nearby, in the form of milk, shoyu, coins and rice to sooth its power. Members of temples, or neighbours close to the liminal places mentioned usually organise rituals of giving to the deities for the protection of bridges, and collect the donations once or twice a year. The Buddhist ritual that I observed on my first visit to Kamikatsu next to the river was to ‘smooth’ the guardian. Two elderly women held it. They were from the house directly opposite to it, at the other side of the river. The donations to these statuettes were of the same kind, rice, coins, milk, sake, as those found in the temples.

The same concern is applied to crossroads and dangerous spots in mountains. Statuettes of kami are erected in these places, to sooth the mountain kami that controls the sliding of mountains, the falling of rocks and trees, woodfires and floods. Boundaries between the marginal places at the periphery of temples, usually geographically determined by a meeting between a river and the entrance into the woods, define the most inauspicious location for a house to be built.

As well as sources of inauspiciousness, there are also inauspicious mythological beings. Evil spirit, oni, is an ambiguous category that defines natural beings or beings which reside in natural environments, woods and forests, and which can be powerful like deities. Closer to human beings and the household is the tengu, another evil spirit which resides in the forest and is invited to enter the Shrine at festivals with Otafuku, or fortune women. This pair, which constitutes another reference to auspiciousness and inauspiciousness, are the crucial actors at most festivals (see Chapter Five). To most villagers tengu and otafuku are mythical beings which are invited to participate in the festival, thus integrating them into the life of the village, in turn introducing the woods and the surrounding areas of the household into the neighbourhood.

The common aspect of all these references to inauspiciousness is the liminality or criticality of all the elements involved. They are manifestations of lack of connectedness of those spaces and conditions that blur the relation between what is outside (the forest) and inside (the neighbourhood). Rivers, mountains, the deceased before departure, crossroads, are all ‘intervals’ or ‘spaces in between’, which deny relationships between places and people. These notions of inauspiciousness are clearly based on the notion of ‘marginal spaces’ and ‘dangerous, powerful substances, and words’, all of which are dealt with by the giving of prestations to soothe the danger, or to obtain protection from deities.

[47] Usually menstrual and birth blood. However, Blood types are perceived like zodiac animals, to be informative about the reasons for the lack of vitality, strength, hard work, and carelessness in individuals. If a boy or a girl is lazy, careless or stubborn these are said to be due to the blood type. I spent many hours debating the nature of my host stubbornness because his particular B gata, and his careful and meticulous nature when dealing with his pottery also due to it. Blood types are popular because they bring both medical and modern considerations about types of blood, and Japanese considerations about the auspicious and polluting nature of blood. Villagers understanding of blood is that something that can be both polluting and prosperous, depending on the individual control to remove what is polluting from what is prosperous in blood.