Setsubun — springtime and demons

24Feb07

The Setsubun festival, which is linked with risshun, the traditional start of spring according to the Japanese lunar calendar, is celebrated on the 3rd and 4th of February every year by the throwing of beans and the driving out of the demons. Setsubun is closely associated with the lunar New Year and, like so many traditional practices in Japan, was borrowed from China during the Heian Period (794-1185). According to Kansai Time Out,

Whatever the weather, Setsubun is a time for new beginnings, a time to cast out the bad and the old, and to start afresh with new hopes and good luck. Exorcism of the old demons and assurance of future good luck involves various rituals. At home, the main event revolves around mamemaki — throwing soybeans both inside and outside the house at sunset, accompanied by the chant, ‘Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi’ (Out with the demons, in with good luck). Afterwards, adults usually eat the number of beans equal to their age, plus one. All this apparently gives protection against evil spirits and provides the necessary good luck for the coming year. During the run-up to Setsubun, packets of these beans can be bought at many shops, usually supplied with a special demon (oni) mask.

I was planning on buying some beans before Setsubun so I could throw them around my house, and out into the yard too, but I didn’t end up running into any of the packets before Setsubun weekend hit full force, and by then it was too late. Instead of throwing beans I ended up meeting my friend Yoko (recently returned from England) for dinner and karaoke. Koji (in the demon mask), Mai, Ayumi, Yuta, and Yusuke joined us, and although we weren’t able to find any of the special Setsubun maki that you’re supposed to eat in order to guarantee old age we did have plenty of good food at a restaurant in the Dotombori area called Chanto, a name that can roughly be translated as “properly,” though I suppose it just doesn’t have quite the same ring in English.

As we were on our way to Chanto, we came across a small temple and a group of priests chanting Setsubun prayers around a fire. I’m not precisely sure how the practice works, but apparently you can buy small placards with prayers written on them and then the prayers are read and thrown into the fire. At Setsubon most of these prayers, as you would imagine, are prayers for good fortune. None of us ended up purchasing any praying power, but we did end up at karaoke after dinner. Singing and chanting are related, of course, and we decided to sing the demons out, rather than chant them away. I believe that my attempted rendition of Kimura Kaela‘s リルラ リルハ (“Rirura Riruha,” which is katakana for “Real Love, Real Heart”) was especially effective at driving the demons away. I think it may have driven everyone else away too, although several people were gracious enough to claim “last train” as their excuse.

Yoko looks so happy all the time that I don’t think she has any demons to drive out whatsoever — especially since she’s recently gotten a job with NHK in Wakayama, editing the local news broadcast. On the other hand, I always seem to have one noxious little oni or another taking up space around the house, and Setsubun seemed as good a time as any to extricate them.

In fact, Setsubun actually got me to thinking quite a bit about habit as a kind of demon, though not really in a moral, Judeo-Christian sense. Because of the Puritanism that undergirds so much of the U.S. cultural unconscious, most people probably associate “bad habits” with immorality. A person who engages in such “bad habits” as smoking, or drinking, or cursing, is somehow deeply morally compromised, as if there were a slight stain or smudge upon their soul. Quitting smoking, or even going to the gym everyday, or becoming a vegetarian, is thus almost always cast in the light of a kind of moral righteousness. The problem with this (false) dichotomy is that it forces the question of habits into the trap of a moral-religious language that emphasizes the rewards (or punishments) of eternal salvation (and damnation) rather than the more useful everydayness of the idea of practice. For Setsubun I decided to switch a few of my habits around — not to be a more “moral” person (I’m not in the market to stop drinking or cursing anytime soon, and coffee is a non-negotiable habit), but rather to cast off those practices that make me feel stultified, or stale, or result in that feeling of wasted days. I don’t really have any desire to become more ‘efficient’ (people that are too efficient tend to make terrible humans), but I do have a desire to make my time richer. I plan to spend less time watching bad television and more time reading good poems. I’ll spend less time wondering if anything has “happened” in the world of electronic communications and more time engaged in aesthetically productive activities. And I want to ride my bike more so I can feel wind swishes and listen to birds chirping on the horizontal axis as the Doppler effect octave-shifts their songs.

Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi!

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Tags: チャント, リルラ リルハ, bad habits, Chanto, 立春, 節分, demons, Dotombori, Dotonbori, driving out the demons, 道頓堀, 鬼, 豆撒き, karaoke, Kimura Kaela, mamemaki, oni, restaurant, risshun, Setsubun, spring, throwing beans, 木村カエラ