As the chill Tokyo wind of late winter blows past, you find yourself flinging dried beans at a man dressed as a demon. Afterwards, you treat yourself to a silent bite of a foot long sushi roll, before returning to your home and admiring the holly and sardine head stuck to your door. Why are you doing this? Well, it’s all part of the Setsubun festival in February of course!
What is it?
Setsubun (節分) translates as ‘seasonal division’ and, appropriately, celebrates the end of winter. Held on the 2nd, 3rd or 4th of February, many of the traditions are centred around preparing for the spring and coming year. The most iconic practice is when participants throw beans at people in oni masks to banish the demons.
Oni?
So why do you want to scare off oni? Well, oni (鬼) are usually evil and the Japanese is loosely translated as demons or ogres. The beans serve the same purpose as carved pumpkins on Halloween, scaring off the oni and bringing good luck. That’s why you shout ‘鬼は外,福は内 (oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi)’ when throwing the beans, which translates as ‘oni out, happiness in’.
(blog.gaijinpot.com)
The oni impersonator is usually the eldest in the household or someone who shares the same zodiac as the current year. At the most popular festivals, they get actors and celebrities in to fill the role. In the 2019 Naritasan Shinshoji Temple celebration, the cast of the drama ‘Idaten’, sumo wrestlers and kabuki actors involved themselves in the festivities.
Why beans?
So the beans are probably the strangest part of this festival (apart from the fish heads, which we’ll get to later), but there is a good reason for them. The Japanese word for the beans is mame (豆), but another word is pronounced the same. Mame (魔目) can also mean ‘demon eye’ and mametsu (魔滅) translates to ‘demon destruction’. Now do you see why they use beans to scare off oni?
Once you’ve thrown the beans, you should then eat one bean for each year you’ve been alive, and sometimes one more for the next year, to bring you luck and health.
(blog.japanwondertravel.com)
Where did the practice originate?
Historians believe Setsubun came from China as far back as the Heian Period (794-1185 CE), so it has a long history. However, people only started to throw the beans in the Muromachi Period (1336-1573 CE). They believed it prevented natural disasters and brought good luck and it’s become the most recognisable part of the festival today.
What else do you do on Setsubun?
The other major tradition of Setsubun is eho-maki sushi rolls. These aren’t your standard bite-size pieces, though. Eho-maki are long tubes of rice and filling wrapped in seaweed; imagine sushi before it’s cut.
Eho-maki (恵方巻) translates as ‘lucky direction roll’, and there’s a traditional way to eat them as well. Each year has a lucky direction. This year was South-South-East, and if you face that direction while silently eating an eho-maki roll, then you’ll have good luck for the whole year! For bonus fortune, the rolls are filled with seven different ingredients because seven is a lucky number in Japan.
What about the fish heads?
So before the beans, there was another way of scaring off the oni. As we all know, oni hate the smell of sardines and burning wood (well if you didn’t know you do now!). That’s where hiiragi iwashi (柊鰯) comes in. They are made by sticking sardine heads onto holly branches and hanging them above the door to your house to scare off oni. For some reason, this practice has become less popular than bean throwing in recent years. Perhaps the smell of sardine heads tends to scare off more than just oni visitors?
Although Setsubun isn’t an official national holiday, it’s common to celebrate the event at home and at temples across Japan. So, if you want good luck next year and some fun after the cold of winter, look no further than Setsubun. After all, all you need is some beans and an oni mask to get in on the fun, but maybe steer clear of the fish heads.