節分 - せつぶん - Setsubun

節分, or the Bean Throwing Festival, is a ceremony that occurs on the 3rd of February each year. This is the last day of Winter according to the Chinese calendar, the 4th being 立春 (りっしゅん - risshun) - the first day of Spring.

It didn't feel very springy to me when I headed out, but I pulled on my coat and braved the cold anyway. Setsubun is not a public holiday, but it is quite a significant part of the Japanese calendar and a lot of shrines have special events throughout the day and evening. For that reason, I caught the train out to one of Kobe's three big shrines and spent an evening with the ogres.

The idea of the festival is to banish ill omens and attract good luck. To do this, people throw soybeans while saying "鬼は外、福は内" (oni ha soto, fuku ha uchi). "Oni" roughly translates to "demon" or "ogre" and "fuku" means "good fortune", so basically it's "demons out, good luck in". A lot of shops even sell oni masks so that poor old dad can dress up like one and be pelted with beans.

A teacher at one of the schools I'm working at heard I was interested in seeing it, so he told me a bit more about it. Kobe has three big shrines - Ikuta, Nagata and Minatogawa - and Nagata is a good place to go for Setsubun. It's one of the rare shrines that actually has "good demons", so no beans would be required! Instead, they would be doing a "fire dance" and giving everyone good luck. "You might get bored," he said, laughing, "the dance is very slow."

A lot of people were milling around at the area once we got there, taking photos and enjoying a fairly diverse range of festival food - from the traditional (ドラ焼き - dorayaki - sweet grilled cakes filled with bean paste or cream) to the non-traditional (frankfurts and french fries). We wandered through to the shrine proper where they were making preparations. We found ourselves a good spot then the musicians let out a long note on their conch shells, the oni picked up their straw torches and everything got started.

The dancing was slow and meticulous, but it wasn't boring. It's very difficult to be bored while watching people wearing big wooden demon masks and loincloths wave flames around. The masks were obviously very hard to see through, because the oni had to be lead whenever they moved.

Before long, a couple more oni were guided over to the gate and people lined up in front of them. For each person in line, the oni would rub their faces then put their hands on the person's head. This was for good luck, according to one of the men at the temple. I was going to be awfully lucky by the end of the night.

On the way home, we picked up some 巻寿司 (まきずし - makizushi) from one of the stalls down the street. These are uncut sushi rolls that are traditionally eaten during setsubun. According to the teacher at school, a different direction is chosen each year to be the "lucky" or "auspicious" direction. 2010's direction was west-south-west. "Personally I don't care," he said, laughing again, "but they say it's good luck to face that direction when you eat your 巻き寿司."

They also have 5 yen coins attached to them. "五円" (ごえん - goen - 5 yen) can also be written as ご縁 (goen), which means "bonds" or "destiny". The coin therefore symbolises one's bond with other people - good fortune through positive relationships. I'll probably talk a bit more about this later - it's really interesting.

"Setsubun is getting quite commercial now though," the teacher had added, his smile disappearing. I didn't really know what he meant until I opened the packet and found a little compass to help me find WSW. Free compasses with your sushi, little bean packets with cute oni faces on them, frankfurts on sticks at temples... a mix of old and new, splashes of silliness amongst all the tradition. It doesn't bother me really - that's just Japan for me. I put away my 五円, found the right direction with my tacky compass and bit into the sushi. If a little bit of commercialism encourages people to learn about culture and tradition, I'm all for it. Plus it serves me right for buying my 巻き寿司 from a convenience store!