Setsubun: the oni within us

Sometimes, you can make friends of monsters

Today, February 2nd, is “Setsubun” in Japan. The word literally means “seasonal division,” as this is the day before the spring equinox. Setsubun is a celebration, and we celebrate it in a fun way: by tossing roasted soybeans inside our homes, which are intended to drive away bad spirits known as “oni” and welcome the spring.

You might have heard of this tradition. But you may also have thought: why throw beans? And what’s so important about the day before the spring equinox?

The basic concept is that change creates instability, until a new order settles. Just because we will pass the equinox doesn’t mean the temperature will steadily rise. One day will be warm. Another will be cold. Sometimes the difference between the two is quite acute – a recipe for catching a headcold.

In times of old, Japanese people believed misfortunes of all sorts were the work of invisible spirits called “oni.” Plagues, natural disasters, famines, fires – you name it, the oni were behind it. Periods of instability were seen as “prime time” for these baddies to get a claw-hold into our lives and cause all sorts of harm.

Originally, “oni” was more of a concept: malice personified. Over the generations, they emerged as characters, and today they’re almost like mascots. You’ve probably seen popular illustrations of them, with their ghoulish horned faces, red, blue or green skin, muscular bodies, and tiger-skin loincloths.

So why beans? “Mame,” as we call legumes of all kinds in Japanese, sounds similar to a word “mametsu,” which means vanquishing evil. This auspicious association has led beans to become seen as tools for bringing luck, and by throwing them, we can “purify” an area from the influence of oni. But not just any mame: “fukumame” (as Setsubun beans are known) have to be roasted soybeans. Raw beans absorb malice and sprout – giving you a cursed sort of plant, folklorically speaking. And nobody wants that.

When we throw the beans, we chant a saying. It varies from region to region, but the most common one goes: “Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!” – Oni out! Good fortune in!

My family was never big on tradition, so the first time I remember participating in Setsubun was in kindergarten. The teacher gathered us round and told us we’d be driving oni out of the classroom. I must have lit up when I heard this, because I remember thinking: just leave it to me.

I may have been a little girl, but I knew oni well. They were “bad guys” from the tale of Momotaro, the peach boy, which like every kid I knew by heart. Momotaro was born from a peach, grew up into an incredibly strong little boy, then banded together with a brave dog, monkey, and pheasant to fight the oni on their own turf of Onigashima – Oni Island. They bowed in defeat and offered Momotaro their treasure.

So I was ready to throw some beans. I was born for this, I felt.

But then something unexpected happened. The teacher handed out construction paper, scissors, and crayons, and told us to draw an oni face. “We’re going to make oni masks,” she explained. “And everyone is going to wear them when we throw beans!”

Kids still make oni masks today

Now this threw me for a loop. I thought the bad guys were outside. And why were we wearing the masks? But being in kindergarten, these concerns didn’t last long. I dove into the project with my friends. When we were done with our masks, we put them on and began pelting the room and playground with soybeans. What a great time I, and all of us had!

It wouldn’t be for many years that I developed a more nuanced way of thinking about oni. Kids’ folktales aside, oni weren’t always simply the baddies. And throwing beans at them didn’t make us humans absolutely good, either. In fact, oni could live within us, metaphorically speaking, in the form of negative thoughts: anger, jealousy, grudges, or hatred. Life is full of up and downs, and we are emotional creatures, so it’s inevitable we’ll harbor negativity like this at some point.

But that negativity is like the “junk” in your mind that hinders, or at least doesn’t help, you live a healthy life. So to another way of thinking, the Setsubun custom could be seen as a “reset” for our hearts. It seems people of old knew this too. Another part of the tradition is eating a number of soybeans equivalent to your age. This gets harder to do as you grow older. But then again, getting rid of our negative baggage gets harder as we get older, too. It’s another poetic expression of the oni within us.

Years later, I also learned that the “Oni out! Good fortune in!” phrase I’d grown up on wasn’t necessarily the same thing people said all over Japan. Some are actually quite harsh, like the chant of Sendai, which adds the refrain “oni no mentama butsubuse!” (crush the oni’s eyeballs!) Ouch. Here are some others:

“Fuku wa uchi, Oni mo uchi!” (Fortune in! Oni in, too!) (Kinpusenji Temple, Nara)

“Senshu banzai, Fuku wa uchi!” (Fortune in, forever!) (Sensoji Temple, Tokyo)

“Fuku wa uchi, Oni wa uchi, Akuma soto!” (Fortune in! Oni in! Demons out!) (Kijin Jinja Shrine, Saitama)

What I like about these is the idea that “bad” can be changed to work for “good.” That’s really key to Japanese spirituality as a whole: there’s an inclusiveness for goodness.

In closing, I’d like to share my favorite Setsubun story. It’s a short anime from the classic series Manga Nippon Mukashibanashi (Animated Japanese Folk Tales). The title is, appropriately enough, “Setsubun no Oni.”

It tells the story of an old widower who lost his wife and child long ago. Out of desperation at his loneliness and isolation, he decides to do the opposite of the usual chant at Setsubun. “Fuku was soto! Oni wa uchi!” – essentially, Forget fortune – bring in the oni!’

And it works! A pair of oni knock on his door, thanking him for the refuge during a time when everyone casts them out. The old man, shocked, welcomes them in. Then one by one more oni arrive. The oni are so moved by his hospitality that they bring sake, snacks, and dance and entertain him all night long. At the end, they promise to return next year for another party. So the lonely old man, who lost so much, isn’t so alone anymore.

The party at the old man’s house. A still from “Setsubun no Oni.”

This story goes against custom, but in another sense, it’s totally in keeping with Japanese spirituality. So many of our legends contain stories about the other sides of things. We can find goodness even in badness.

My husband and I throw beans every Setsubun too. Originally, I coached him to say “oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!” because such was the standard Setsubun chant in a typical Japanese household. But over the years, largely thanks to our work writing about them, we’ve become quite affectionate to oni. More recently, our traditional household cry has become “Fuku wa uchi! Warui oni wa soto! Ii oni wa uchi!” — in other words, “Good fortune in! Bad oni out! And the good oni can stay.”