This year was my second Setsubun in Japan. You can learn about Setsubun: here or last year’s Setsubun: here. My hope was I would be able to witness the festivities at Kushida shrine where Kumamon was visiting among other events, but Setsubun fell on Wednesday this year, which is the day I have to stay late to work, so I wasn’t able to go.
Over the weekend, a few days before Setsubun I went out to Kushida Shrine in Hakata and Kashii Shrine in Kashii to see some large otafuku masks, a Setsubun specialty of Fukuoka. These masks represent the good luck of Setsubun where as Oni represent bad luck. I thought they were interesting things and I have wanted to see them after reading about them in a book about large things in Kyushu. There were plenty of people taking pictures of the large masks even though this was days before the Setsubun events.
My school had a lot of setsubun activities as well. I wasn’t sure what to expect because when I worked at an eikaiwa, my students of various ages told me they never did setsubun related things in school. The kids all adorned setsubun masks and threw crumpled up newspaper clippings at the oni whom invaded the classrooms. About 7 kids in my class (6 girls and 1 boy) started crying for a while after they came and seriously believed the oni (demons) were real and not just the school bus drivers in disguise. The event itself was over in minutes, but I’m sure it’ll stay as one of the more memorable events of my first year at this school.
My food for the day was also pretty traditional for Setsubun. Nami made me a Setsubun/oni themed bento for lunch. For dinner we made ehomaki (恵方巻/literally: lucky direction roll) for dinner. The idea behind ehomaki is basically each year you have to eat the large sushi roll while facing the year’s lucky direction which this year happens to be South-Southeast, you also have to eat in complete silence until the ehomaki is finally confused. This is a very traditional Setsubun treat, many convenience stores take reservations for them weeks before the day, much like turkeys on Thanksgiving in America. We also had fukumame (lucky roasted soybeans) which were thrown off our balcony saying “Oni wa soto” (demons go out) and on the floor of our apartment saying “Fuku wa uchi” (luck come in) and as we were throwing the beans of the balcony we hear a voice yell up “Oni jyanai yo!” (I’m not an oni), it turned out one of my coworkers was walking by outside. We proceeded to pick up the beans that we dropped inside and ate the same number beans that matched our ages (another Setsubun tradition), thus I ate 28 roasted soybeans. We ate some ice cream sticks as well that were meant to look like the clubs that oni hold. So all in all, even though I didn’t get to go to the festival downtown, this has still been a very traditional Setsubun.
