February 2012

Ah, Setsubun. This special day marks the end of winter and the beginning of spring on the Japanese lunar calendar. It’s a little bit like a New Year’s party in terms of one period coming to a close while a new one starts. It is celebrated in temples and home throughout the country. There are traditional foods and traditional behaviors. One such behavior involves chasing the male head of the household out of the house while throwing beans at him and yelling “Out with the Devil!”

You can’t make this stuff up.

Setsubun comes around every year on February 3rd or 4th. It’s like the Japanese spring equinox. It’s a day to let go of winter and welcome spring. The behavior of the day is reflective of this – the alpha male of the house traditionally dresses up as an oni (devil) and his family throws beans at him while chanting “Devils out! Happiness in!!” until he runs out the front door, which is then slammed behind him. This is meant to drive evil spirits from the home and welcome good ones.

This tradition isn’t practiced so widely at home anymore. Now, celebrations (some involving bean throwing) are held at temples. At some events, celebrities and sumo wrestlers show up. Rather than having everyone chuck beans at some unlucky guy, however, these events may feature celebrities throwing prizes, money, or gold foil-covered bans into the assembled crowd.

There’s food, too (as there often is with Japanese holidays). Setsubun’s special treat is the ehomaki. It’s a long roll of sushi that hasn’t been cut (about 20cm long). It is filled with seven different items because seven is a “lucky” number, and also reflects the legendary seven gods of happiness in Japanese folklore. Every year, a direction is designated as “lucky” (this year it’s north-northwest), and the goal is to eat the entire ehomaki in silence while facing the lucky direction.

I’m not a big fan of rolled sushi, but it’s not every day you see a compass attached to your food in the supermarket.

Ehomaki, a rolled sushi traditional at Setsubun

The compass attached to each roll of sushi is supposed to help you turn in the correct direction while attempting to eat the entire ehomaki.

While I did not participate in setsubun this year (aside from buying the compass-sushi), it’s a quirky, interesting way to say goodbye to winter and welcome spring. The day also seems to coincide very closely with groundhog day in the U.S. Both are fairly ridiculous. If relying on a rodent to predict the weather for you or throwing beans at your Dad sounds like fun, that’s great. I’m going to wait until I can turn my heater off before I officially welcome spring.

Every culture has its own remedies for everything from mosquito bites to zits to the common cold. “Culture” could mean the country you live in, your region, or even your family. Regardless, there’s probably a little something you do that might seem bizarre to someone else.

Japan has a reputation for weirdness that may or not have been fairly earned. An image of this “weirdness” was spread around the globe following the SARS scare from 2002-2003. The image was of Japanese people wearing what western individuals and media deemed unsettling: surgical masks.

A group of Japanese people wearing surgical masks.

(Photo via flavorsofjapan.com)

For the average western-country dweller, surgical masks are worn almost exclusively in medical contexts. If a person is wearing a surgical mask, they are either a doctor or a sick patient. There’s not much else the western brain immediately tends to think when they see these masks (unless you subscribe to a specific sort of fetishism, I suppose). So, it’s a little weird for some people from other countries to see so many people all wearing a mask in this fashion.

This is a preventative measure. While yes, masks are used to prevent the spread of germs from a sick person to another, the Japanese also use masks to prevent themselves from coming into contact with the germs in the first place. In the past, special masks were even designed using ostrich antibodies because a researcher discovered that ostriches have stronger immune systems than other birds. Masks are taken seriously here.

Now that it’s winter, of course, it’s also flu and cold season. The word “epidemic” is being thrown around with regard to this year’s flu numbers. Additionally, new forms of avian flu have been detected in northern Japan. Nobody wants to get sick. But we also can’t stay home. So, what do we do? We put face masks on.

Until recently, I thought this was a bit of a joke. A face mask? Really? I was especially bothered by the way some sick people (salarymen in particular) seemed to feel that because they were wearing the mask it was acceptable to cough and splutter at will. I find myself holding my breath in train cars at times when a person next to me is coughing and hacking without covering their face. Some people seem to think their face mask will take care of disease control altogether.

But I learned something recently. Something I had to look up. The owners of my school have been giving each person who comes in the door a hand wipe to help reduce the spread of germs. They’ve also been running a humidifier, and many students show up in face masks. The most surprising information I heard regarding these practices was that humid air actually helps reduce the spread of the germs.

“HA! SILLY JAPANESE WITH YOUR SILLY IDEAS!” was my first reaction.

I did a little research, and what I found surprised me. Some evidence suggests that moist air may actually make existence very difficult for the flu. In fact, increased outbreaks of the flu (especially in less humid climates) may be due to how easy it is for the germs to travel through the dry air. However, not all scientists are on board with this theory.

So, how does this relate to masks? By breathing into a mask (especially breathing through the mouth), you’re actually warming the air and adding humidity to it. You’re not pulling dry air into your lungs; it’s much less harsh, and it may possibly be helping to eliminate any influenza germs. Or not. You decide. I tend to think masks have an entertaining element about them – I can breathe with my mouth open without appearing ridiculous, I can smile to myself on the train when I’m watching something funny on my iPod, and I even come with the added bonus of looking somewhat like a space alien when I wear one.

(Exhibit A responds with terror when exposed to loud sounds or cockroaches.)

I don’t wear a mask to protect myself from germs. If I am feeling extraordinarily sick, I will wear a mask in an effort not to infect my coworkers and my students. I do, however, wear a scarf that I regularly pull up above my mouth. I tend to breathe through it when I’m out and about in the winter just because the air is cold and breathing through the scarf allows me to heat the air before I pull it into my lungs, which feels much more pleasant. Whether or not my scarf is saving me I may never know.

The thing I find the most entertaining about all of this, however, is knowing for certain now that I live in a nation of mouthbreathers.

Month: February 2012

Setsubun: Do You Know Where Your Beans Are?

Mask Yourself from the Flu