Forum - View topicAnswerman - What Are Some Japanese Superstitions?
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Just Passing Through
Posts: 277 |
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That sneezing thing is a superstition in North India as well.
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Shiratori-san
Posts: 59 |
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My parents also said this one to me: play with fire and you'll wet your bed at night. Guess it's a thing here in Portugal as well.
"bathing your baby in urine will make them beautiful" Oh, please, god, no.... don't, please, no don't, please, just don't do this. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18440 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Would getting wet from rain = getting sick count as a superstition? I know Japanese are far more obsessive about umbrella use than Americans are.
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TheOtakuX
Posts: 344 Location: Wooster, Ohio |
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I've heard the sneezing thing in America before. Though I see it more in anime than in everyday life.
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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I think it is quite probable you have lived most of your life in the midwest, where precipitation is scarce in comparison, Japan gets on average 1,668 mm of rain per year. The closest the USA gets is Hawaii with 1618 and in the continent Louisiana with 1528. California gets 563 and it is probably getting dryer each year. |
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Zin5ki
Posts: 6680 Location: London, UK |
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Aha! More light has been shed on the appeal of Ebessan's gimmick. I presume this accounts for the features of various local deities by the same token. |
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LightningViper
Posts: 13 |
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About that bathing baby in urine... it might be cause of urea, which is a compound usually found in urine and used in fertilizer, but also many today's skin-care products cause of its ability to re-hydrate the skin. Urine however is far from being as clean as something synthesized in laboratory, it is a body's way of getting rid of waste, so really not recommendable.
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Scalfin
Posts: 249 |
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I can think of one especially harsh superstition that's maintained prominence despite not being believed because of its inclusion in the weekly liturgy:
I would note that, at least according to the footnotes on my siddur, the entire purpose of this passage is to state disagreement with a second-temple-period sect that held the having, rather than just lighting, a flame was prohibited on shabbos. That also means that the tradition of lighting the candles is actually one of picking a side in a fight that's been settled for over two thousand years. This isn't even the oldest one, as the reason we salt our challah before thanking god for it is that the societies surrounding stone age Israel believed that salt made bread unsuitable for their (pagan) religious rites. I'm also pretty sure we boil our wine so the Catholics can't use it for mass, which I'm very sure is a false assumption. |
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ultimatehaki
Posts: 1090 |
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...Those Kanji don't look remotely similar.
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EricJ2
Posts: 4016 |
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And also two of the other most common Japanese superstitions in anime:
1) If you get a small twig from the tea leaves in your green tea, and it floats vertically, that's good fortune. 2) If a mysterious accident seemingly happens on its own, such as glass breaking, or a picture falling down, it's an omen of something bad happening to someone close to you at that moment. In one episode of Tenchi in Tokyo, Tenchi's dad is waiting at his son's big-city dorm while Tenchi faces the usual chaos. Dad muses over the good luck of a twig in his tea, when the twig suddenly sinks, the cup cracks, three desk pictures fall off the desk, the wall picture tips, and....his pants fall down. Hmm, wonder if Tenchi's in trouble?
In the West, your ears "burn" hot if someone's talking about you, but the sneezing is pretty common to Eastern anime. In one episode of Urusei Yatsura, Ran is sick in bed thinking back over the many times Lum came to her house when they were kids, which always ended up going wrong--"Curse you, Lum!!" Cut to class, where Lum seems to be having an odd sneezing attack all day...Wonder if she's getting a cold? |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 18440 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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Not sure what that has to do with the matter at hand, as I was talking about using umbrellas, not carrying them around. (And yes, the area where I grew up averages more around 1100 mm of rain per year.) I almost never see even fictional stories in the States about people getting feverish or even deathly ill just from being caught in the rain once, yet those are wide-spread in anime, and I've read forum accounts of Japanese marveling that foreigners would dare go out in even a mild rain without an umbrella. |
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Tenebrae
Posts: 490 |
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Local superstition regarding sneezing: first for something good, second for something bad, third for money. Actually rhymes in the language of origin.
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Dumas1
Posts: 84 |
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I think the writer meant to say that they sound very similar. Chinese also has the 4 = Death thing, so some buildings are missing a fourth or fourteenth floor the way that Western buildings sometimes skip 13. In Chinese, 8 sounds a lot like a word for fortune or luck, so apparently license plates with 8s on them can go for quite a bit in China. It also sounds like a word for father, so August 8th is Father's Day in Taiwan (I'm not sure about the Mainland). |
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mangamuscle
Posts: 2658 Location: Mexico |
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Since we are going from "getting sick" to "near dying" ... Ever heard "A Single Death is a Tragedy; a Million Deaths is a Statistic"? Since 1 in 4 japanese are 65 or older and since the elderly are at higher risk of the flu (which is not to be underestimated), it makes sense that older people might preach (and younger people repeat ) the gospel of prevention, but I would not classify that as superstition, maybe erring on the side of caution. Or it could be just about awareness (or lack of depending where you are). |
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Compelled to Reply
Posts: 358 |
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Outside the funeral tradition, who passes food from chopstick to chopstick? Isn't that rather tedious and unhygienic, akin to passing with knives and forks? Proper Japanese restaurants outside Japan usually provide tongs to transfer food.
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