Terrifying Old Japanese Customs
1. All I can think of is ubasute (abandoning the elderly in the mountains so you no longer have to feed them).
2. Culling.
54. >>2 Kokeshi -> kodomo kesu (”erasing” children).
4. “Otteshi-san.” It’s so scary I don’t really want to write about it. You probably won’t find anything if you google it either.
10. >>4 It sounds kinda scary, I’d like to ask about it but…
16. >>10 Well if I write about it here, it’s hardly a secret anymore is it, lol.
Um, well let me keep the location a secret. Why? …Well the village still exists, so we don’t need people going there to bother them.
There’s a small shrine in that village (I’m not sure if it was big or small, but it probably used to be big enough that it had stairs), but anyway, it’s an old shrine.
That shrine holds a festival every year on a certain day of the lunar year. By festival, I don’t mean like night stalls or anything like that, but all the participants wear masks. Of course, it’s still continuing today, which is why the location is a secret.
Anyway, there’s a jar in the shrine that for some reason everyone moves around while chanting… and then it’s over. At that point, offerings are also made.
Well, that’s mostly it. I don’t want to say much more because I’m sure I’ll remember something I don’t want, haha.
Japan might be a small country, but it’s also rather big. You should be careful when you climb mountains regardless of where you are.
7. Kidnapping, stealing into women’s bedrooms at night, eating dogs, and eating people.
8. Human pillars.
23. >>8 I thought the same thing. Also fudarakutokai (a practice of basically abandoning monks at sea to die), kamikaze attacks, and other similar things.
11. Oni used to be regular people. Then they turned into oni because of the resentment they held.
12. Kiri-sute gomen (the right of samurai in the Edo period to strike those of a lower class who they felt compromised their honour).
13. Cursed Japanese dolls.
21. Ojiroku and obasa (a system in old Tenryu Village in the 16th and 17th centuries where the eldest child led a normal life and all their younger brothers, ojiroku, and sisters, obasa, were basically their slaves).
27. >>21 This.
28. Eta. Hinin (the lowest levels of the caste system).
Sokushinbutsu (monks who mummify themselves).
Learning about humans and the things they have done is so fascinating.
32. Seppuku.
39. Most manors in the Edo period had a prison room like it was a totally normal thing.
46. Okinawa’s custom of digging up and washing bones. After being buried, the maggoty remains are dug up and the wife of the eldest song washes them. Then the bones are buried again. Apparently it doesn’t happen anymore because it was inhumane and people felt bad for the women.
47. People still have banquets at graves though.
48. I heard that in the old days, the dead body was left in the coffin for several years, and then people would feast where the rotten corpse was.
50. Some village in Chichibu where I got lost. It was autumn, so the sun goes down pretty quickly in the mountains. Suddenly there was a shrine in front of me, and a group of people wearing masks and white paint appeared. I almost wet myself. Maybe it was some kind of kabuki offering performance.
52. Kagome kagome.
55. Yobai (sneaking into women’s bedrooms at night). Yatsuhaka Village, the Tsuyama massacre.
51. Minami Umayado Village (an internet prank of a village said to be ostracised by the Japanese government that some people believed to be true).