Setsubun - the Japanese bean-throwing festival that drives demons out before the new spring arrives

Setsubun is a Japanese festival on the day before spring begins in the traditional calendar. Roasted soybeans are thrown out of the door, or at a paper demon figure, while chanting "demons out, luck in" - and then eaten for a year of health.

The one-line summary

Japanese festival on the day before Risshun, the traditional start of spring - February 3 in ordinary years, February 4 in leap years. Religious category, standard tier. Widely observed, not a public holiday.

Origin

Setsubun marks the passage from the old year into spring - and spring in the old belief brought disease with it. Demons were thought to travel with the change of season, so the ritual is both a good-luck charm and a piece of medicine: throw them out, roast away the illness, eat what remains.

The beans are the point of the whole festival. Mamemaki - bean-scattering - dates to at least the Muromachi period and was codified in Edo-period Japan, where roasted soybeans thrown in the doorway and then eaten were said to secure a year without illness. It survives as one of the most recognisable seasonal acts in the Japanese calendar.

When it falls

Setsubun is the day before Risshun, the traditional first day of spring. Risshun falls on February 4 in ordinary years and February 5 in leap years, so Setsubun falls on February 3 normally and February 4 in leap years. The next leap-year February 4 Setsubun is 2028.

How it is observed

The beans are the point of the whole festival. They are roasted, thrown - traditionally out of the door of the house, or nowadays at a large paper oni demon figure set up on temple grounds - and then eaten. Eating them is said to give a year of health, and the beans that scatter on the ground afterwards are called the fortune beans.

Oni are demons from Japanese folk belief - horned, red-skinned figures of enormous strength who are both feared and, in the arts, deeply loved. Setsubun is their one night of the year when they are chased out. New Year, by contrast, is when they are drawn in: by a regional custom, oni visit households on New Year's Eve and are invited to warm themselves at the hearth by a line of salt.

Temples stage large public mamemaki on the day, with bonfires and crowds, and it is a school term day in Japan.

Public status

Setsubun is not a national public holiday in Japan, though it is observed almost universally at home and in schools. It is the last of the major February-to-March seasonal observances beforeHinamatsuri.

Where it is contested

Setsubun is not contested, though it occupies an interesting space in a modern Japan that does not otherwise celebrate the oni so openly. The demons are now more often comic than frightening - a popular-culture export - which means the festival has migrated from apotropaic ritual to seasonal entertainment without either side quite acknowledging the shift.

Related holidays

Setsubun belongs withHinamatsuri and the wider sekku observances as the great February-March rites of purification and new beginning in the Japanese year, all of them turning on the same seasonal hinge. March 3 is a fixed Gregorian date, which makes it an unusual exception in a Japanese calendar otherwise built on the lunar month.

Sources

• Japan Travel - Setsubun(the mamemaki custom, the oni tradition and the Risshun dating).
• Cabinet Office of Japan - National Holidays(the official calendar and Setsubun as a non-holiday observance).
• Encyclopaedia Britannica - Oni(the demons of Japanese folk belief and the Setsubun expulsion rite).
• Nippon.com - Setsubun(contemporary observance and the oni tradition).