Uso Kae (鷽替）

[asakiyume]

Sayuri Sasai is a Japanese artist who draws attractive, informative comics about daily life in Edo Period (1600–1868) Japan and shares them on Instagram.

The other day, she shared about a ceremony that originated in the Edo Period, Uso Kae--Bullfinch exchange. (Here's a link to the original post, but below are screenshots of the images for those of you who can't access Instagram.)

Uso (Eurasian bullfinch, but in Japan it's the grey-bellied subspecies, with just a touch of rosiness on its throat instead of all down its breast the way you get in, for example, the UK) are special messengers of the god Tenjin, otherwise known as Sugawara no Michizane (845–903), a scholar, poet, and politician who ended up dying in exile due to political machinations. When plague and drought struck the capital, people attributed it to his vengeful spirit, and to appease him, they built a shrine to him and eventually deified him. As Tenjin, he's nowadays a patron of scholarship. (More on Michizane, including some of his poems, here at his Wikipedia page.)

uso (Pyrrhula pyrrhula, subspecies griseiventris)


In Japanese, the word "uso" (written with a different character) also means "lie" (as in, something spoken to deceive). Michizane, however, was known for his uprightness and honesty. In the uso-kae ceremony, people carve a stylized uso and bring it to a Tenjin shrine, where they exchange it with other attendees. By doing this, you "exchange your untruths for the blessings of the deity," says the English-language page at the website of the Tenjin shrine in Dazaifu, where Michizane died in exile. (Read more here.)

Here's Sayuri Sasai's portrayal of uso-kae in the Edo period:



And here she shows details of the carved uso:



And **here** is one that one of my daughters in Japan just made ^_^



Here, from the Dazai shrine, is a photo of a child receiving an uso:



What a wonderful ceremony!

Comments

[heleninwales]

The carved uso is so simple and yet charming.

[asakiyume]

Yes, I love the simplicity of the design!

[mallorys_camera]

❤️❤️❤️

[asakiyume]

^_^

[wayfaringwordhack]

Bullfinches always strike me as such stalwartly trustworthy and cheerful birds. <3

[asakiyume]

We don't have them in the US! They're very pretty. Did/do you get them a lot in France (or, for that matter, Lebanon?)

[wayfaringwordhack]

I don't know if they are present in Lebanon, but we see them very occasionally here, always in winter.

[asakiyume]

That's interesting that it's only in winter! I bet it's the same in Japan.

[sartorias]

What a charming ceremony! And the drawing is even more charming. I wish the artist used mor kanji so I could try to puzzle out more meaning, heh.

The uso look like whistles, a bit.

[asakiyume]

I thought the same thing about them looking like whistles! It would be very cool if one could make an uso that also served as a bird call.

I've started learning Mandarin on duolingo, and I feel the same way re: the characters. Every time there's one that's the same, it gives me an advantage--and every time the simplification is different from the Japanese simplification (or cases where the Japanese uses an unsimplified character), I'm stuck!

[sartorias]

Heh! It's like working puzzles!

[minoanmiss]

This is so very beautiful!

[asakiyume]

I just love the ceremony. Why don't we have nice things like this??

[sovay]

And **here** is one that one of my daughters in Japan just made ^_^

Aw!

[asakiyume]

They must be fast to make because then she went and made another one so that she could keep one and still have one to exchange!

[amaebi]

Thank you!

[asakiyume]

My great pleasure! Thanks for stopping by :-)

[smokingboot]

These are so uplifting! Thanks for posting them XXX

[asakiyume]

My pleasure! All my life (including now) I've always wished I grew up in a place, was part of a culture, that had traditions like this. But I think that only happens with places where a people's lived for ages. And while there *are* peoples who've lived in these parts for ages and ages, their traditions been well stamped on by the people who arrived later (at least in my part of the country; it's different in some of the others), such that they've had a hard time preserving them for themselves, let alone to share.

I do like what we do have here, a mix of all the traditions people have brought with them when they came. But those aren't shared by everyone, such that everyone knows them without even noticing they know them. They're things that have been carefully carried here, not things that seem to have seeped upward out of the ground through capillary action (except, see above, for the traditions the later comers tried so hard to eliminate).

[mme_n_b]

But what do you do with the carving you exchange for your own? Do you burn it? Leave it at the shrine? Hang it on a tree? Keep it and die at 104 years old leaving your great-grandchildren a collection of 100 carved robins by different authors?

[asakiyume]

Good question! I'll have to ask my daughter. But I think if you go back year after year to do this, you only ever have one bird. Each year you bring one, exchange it, and come back with one bird. Then you bring that one the following year exchange it, and again come back with one. So you'd only have one. Though I guess yes, if each year you made a new one, then you'd have quite the collection. And as you say, maybe they're supposed to meet some other fate. I'll ask my daughter after she does her uso-kae!

[mme_n_b]

If you bring it back to exchange every year that must mean that some of those birds have been exchanged over and over for hundreds of years (wood objects that aren't used tend to last a long time) if not thousands. I wonder whether anyone's written a dissertation about forestation changes or cutting style evolution based on uso sampling.

[asakiyume]

I wonder! I would love to see the style evolutions over time!