Asakiyume mita

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!

On this day in Pen Pal, Kaya took an action to express grief. You might say she created a spontaneous ceremony.

I think people do this a lot. Prescribed rituals do give us a way to proclaim and honor our big feelings (the happy ones as well as the sad ones), but sometimes they're not enough; sometimes we need or want to go further. We want to make a personal statement. Or, like Kaya, we may not be in a position to engage in prescribed rituals.

Do you have any spontaneous ceremonies you've created that you can share? And did any then go on to become personal traditions? One of mine that I don't mind sharing, for instance, is doing a great bow (after the manner of the fairy queen in The Perilous Gard) in locations of great physical beauty would be one.

One that my kids do is bake cakes on the occasion of the birthdays of characters from anime or video games. I highly endorse that one!