Ushinokokumairi – Voodoo in Japan

For a country where countless cults, sects and religions with endless gods, kami and deities (Shintoism alone counts for 8 million of them) co-exist, it’s quite surprising that the average person is not at all religious in the western sense of the word. However almost all Japanese are highly superstitious. I guess this was the reason why it took me more than 2 years of casual research to find out more about Ushinokokumairi – the Japanese version of Voodoo. Almost nobody wanted to talk about it and came up with their individual version of “there was this strange girl in high-school which cursed a friend/family member/somebody I know who got sick/died/committed suicide” and this seemed to be a scary experience.

But this could not stop me to find out more about it. A special thanks goes to Ako for additional research, translation and organization and to Megumi for modeling for this post. Plus more thanks to all friends and acquaintances I scared with my curious questions. Sorry for that!

Ushinokokumairi freely translated means something like “Going to the Shrine at the time of the Ox”, while the Ox refers to the Chinese calendar applied to a clock and further translates into 2:00am in the morning. The thought of going to a shrine at 2:00am at full moon is scary enough, but being equipped with a straw doll (wara ningyo), a hammer and 15 centimeter long nails is even more.

The Ushinokokumairi ritual seem to origin around the year 800 at the Kibune Shrine in Kyoto, where a young beautiful woman cursed her husband in a 7 day long ritual for cheating on her. And to curse people who cheat is still one of the main uses of straw dolls today.

This is Megumi. While Megumi is superstitious, she agreed to be my model to demonstrate how to perform the ritual. The “home curse kit” can be conveniently ordered over the Internet…here really the future and the past come together!

A “home curse kit” is advertised as featuring a straw doll along nails, candles, a curse manual, and a curse-blocking bracelet to ward off return curses.

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