What Is Kotodama? Japan's Belief in the Spirit of Words, Explained

Kotodama turns up more and more in cheerful contexts: words spoken become reality, so choose good ones. But the original idea cut both ways. Kotodama was thought to work just as strongly on the side of the curse as on the side of the blessing.

This article explains what kotodama is, where it comes from, and how far the belief reached in Japanese life — purely as a matter of folklore and culture.

What kotodama is (the meaning)

Kotodama is the idea that a spoken word carries a spirit of its own, and that this spirit acts on reality. Words are not mere signs; the moment they leave your mouth they have force. Say something carelessly and you may bring it about. That premise sits underneath a whole family of Japanese customs about speech.

"The land where kotodama brings good fortune"

The word appears already in the Man'yoshu. Poems attributed to Kakinomoto no Hitomaro and Yamanoue no Okura speak of Japan as "the land where kotodama brings good fortune," which tells us the country thought of itself that way very early.

Worth noticing: this was not self-help. It was not "use nice words and prosper." Precisely because words had power, they were not to be uttered carelessly. The idea carried dread with it.

Norito and names — the power of ordered words

Shinto norito prayers are kotodama at its most formalised. A fixed wording, in a fixed cadence, delivered without error. More than the content, it was the correctly ordered chain of words that was thought to carry force.

Names belong to kotodama too. In ancient Japan a woman's true given name was not disclosed lightly, because to know a name was to be able to handle that person through language. Acting on someone by speaking their name runs to the root of juju sorcery and juso cursing alike.

Imi-kotoba — the discipline of avoidance

The reverse face of kotodama is the taboo word. At a wedding you avoid "cut," "part" and "return"; around an exam candidate you do not say "fall" or "slip"; at a funeral you keep clear of doubled expressions such as "again and again." Each rests on the same logic: say it and you summon it.

Today these mostly survive as courtesy toward the person in front of you. Even so, the underlying sense that some words must not be spoken is still very much alive.

Kotodama as the words of a curse

If kotodama brings good fortune, it stands to reason it can run the other way. Japan's traditions about the words of a curse — the formula spoken during ushi no koku mairi, the phrasing of a juso — all assume kotodama. It was exactly because words had force that putting hatred into them was feared.

Japanese folklore also insisted that what has been said cannot be unsaid. Perhaps the reason the curse that rebounds was told and retold is that people sensed how easily a word released can come back to the one who released it.

The plainer mechanism by which words act — a modern view

You do not need spirits for words to bite. Keep telling yourself "I'm useless" and you begin behaving that way, which makes things go badly — the self-fulfilling prophecy, or labelling, of psychology. Conversely, naming an anxiety precisely — "I am anxious about this deadline" — reliably shrinks it to a size you can handle.

In other words, a word does not fly off and strike someone else. It works first by changing how things look to you. When older generations saw a spirit inside language, they may have been describing exactly that very solid sensation.

Aim the cursing words at paper, not at a person

If words have force, where you aim the hateful ones matters. Fire them at the person and the relationship breaks; post them online and there is no taking them back; swallow them and they keep swelling inside.

Saved journal text in Noroi Nikki is not public to other users. You choose whether to share a curse card. Put it into words, get it outside you, then quietly set it down — the same thing oharai and yaku-otoshi have always done, in the form of a journal.

For more folklore about language, see the words of a curse and what majinai means.