What Is Tatari? The Folk Meaning of the Misfortune the Japanese Have Long Feared

An illness with no known cause, a run of poor harvests, an unexpected calamity. In the age before science offered explanations, people sensed the will of unseen beings behind such misfortunes. That idea is tatari. Many know the word without being able to explain its true meaning. From a folklore view, this article covers what tatari is, its etymology, the two faces of a deity known as ara-mitama and nigi-mitama, how it differs from a curse, and how people appeased it — aiming to be the most careful single read available.

What tatari is

Tatari is an old idea that the anger of gods, spirits, or nature falls upon people as misfortune. Its mark is that unhappiness — illness, disaster, poor harvests — was tied to the wrath or discontent of unseen beings.

Tatari, then, was not mere bad luck but an event received as "the appearance of someone's will." Faced with a misfortune whose cause was unknown, people tried to read in it a sign from a spirit they had failed to soothe.

Etymology — from "to appear"

The word tatari is said to derive from an old term meaning "to stand" or "to become manifest." The normally invisible will of deities or the dead becoming visible, in the form of misfortune, in the human world — this is close to its original sense: something hidden standing forth into the open. The etymology, however, has several theories and cannot be stated with certainty.

Ara-mitama and nigi-mitama — the two faces of a deity

In Japanese thought, a deity's spiritual power was said to have two sides: the wild, raging ara-mitama and the gentle, blessing-bringing nigi-mitama. The same deity brings calamity when it rages and harvest or protection when it is calmed. Tatari can be understood as the state in which the ara-mitama side has come to the fore.

This is precisely why people did not try to expel a raging deity. By enshrining it with care, they sought to calm the ara-mitama and turn it toward the nigi-mitama. Fearing tatari and revering the deity were not opposites but one continuous act.

The difference from a curse

Tatari is often confused with noroi, a curse. They overlap, but their agents differ.

A curse points to an active act in which a person deliberately directs misfortune at another. Tatari, by contrast, is a passive idea: gods or spirits, out of anger or discontent, bring misfortune of their own accord. A curse is something a person "casts"; tatari is something that "happens" from the side of the spirits. Not human malice, but the wrath of a great being one failed to soothe — herein lies the weight of the word tatari.

Appeasing tatari — goryo belief

The Japanese did not simply fear and shut out tatari. Rather, they enshrined the spirits or gods said to bring it with great care, building shrines and revering them, so as to calm their anger.

This is called goryo belief. In the Heian period especially, the spirits of figures who died in bitterness after losing at politics were feared as causes of plague and disaster. Enshrining such a spirit as a deity turned it from a bringer of misfortune into a protector of the people — the Tenmangu shrines that enshrine Sugawara no Michizane are a foremost example. Not sealing away the feared but softening it through honor and enshrinement: this idea runs deep in a Japanese faith that seeks to live alongside the raging. See What Is Goryo Belief for more.

Putting unquieted feelings into words, and letting go

What the stories of tatari whisper is an old sense that unappeased bitterness and anger do not vanish but linger in the world. Perhaps the same is true within the human heart. Swallowed anger and feelings that find no release, left alone, quietly keep tormenting you.

Noroi Nikki is a private app for putting such unquieted feelings into words, seen by no one. As one enshrines and calms a spirit, you set the raging emotion in your chest into the form of words and place it outside for a while. Even if it never quite turns an ara-mitama into a nigi-mitama, to write and let go may be, in our own age, one rite of appeasement.

Related article: What Is Onryo? The Folklore of the "Vengeful Spirit" the Japanese Both Feared and Enshrined