What Is Ushimitsudoki? What Time Is the Japanese Witching Hour? Meaning and Origins

"Ushimitsudoki, when even the grass and trees sleep" — this phrase, familiar from ghost stories and period dramas, points to the quietest, eeriest stretch of the dead of night. Only a vaguely frightening image tends to reach us, yet behind it lie the old Japanese way of counting time and a history of dread of the dark.

This article explains what ushimitsudoki is — what time it means, where it comes from, why it became the hour of the uncanny, and how to face a sleepless night — purely as a matter of folklore and culture, in the most thorough form available.

What time ushimitsudoki is (the meaning)

Ushimitsudoki is a name that, in the old way of counting time, refers to the third of four parts into which the hour of the ox — roughly 1 to 3 a.m. — was divided, about 2:00 to 2:30 a.m. It falls in the darkest, stillest hour of the whole day, when the night has deepened most and people and nature alike have fallen asleep.

Telling time by the zodiac — the hour of the ox and its quarters

To understand how ushimitsudoki works, you have to know the old system of hours. Japan once divided the day into twelve equal parts and assigned each to a zodiac sign — Rat, Ox, Tiger, and so on. The roughly two hours around midnight were the "hour of the Rat," and the following stretch, about 1 to 3 a.m., was the "hour of the Ox."

Each two-hour "hour" was then split into four parts counted "one, two, three, four." Quartering the hour of the ox gives ox-one (about 1:00–1:30), ox-two (1:30–2:00), ox-three (2:00–2:30), and ox-four (2:30–3:00) — and the third of these is ushimitsudoki. It sits at the very bottom of the night, the deepest point of the silence.

"When even the grass and trees sleep" — the dark and the stillness

The phrase "ushimitsudoki, when even the grass and trees sleep" paints the scene of a midnight so hushed that even the grass and trees seem to have drifted off. In an age before electric light, the darkness of this hour was far denser and deeper than it is today. Precisely because it was the hour when every trace of human presence vanished, the imagination could sense in it the presence of something unknown. Ushimitsudoki is a distinctly Japanese name for an hour, crystallized out of that dread of the dark.

The demon gate and "yin" — why it became the hour of the uncanny and of curses

Behind the special dread of ushimitsudoki lies not only the hour but the idea of direction. The zodiac signs were assigned to compass points too, and the space between Ox and Tiger — the northeast — is the "kimon," the demon gate, shunned as the quarter through which demons pass. Ushimitsudoki was thought, in a sense, to touch the demon gate in time.

Moreover, in the Chinese-derived thought of yin-yang and the five elements, night is the time when "yin" energy fills the world, and midnight's ushimitsudoki was held to be the hour when that yin reaches its peak. With the "yang" energy at its weakest, this hour — said even to open onto the other world — was spoken of as an eerie stretch in the lineage of the "omagatoki," the time when spirits and apparitions readily appear.

Its link to ushi no koku mairi

What sealed the image of ushimitsudoki was the legend of the ushi no koku mairi. Nailing a straw doll made to stand for a hated person to a shrine's sacred tree at this most deserted hour — because the ritual was said to be performed then, ushimitsudoki grew all the stronger as the hour of curses and the uncanny. Yet these are only legends, and it has never been verified that anything actually happens at that time. On the origins of the ritual itself, see what ushi no koku mairi is.

It really is easier to be troubled on a sleepless night — a modern view

Even setting the supernatural aside, there is a sound reason the heart grows restless around 2 a.m. In the body's internal clock, core temperature falls to its lowest from the dead of night toward dawn, and once you wake it is harder to fall back asleep. Alone in hushed darkness, the unease and regret you could shrug off by day tend to circle round and round in the mind — not an apparition, but a workaday function of body and heart that anyone can feel. Perhaps the old fear of ushimitsudoki was just this peculiar midnight forlornness, put into words as a story of the dark.

Write the thoughts of a sleepless night down before the dark swallows them

Ushimitsudoki has been feared because, in deep dark and silence, the heart is easily seized by unease and regret. Waking wide-eyed in the dead of night while resentment and worry spin round and round is something everyone has known. Yet there is no need to bear those thoughts alone. Feelings that swell in the head become far lighter once you put them into words and let them out.

Noroi Nikki is a private app for gently writing out, and letting go of, exactly those "negative feelings you can tell no one." What you write is seen by no one, and no one else is dragged into it. Rather than carrying it alone through a sleepless witching hour, write the thought into a journal and set it down from your chest, little by little.

For a legend tied to this hour, see also what ushi no koku mairi is.