What Is Yaku-otoshi? How It Differs from Yaku-barai, and the Folk Practice of Letting Go of Misfortune

Many people have had yaku-otoshi performed at a shrine at the start of a year or upon reaching an unlucky year. Yet surprisingly few can precisely explain the difference between yaku-otoshi, yaku-barai, and yaku-yoke. From a folklore view, this article covers what yaku-otoshi is, its original meaning, how it differs from yaku-barai and yaku-yoke, the origins and counting of the unlucky years, and its concrete customs and regional variety — aiming to be the most careful single read available.

What yaku-otoshi is

Yaku-otoshi is a folk practice of deliberately shedding and letting go of misfortune or bad luck — yaku — that clings to you. The key point is that it treats yaku as something already attached, which one then tries to separate from oneself.

Today it most often means receiving a blessing at a shrine or temple, but that is not all. Moving misfortune off yourself and out, to lighten your load — this idea of "transferring and dropping" is the very heart of yaku-otoshi.

The original meaning — deliberately "dropping" an object

Yaku-otoshi was originally, quite literally, a custom of "dropping" an object. When bad things kept happening, you would deliberately drop a treasured or habitually worn item by the roadside. The yaku was thought to transfer to the object and leave your body, warding off further misfortune.

Related customs were handed down across the land: holding a feast at a turning point so many people each carry off a little of the yaku, or scattering beans, rice cakes, or coins to pass the yaku along. As in the "abandoned child" rites, in which a child was formally "cast away" for a moment and picked up by another, folk practice held ways to reset a body that had taken on misfortune. All are run through by one consistent idea: separating the yaku from yourself and moving it onto something else.

The difference from yaku-barai and yaku-yoke

Two closely related terms are yaku-barai and yaku-yoke. In everyday speech they mean much the same, but strictly they differ slightly.

Where yaku-otoshi points to "shedding and releasing yaku already attached," yaku-yoke is the preventive sense of "keeping coming misfortune from drawing near." Yaku-barai is often a broader word for blessings that include both. The setting tends to divide, too: yaku-yoke at esoteric-Buddhist temples that burn a goma fire, yaku-barai (o-harai) at shrines where a purification liturgy is recited. Still, this distinction is not absolute; the terms and their emphasis differ by region and shrine. On the shrine purification itself, see What Is O-harai. What matters is less the precision of the words than the very stance of facing misfortune and steadying the heart.

The unlucky years — traditional counting and the ages for men and women

Yaku-otoshi is felt most keenly in the yakudoshi, the unlucky years. These are ages long thought to bring changes of body and mind and a greater chance of misfortune, set separately for men and women by traditional (kazoe) counting.

Commonly, the unlucky years are 25, 42, and 61 for men and 19, 33, and 37 for women; of these, a man's 42 (which sounds like "to death") and a woman's 33 (which sounds like "disaster") are called the "great yaku." The years before and after are the "fore-yaku" and "after-yaku," and all three together were to be spent with care. Note, too, that many shrines mark the boundary of the year not at New Year but at Setsubun (the eve of the first day of spring).

The origins of the unlucky years, and the seasons of life

The notion of the yakudoshi arose where the Chinese-derived thought of onmyodo met Japan's own age-based rites of passage, and its shadow can be seen even in Heian-period literature. The age system in its present form is thought to have taken firm hold in the Edo period.

Why perform yaku-otoshi in that year? To calm the unease that arises at a turning point and to steady the heart against misfortune. The ages named as unlucky often coincide with times when the body changes or social burdens grow heavier; the yakudoshi have been handed down less as a medical claim than as a wisdom for marking a season in life — a time to take care of oneself and reaffirm one's ties to others. To shed yaku also carries a forward-looking meaning: resetting who you have been and meeting a new turning point afresh.

The "yaku" that piles up in the heart — write it out and shed it, too

What the idea of yaku-otoshi teaches is that misfortune and heavy things may be let go rather than held. That applies not only to unseen bad luck but to the feelings that pile up in the heart. Swallowed anger and unease, left alone, keep weighing you down.

Noroi Nikki is a private app for writing out and letting go of that inner "yaku," seen by no one. As one sheds yaku at a shrine, you set the stagnant feeling in your chest into words and place it outside. To write and shed may be, in our own age, a yaku-otoshi for lightening yourself and stepping toward the next turning point.

Related article: What Is Ohyakudo-mairi? The Folk Practice of Praying the Same Wish a Hundred Times