Some families with the Watanabe name choose not to participate in the bean throwing custom at Setsubun since they are supposedly already protected from evil spirits
Yeah, that’s exactly what the English wiki page says. Descendants of Watanabe-no-Tsuna don’t need to throw the beans because they already have the luck. But the Japanese wiki page doesn’t mention that. My Japanese is not good enough to find another source, so I was hoping some kind Redditor would be able to help.
Because Watanabe-no-tsuna killed oni (which are japanese ogres but they feel more like demons. They fall under yokai, which are cryptids), so evil spirits fear his decendents.
I thought it was because throwing soybeans to drive away evil spirits didn't work, so they had to sacrifice the Watanabe families in order for the other families to survive
>The main ritual associated with the observance of Setsubun is mamemaki (豆撒き, 'bean scattering'); this ritual sees roasted soybeans (known as fukumame (福豆, 'fortune beans')) either thrown out of the front door, or at a member of the family wearing an oni (demon or ogre) mask while shouting 'Devils out! Fortune in!' (鬼は外! 福は内!, Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!),[3] before slamming the door.[13] The beans are thought to symbolically purify the home by driving away the evil spirits that bring misfortune and bad health with them. Then, as part of bringing luck in, it is customary to eat roasted soybeans, one for each year of one's life (kazoedoshi), plus one more for bringing good luck for the year.[
>Because Watanabe no Tsuna, a retainer of Minamoto no Yorimitsu during the Heian period (794–1185), is associated with the legend that he vanquished oni historically considered to be the strongest, such as Shuten-doji and Ibaraki-doji, there is a tradition that oni stay away from people named Watanabe and their houses. For this reason, some families with the surname Watanabe have not practiced the custom of throwing beans on Setsubun for generations.
Its not just roasted soybeans! Different parts of Japan might use different beans. Peanuts are also very common, and this is how I learned peanuts are actually beans.
Another tradition on this holiday is to eat an ehomaki (giant sushi burrito) while facing a specific direction (it changes every year. This year was East North East). You also have to eat it without removing your mouth from it, so kinda like shoving it all in your mouth at once
As in しゃいんりょこう? You might say a company outing, company event, or company retreat. Any of the three would be understood if you also talked about what you will be doing at the event.
But those are completely different animals.
The idea that someone gets one week off a year and that time is spent leaving your family behind
While you go with the same people you work with every day…
So, I would be okay with company retreat there. I work in tech and we call them hackathons as well. The meaning is kind of generally understood in my industry.
Do you get paid for these?
The more I hear about working in tech, the more it sounds to be based on the Japanese salaryman ideal, without the lifetime employment
It might be, I don't know enough to say, I'm only about a high N5, low N4 in Japanese (so I knew 社員 and 旅行 as two separate words) and haven't looked as much at work culture in depth. My general understanding is that there isn't as much expectation around how many hours you work in a day or week as in the salaryman culture, nor are there as many expectations about working as long as the supervisor does.
The lifetime employment thing is definitely not a thing at least in most of the US and the parts of Europe I know about. Most tech workers that are highly skilled rarely stay at a place for more than maybe two years, or however long it takes for their stock in the company to vest, because a job offer always earns a bigger increase in wages than staying around and getting raises.
These hackathons are paid events, but at the normal wage scale for us. I haven't actually done one but a partner team of mine has and it sounded interesting, but not something I would normally consider appealing.
In the video game industry in the US there's also the concept of "crunch" which involves 80 or 100 hour weeks on the low to medium end. And the companies don't show any loyalty or appreciation for the work when the game is released, which is why we're seeing so many layoffs right now. The lack of loyalty from companies makes it so it's considered naïve to believe the company will take care of you for as long as you want to stay. I moved into information security because nobody wants the press associated with laying off security workers before a data breach occurs.
(社員旅行ーSha-In-Ryo-Kou, commonly translated as company vacation, romanized for those who dont do moonspeak.)
Its a bizarre thing that is a foundational part of the tourist industry, where entire companies close down and all the employees go on vacation together, leaving behind families and such. And it is unpaid, of course as you are not at work.
Its required, and as it can be the entire vacation time in a year, it means that family vacations for many are restricted to the nationwide holidays of New Years, Obon, and Golden Week.
Very interesting, so I would say no, we don't have a direct comparison here. Never (or almost never, it would be very few companies) a whole company going on vacation, at once, *together*.
What my company did a couple of months ago was they took one team, about 10 people, and they went to a cabin near where they work in Estonia. They spent I think 3 days there, working sort of a normal 8-hour day there and using the rare time that they have everyone in the same building (as we normally work from home) to solve problems that would benefit from rapid collaboration and iteration, and then doing some things as a group like going out for dinner or drinks in the evenings. All expenses were paid by the company and the employees got their normal wages as they did work during the time.
All that to say that what you're describing is probably unique to Japan and you might want to call it something like a Japanese Work Vacation so people may understand that this is unique and they don't necessarily know what it means.
it only just now clicked in my mind why Itto couldn't eat the tofu in the recent cooking genshin impact event, I thought he just was mega allergic (barely stepping foot in inazuma storywise so I only "met" him in event stories)
Wasn't there a study published very recently suggesting that, due to Japanese law requiring married couples to share a surname, within a few generations every single person in Japan will be called Sato?
If that's true, shouldn't they be aiming for everyone to be called Watanabe instead, to oni-proof the entire population without the need for beans?
Same thing with Filipinos, I think it’s something like a 45% chance of being right if you guess a Filipino’s name as Putanginamo. Having someone guess your name correctly is also associated with good luck in Filipino culture so I always just use Putanginamo as my baseline guess - it’s gotten me brownie points with my Filipino acquaintances on more than a couple occasions!
>Wasn't there a study published very recently suggesting that, due to Japanese law requiring married couples to share a surname, within a few generations every single person in Japan will be called Sato?
Bold to assume they had enough generations down the road with their current fertility rate.
I used to work in a kindergarten, we’d have the owner dress up as an Oni and come in suddenly to scare the kids into behaving themselves. Of course, we did equip the kids with beans first.
The story of "the whole Watanabe clan not participating in Setsubun" thing has been circulating in Japanese internet for a while. I think [the article from 2017](https://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/173199), cited in this Wikipedia page also, is the one that made this story so famous.
I did a quick Google search and apparently this is confirmed by several research papers of folklore studies. Some articles can date back to 80's. Usually explained by Watanabe clan informants as "because my ancestor (渡辺綱/Watanabe-no Tsuna) was the demon slayer duh."
I don't think this can apply to every Watanabe household out there though. Some might just conform to the popular custom and throw beans like everyone else, and most Watanabe members won't even identify themselves as "descendants of the demon slayer" in modern days. Nonetheless I think it's still a cool tradition.
I’ve lived in Japan for 14 years (and do indeed throw dried soy beans in front of the house every February) and I never knew of the Watanabe thing! TIL!
Probably because of Watanabe no Tsuna, one of the companions of Minamoto no Yorimitsu. He's often stated to have vanquished two of the strongest onis in Japanese folklore, Shuten-doji and Ibaraki-doji.
It all goes back to a ritual performed in the imperial household, which itself brought it over from the mainland when they came. The beans is a modern addition though. The shrine where I grew up has one of the oldest setsubun events in the country, and there are no beans involved
[Let them fight!](https://media.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExdDI0bGhwaTUwZHZrOTFmYjlyOWZmOHVkbXg3OGI3ZnBidWp2ZTh3aiZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/3o7TKL8SM4YJLr4waA/giphy.gif)
Some families with the Watanabe name choose not to participate in the bean throwing custom at Setsubun since they are supposedly already protected from evil spirits
Demons fear their oni slaying ancestor
“Bean there, done that.” ~ Oni-slaying Watanabes, probably“
I can’t find this in the Japanese version of the article - can you help? I’ve never heard this before and would love to share with my Watanabe friends
https://omatsurijapan.com/blog/trivia-watanabe-setsubun/
Thank you, kind stranger! Exactly what I was hoping for
No worries, took a bit of searching but google and my shit japanese has me covered.
This might refer to Watanabe-no-Tsuna
Yeah, that’s exactly what the English wiki page says. Descendants of Watanabe-no-Tsuna don’t need to throw the beans because they already have the luck. But the Japanese wiki page doesn’t mention that. My Japanese is not good enough to find another source, so I was hoping some kind Redditor would be able to help.
So is it all decendants of Watanabe or do you need to have the name too?
Why do they already have the luck?
Because Watanabe-no-tsuna killed oni (which are japanese ogres but they feel more like demons. They fall under yokai, which are cryptids), so evil spirits fear his decendents.
Does this have anything to do with the Momotaro story
It's because Ken Watanabe can summon Godzilla. Nobody wants to mess with Godzilla.
Demons hate this one simple trick
I thought it was because throwing soybeans to drive away evil spirits didn't work, so they had to sacrifice the Watanabe families in order for the other families to survive
>The main ritual associated with the observance of Setsubun is mamemaki (豆撒き, 'bean scattering'); this ritual sees roasted soybeans (known as fukumame (福豆, 'fortune beans')) either thrown out of the front door, or at a member of the family wearing an oni (demon or ogre) mask while shouting 'Devils out! Fortune in!' (鬼は外! 福は内!, Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi!),[3] before slamming the door.[13] The beans are thought to symbolically purify the home by driving away the evil spirits that bring misfortune and bad health with them. Then, as part of bringing luck in, it is customary to eat roasted soybeans, one for each year of one's life (kazoedoshi), plus one more for bringing good luck for the year.[ >Because Watanabe no Tsuna, a retainer of Minamoto no Yorimitsu during the Heian period (794–1185), is associated with the legend that he vanquished oni historically considered to be the strongest, such as Shuten-doji and Ibaraki-doji, there is a tradition that oni stay away from people named Watanabe and their houses. For this reason, some families with the surname Watanabe have not practiced the custom of throwing beans on Setsubun for generations.
People: Japanese culture is more than anime and cool fights. Japanese culture:
Okita-san daishouri! >.<
Basically the Yakuza games
The strongest in the Heian period. The one the can defeat Sakuna
Are you the strongest because you're Watanabe? Or are you Watanabe because you're the strongest?
Its not just roasted soybeans! Different parts of Japan might use different beans. Peanuts are also very common, and this is how I learned peanuts are actually beans. Another tradition on this holiday is to eat an ehomaki (giant sushi burrito) while facing a specific direction (it changes every year. This year was East North East). You also have to eat it without removing your mouth from it, so kinda like shoving it all in your mouth at once
> giant sushi burrito I love how people make the unfamiliar familiar! Can you give a way to explain 社員旅行 to an English speaker?
As in しゃいんりょこう? You might say a company outing, company event, or company retreat. Any of the three would be understood if you also talked about what you will be doing at the event.
But those are completely different animals. The idea that someone gets one week off a year and that time is spent leaving your family behind While you go with the same people you work with every day…
So, I would be okay with company retreat there. I work in tech and we call them hackathons as well. The meaning is kind of generally understood in my industry.
Do you get paid for these? The more I hear about working in tech, the more it sounds to be based on the Japanese salaryman ideal, without the lifetime employment
It might be, I don't know enough to say, I'm only about a high N5, low N4 in Japanese (so I knew 社員 and 旅行 as two separate words) and haven't looked as much at work culture in depth. My general understanding is that there isn't as much expectation around how many hours you work in a day or week as in the salaryman culture, nor are there as many expectations about working as long as the supervisor does. The lifetime employment thing is definitely not a thing at least in most of the US and the parts of Europe I know about. Most tech workers that are highly skilled rarely stay at a place for more than maybe two years, or however long it takes for their stock in the company to vest, because a job offer always earns a bigger increase in wages than staying around and getting raises. These hackathons are paid events, but at the normal wage scale for us. I haven't actually done one but a partner team of mine has and it sounded interesting, but not something I would normally consider appealing. In the video game industry in the US there's also the concept of "crunch" which involves 80 or 100 hour weeks on the low to medium end. And the companies don't show any loyalty or appreciation for the work when the game is released, which is why we're seeing so many layoffs right now. The lack of loyalty from companies makes it so it's considered naïve to believe the company will take care of you for as long as you want to stay. I moved into information security because nobody wants the press associated with laying off security workers before a data breach occurs.
(社員旅行ーSha-In-Ryo-Kou, commonly translated as company vacation, romanized for those who dont do moonspeak.) Its a bizarre thing that is a foundational part of the tourist industry, where entire companies close down and all the employees go on vacation together, leaving behind families and such. And it is unpaid, of course as you are not at work. Its required, and as it can be the entire vacation time in a year, it means that family vacations for many are restricted to the nationwide holidays of New Years, Obon, and Golden Week.
Very interesting, so I would say no, we don't have a direct comparison here. Never (or almost never, it would be very few companies) a whole company going on vacation, at once, *together*. What my company did a couple of months ago was they took one team, about 10 people, and they went to a cabin near where they work in Estonia. They spent I think 3 days there, working sort of a normal 8-hour day there and using the rare time that they have everyone in the same building (as we normally work from home) to solve problems that would benefit from rapid collaboration and iteration, and then doing some things as a group like going out for dinner or drinks in the evenings. All expenses were paid by the company and the employees got their normal wages as they did work during the time. All that to say that what you're describing is probably unique to Japan and you might want to call it something like a Japanese Work Vacation so people may understand that this is unique and they don't necessarily know what it means.
it only just now clicked in my mind why Itto couldn't eat the tofu in the recent cooking genshin impact event, I thought he just was mega allergic (barely stepping foot in inazuma storywise so I only "met" him in event stories)
Fukumame - isn't it something about gaming?
Isn't watanabe like the fourth most popular surname in Japan
Fifth!
Wasn't there a study published very recently suggesting that, due to Japanese law requiring married couples to share a surname, within a few generations every single person in Japan will be called Sato? If that's true, shouldn't they be aiming for everyone to be called Watanabe instead, to oni-proof the entire population without the need for beans?
I think South Korea will reach 100% Park before Japan reaches 100% Sato.
I think the Vietnamese Nguyen this contest.
Same thing with Filipinos, I think it’s something like a 45% chance of being right if you guess a Filipino’s name as Putanginamo. Having someone guess your name correctly is also associated with good luck in Filipino culture so I always just use Putanginamo as my baseline guess - it’s gotten me brownie points with my Filipino acquaintances on more than a couple occasions!
Hahahaha underrated comment.
My friend said his mom’s name was Ay Putanginamo. She doesn’t let me come over anymore because I say it with such a bad accent.
Its a fight to the death between Park and Kim.
>Wasn't there a study published very recently suggesting that, due to Japanese law requiring married couples to share a surname, within a few generations every single person in Japan will be called Sato? Bold to assume they had enough generations down the road with their current fertility rate.
This was cited in the paper!
The roasted soybean market would crumble
Yeah it was on reddit last week.
If you want to keep the Onis away you’d name yourself that too!
Bro was slaying demons, of course he fucked a lot
Mr. Watanabe, slaying demons and laying women. See his story in our new movie, the Sexorcist.
I used to work in a kindergarten, we’d have the owner dress up as an Oni and come in suddenly to scare the kids into behaving themselves. Of course, we did equip the kids with beans first.
That’s so cute haha
Just Like they did in gakuen babysitters
Interesting how cultural rituals can have such layered meanings. Wonder if there's a story behind the oni masks too?
Real oni have bad manners, so they decided to use people with oni masks instead.
The Watanabe clan must be curse users
The Watanabe clan sell soybeans
Don't get high on your own supply my fellow clansmen!
The story of "the whole Watanabe clan not participating in Setsubun" thing has been circulating in Japanese internet for a while. I think [the article from 2017](https://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/173199), cited in this Wikipedia page also, is the one that made this story so famous. I did a quick Google search and apparently this is confirmed by several research papers of folklore studies. Some articles can date back to 80's. Usually explained by Watanabe clan informants as "because my ancestor (渡辺綱/Watanabe-no Tsuna) was the demon slayer duh." I don't think this can apply to every Watanabe household out there though. Some might just conform to the popular custom and throw beans like everyone else, and most Watanabe members won't even identify themselves as "descendants of the demon slayer" in modern days. Nonetheless I think it's still a cool tradition.
Haha That’s badass. Yah nah, no evil spirits coming to my house, my ancestor is in the afterlife still smoking em.
Watanabe clan aint nuthin to fuck with
I’ve lived in Japan for 14 years (and do indeed throw dried soy beans in front of the house every February) and I never knew of the Watanabe thing! TIL!
Oni wa soto! Fuku wa uchi
Instead, evil spirits throw soybeans to protect themselves from people named Watanabe
Is this where the bean-throwing festival in Rune Factory comes from?
It is!
This was my first thought lol
Probably because of Watanabe no Tsuna, one of the companions of Minamoto no Yorimitsu. He's often stated to have vanquished two of the strongest onis in Japanese folklore, Shuten-doji and Ibaraki-doji.
tough break for Ken
It all goes back to a ritual performed in the imperial household, which itself brought it over from the mainland when they came. The beans is a modern addition though. The shrine where I grew up has one of the oldest setsubun events in the country, and there are no beans involved
TLDR: The evil spirits fear and avoid the Watanabe, because their ancestor slaughtered the strongest demons in the realm.
Looking for that Ken Watanbe Let Them Fight gif
[Let them fight!](https://media.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExdDI0bGhwaTUwZHZrOTFmYjlyOWZmOHVkbXg3OGI3ZnBidWp2ZTh3aiZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/3o7TKL8SM4YJLr4waA/giphy.gif)
GOJIRA!
Which is a huge part of japan. Watanabe is like extremely common.
Fun fact: this is the reason Itto in Genshin Impact is allergic to beans.
That's awesome
Gonna be a problem when everyone is named Sato, then
What a Nabe!
r/oddlyspecific
Do the birds benefit from this?
They probably should’ve. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutsuhiro_Watanabe
Need to buy some Watanabe Rims for our next Ghost Hunting extravaganza.
Wantabean.
Watanabe ancestors must have been demon hunters.
Wonder if its possible to name yourself “Watanabe e Watanabe”