Fuden-an: Leaves from a Tea-journal

　　With general mentions of the imminence of the month of March - and the accompanying hints, in temperatures of the day-time air, as to the eventual relenting of iron winter - there are few that, in Japan, do not feel a certain rise in the spirits that often proves to have come upon one rather before one was quite aware of this change in feelings. Here, overcoats will at last be dispensed with, and one will feel encouraged to choose rather lighter clothing, of hues more suited to the efflorescence of Spring. One's bodily movements naturally become a little more spontaneously sprightly, and one can be surprised by how pleasantly light the hitherto burden of one's own limbs has now become. And it is this prizing of the subtle yet distinct shifts in temperature from month to month, and consequent changes in both flora and feeling, that is one element that most decisively characterizes the traditional cultural perceptions of at least Japan. The opportunity of living in an environment that so encourages one to make a single unity of all of one's subjective impressions, one's new corporeal feelings, and one's sense of subtle seasonal changes, is one of which I myself wish to continue to make the most.

　　Be that as it may, on the occasion of the festival of the day preceding the Spring Equinox, our household still maintains the rite of strewing dried beans. As the Chinese system of years named for astrologically significant animals comprises a duodecimal cycle, and I have myself now turned forty-eight, this year happens to be the third occasion upon which my Chinese astrological year of birth - the Year of Monkey - has yet again come round. Consequently, I was allowed to strew dried beans in both the shrine that houses the god of whom we have - since removal - newly become parishioners, and also that of Nishi-Arai-Daishi, a semi-deity also worshiped within our immediate neighborhood. Both of these rites appear to be ones that, of late, very few other households any more bother to observe.

　　When I look back upon my infant memories, it is my impression that I hardly ever heard the cries that traditionally accompany the scattering of dried beans, in order to rid a household area of small but impertinently importune demons. Thus, it was with a sense of deep nostalgia that I arose with my parents from our evening meal, drew back the solid rain-door shutters that, in winter, and once winter dusk has so swiftly fallen, are normally fitted into place, in order to protect every room from winter rains and storms, and then strewed dried beans from each of our rooms. Upon such occasions, both my father and my mother would robustly shout out, 'Demons out; felicity in!'; yet I still recollect that both my esteemed younger brother and myself always felt a certain shyness, about making so much noise, and so we would accompany our parents' invocations with mere, embarrassed whispers. And yet, towards the end of this process conducted in room after room, one's voicing did eventually lose that initial shyness, to become as solid as that of both of one's parents. And I do believe that I may now be perceiving my own children in turn undergoing those same shifts in confidence.

　　I myself grew up in a nuclear family formed of four persons: father, mother, younger brother, and self. But the custom of families such as ours is for younger brothers to take different family-names and then reside elsewhere; I myself have been blessed with not only an admirable wife but all of three children; and thus our composite household is presently composed of all of seven people. At the same time, my younger brother's own nucelar family is also an important part of our larger domestic group. And so, when all of us are gathered together for the scattering of dried beans, the resultant riotous noise knows few bounds. If too many beans be too wildly scattered, the mother in charge of that household may well find herself much taxed by the task of sweeping up every last one; and so she may grow irate upon observing too carelessly liberal scatterings scadding from her offsprings' hands. At the same time, this rite is one in which children delight; and they will exuberantly indulge themselves in it, with little thought of aught other than their own freedom.

　　In our household, the dried adzuki beans used in such rites are first offered to the spirits of our ancestors in the family shrine, in small, square cypress-wood boxes of various sizes. Since the larger boxes of course hold more beans, and have bigger openings, which make the grasping of handfuls of beans far easier, these boxes prove more popular, and the question of who gets which size of box always assumes a grave importance. And then, when the very last been has been flung, each of the participants collects as many beans as s/he has lived years, wraps them in a sheet of 'breast-paper' , and later consume them. Lore has it that these are a source of protection from all evils; but also that one must eat them on the following day, and in a place where one can remain unobserved by others.

　　While I was myself still a child, I had also to inconspicuously eat up the beans collected by both of my parents (of course, I cannot even now reveal where I would do this). And in turn I myself now request the same service of my own children; but, as they evidently realize that not just anywhere will do, I suspect that I am putting them to some extremes of contrivance, in order to oblige me in this respect. There is also the rite of eating as many of the beans remaining in one's allotted box as the years during which one has lived. But, as one now forty-eight, I do find myself failing to eat all of forty-eight dried beans.

In this way, our household is still managing to maintain the rituals that have been familiar to me even since I first began to notice what was going on around me. The process of transmission of traditions - from parent to child, and then from child to grandchild - is one that, irrespective of whether or not it be that of the scattering of beans to mark the Spring Equinox, every household must, in its own way, surely maintain. This is something that I myself wish never to neglect.