Hour of the Ox

The hitogata paper is used in Shinto to represent the human figure. Sometimes dolls are used too.

Green Shinto friend Ted Taylor has provided a link to a website with an account of a former practice that I had read about but did not know the details …   On the surface it seems not dissimilar to some of the practices in witchcraft, where dolls are used to represent the person one is healing (and in black magic cursing).

The article appears on a site run by Zack Davidson called Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai, and he has drawn on various Japanese sources to provide some fascinating facts.  The article can be found by clicking here.  What follows below is a short extract….

At the Hour of the Ox (between 1-3 A.M.) a lone figure creeps silently towards a sacred tree. She is dressed in white, and on her head an upturned trivet is worn like a crown, three candles burning in the night. In one hand, she carries a doll made of bound straw in the form of a person; in her other hand, a small wooden hammer and a set of long, iron spikes. The hatred in her heart blazes brighter than the candles, appropriate for one completing the curse-ritual known as Ushi no Koku Mairi, the Shrine Visit at the Hour of the Ox.

The Ritual
Ushi no Koku Mairi (丑の刻参り; also known as 丑の時参; Ushi no Toki Mairi, both of which translate as Shrine Visit at the Hour of the Ox) is an ancient, famous, and terrible Japanese curse-ritual. It has been performed for millennia—some sources trace it back as far as the Kofun period (250 – 538 CE), although in a different form. While the costume and ritual have changed over the centuries, the basic rite of pounding nails into dolls remains the same.

To perform an Ushi no Koku Mairi, you first make a straw doll (藁人形; waraningyo) to serve as an effigy of the person you want to curse. For the best effect, the doll should have some part of the person in it, some hair, skin, blood, fingernails, or other DNA. In a pinch a photograph will do, or even their name written on a piece of paper. This done, you done the ritual costume, and sneak into a shrine late at night. Many Shinto shrines have sacred trees, called shinboku, that are the homes of kami spirits. Nail the doll to the sacred tree using long, iron spikes called gosunkugi (五寸釘).

Nailing a doll into a sacred tree in the Hour of the Ox was an ancient practice. Don't try it, though – nowadays it's illegal.