Amami Superman Photography

When I first got to the shrine that day, there was no one in sight. As it got closer to otakiage, more people started to show up. After the otakiage, there was a nice little crowd starting to form.

I imagine that if the setsubun fell on a weekend day, there would be plenty more people. As it turned out, setsubun fell on a Wednesday. Mame maki was set for 3:00pm so people would still be at work and elementary children and up would still be in school.

These children in the red hats are from a pre-school. Most pre-schools finish at 2:00pm here in Amami so I imagine these kids are apart of the after-school daycare service most pre-schools provide.

Before the actually bean throwing, the people throwing the beans went inside the shrine and participated in some sort of rite. After the rite was performed, they came out with the beans and got ready.

It was about this time that my photos really started to suck. From motion blur to out of focus shots, I wanted to kick myself after I saw them that evening. If the out-of-focus shots were in focus, I think they would have been some really great shots. The mame maki only lasted a minute or so, so I didn't have a chance to check to see how they were turning out. I was so excited to get home and check them out. When I did get home and looked at them, I wanted to go into a rage and destroy something. Well, not really. I was just sad I screwed them up. I did get a few OK shots though.

It was amazing to see even the older folks getting down and scrounging up the peanuts that fell to the ground. It reminded me of little kids gathering up candy after a piñata had been cracked open.

After the mame maki, they handed out omamori which are basically good luck charms. The actual word mamoru means to protect or defend. So an actual direct translation would be a protection charm.

When I first heard about setsubun, my first question was, why don't they do the good luck thing during New Years instead of a month after? I first thought that maybe it had to do with the Chinese calendar but after a bit of study, I found I was wrong. I thought I would take a bit to explain what setsubun is.

Setsu means season and bun means part or division. They use the word setsubun to refer to the day before the first day of a season. Now days, setsubun is referred to as the day before the first day of Spring. Although they had calendars thousands of years ago in Japan, not everyone used them. Instead, many people went off the lunar cycles for their calendar. Because the the Spring setsubun was also the day before the Lunar New Year, it was also considered New Year's Eve.

So to answer my first question, why don't they do the good luck thing during New Years instead of a month later? Well they do, if you use the lunar calendar like they did a long time ago.