In May’s Uncanny Japan you get three Japanese superstitions and why:
1) Please don’t cut your nails at night.
2) Please don’t whistle at night.
3) Please do kill spiders at night…or don’t, actually you might not want to. There’s a good argument why you should let those night spiders live.
Above is an Edo Era woman cutting her nails with some ginormous nail clippers.
Credits
The intro/outro music of Uncanny Japan is a song by Christiaan Virant (“Yi Gui” from Ting Shuo). The whole album is just gorgeous as it everything else by FM3.
While I was living in Japan (’93-’99, in Shikoku), a coworker died of a heart attack. I was honored to be allowed to pay my respects to his family and to his resting body. At that time, I was told that the family members would be cutting their nails to burn with the body to act as money after death.
And now, of course, I can find nothing to back that tale up, so perhaps not.
Erik, thank you for commenting. I will absolutely look this up and ask around. I haven’t heard of it personally, but it very well could be something done only in Shikoku. In my area, little personal “presents” or items that you would like the deceased to take with them to the afterlife are often placed with the body before cremation. My husband (a huge rock fan) gave his grandfather a cassette tape with “Stairway to Heaven” on it. I thought that was quite sweet. I’ll most definitely look into the fingernail thing! Thanks again.
I just stumbled over your podcast today and I just love listening to all these little folktales and myths. But when I listened to episode 6, I recognized myself when it comes to whistling in the night.
I live in Sweden and I’m born here. But my parents come from Vietnam, so I was brought up with Vietnamese/Chinese customs and was taught early on that I was absolutely not allowed to whistle at night because then it would attract snakes to our house. I never believed it of course but didn’t dare to whistle during nights.
A couple of weeks ago, my son, who is 7 years old, and just learned to whistle, started whistling one evening suddenly. Out of reflex I told him to stop immediately. He asked me why and I was going to tell him that it would attract snakes but regretted it because it doesn’t make sense. I just told him not to 🙂
I also remember that my mother told me that I should never buy and plant a banana tree near my house (not that a banana tree would survive here in Sweden). But the reason was that banana trees are said to attract ghosts. Is there something similar they say in Japan about banana trees?
Oh, wow! Linda, I didn’t realize the superstition was so widespread! Thank you for letting me know. As for banana trees, there is something similar I’m researching now that comes from Okinawa. That episode should come out soon. I’ve got a Part 2 of Supernatural Trees (Ep. 156) I’m working on. It seems there’s a weird little creatures that lives inside them. Willow trees are very much associated with ghosts though.