All of my apartment’s (many) windows are single-paned. Luckily, energy saving measures spurred by the Tohoku earthquake have lead Japan to explore winterization and insulation wrap, so hopefully this won’t completely eviscerate my electricity budget this winter. It’s been warm here—highs have been 21C (69.8F) since late September—so I’ve been leaving my windows open in the evening to air out the place and enjoy the crisp evening weather.
Starting in mid-October, though, I started to hear strange noises coming from the town below. At around 8:30 or 9, I heard bells. These weren’t occasional peals from the big bells from the temple next door like I hear sometimes on Buddhist holidays. This is someone walking with a single handbell: ring, step, ring, step. I looked out my window every time I saw it, hoping to see one of the monks walking around. I never saw a monk, but the noise continued.
Around Halloween, I was riding back from visiting a friend. It was very dark, but even though they don’t have streetlights, the roads through the acres of rice fields a few blocks from my building are less crowded and therefore safer than the main streets. I went down a different road this time, one that goes through an old residential area before it opens up into the rice fields. Then, I heard a new variation on the same noise: clack, step, clack clack, step, clack. I actually followed the noise this time. An older woman was walking down the road with two wooden blocks, clacking away and looking somber. Once or twice, she muttered something I didn’t quite catch. I tried to greet her and ask what it was all about, but she didn’t seem to notice I was there.
The sound faded away as I biked off through the cut-down, dried out rice fields and rows of fruit-laden persimmon trees. What was that? Was she making noise to scare away stray cats from the garbage sites? Was it a religious thing, the muttering a prayer? What if I interrupted some sort of special rite she was doing? Or…what if she was a ghost? It was dark and the moon was peeking through the clouds in a very Halloween-ish sort of way—the thought did cross my mind.
From then on, I heard the clacking from my apartment at night soon after the bells. It went on for more than a week. In fact, I’m sure once it hits 8:30, I’ll hear it again tonight.
I finally asked one of my teachers about it today. She didn’t know at first, which kind of creeped me out. I was about to try to ask one of the Japanese history teachers too when she remembered.
Apparently it’s really rare, but some neighborhoods carry on the tradition of beating wooden blocks and saying 火の用心 (hi no youshin, careful of fire) to their neighbors during fall and winter nights. Long ago, people did this all over Japan to remind their neighbors to put out their cooking fires and be careful heating their homes through the night. Given that houses in Japan are traditionally made of fire-safe materials like pine wood, tatami mats, and paper screens and that they were built so close they almost touched, if one house caught fire, everyone suffered.
No one uses cooking fires anymore, but the areas of Komatsu nearby are mostly comprised of traditional style homes. Combine that with a high percentage of smokers, kerosene heaters in every big room in winter, and lots of ungrounded plugs, and…you have ample reason to remind your neighbors to be careful of their fire-related things at night.
Now that I know the history, I think this is one of my favorite local traditions. Sometimes these little windows open into the past and I realize just how old everything is here. Electricity and firetrucks are very, very new in the history of Japanese cities, particularly out here. How many tens of times older is this now-rare tradition than an electric stove, and yet, it vanished so quickly. I love it when things from the past leap up, grab me by the collar and give me no choice but to reflect on the way people lived their lives generations ago.
So, no ghosts save the ghosts of times long gone.
Also, if you want to read something awesome today, look up firefighters in Edo-era Japan.
