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Where the four-leafed clover can be considered a good omen in the West, the four-petalled hydrangea flower can be considered a bad omen in Japan.
The four-leafed weed is not so common, therefore lucky if you see one. (There are other reasons explained on our sister website. In contrast, while the four-petalled hydrangea is undoubtedly prettier than the four-leafed weed, in Japan it flowers in June at the start of the gloomy rainy season, when shoes in the cupboard get mouldy from the muggy atmosphere and hearts droop with melancholy.
The flowers also change colour whenever they feel like it, and while such capriciousness might be due to the acidity in the soil, it could be because they just feel sad.
But that would be true whatever number of petals they had. So why is four considered bad luck in Japan?
This fear of the number 4 (tetraphobia) in Japan is a very ancient superstition; as old as the Japanese spoken language, since the Japanese word for 4 is shi which is also the word for death.
Along with Chinese, Koreans and Taiwanese, some, but not all, Japanese people avoid the number 4 because of this superstition.
There's a popular belief that hotels in Japan don't have guest rooms on the fourth floor, and hospitals don't have inpatients staying on the fourth floor. Also in hospital maternity departments, the room number 43 is avoided because 4 is shi and 3 is san, and shizan means stillbirth. Evidence of avoiding those numbers can easily be found, though as we explain below, the reasons are more pragmatic than based on superstition.
Homes on the 4th floor of apartment blocks are considered safe, as are houses with an address which includes the number 4.
But elsewhere there's a conspicuous absence of the number four. Even in onsen and public baths, the yukata and towel basket numbers 4 and 9 might not exist, though number 13 was observed at this onsen in Izu.
(Click any image to enlarge)
You'll notice the twelve onsen baskets (4 and 9 omitted) are numbered vertically and right-to-left; the traditional way of reading Japanese.
| 12 | 8 | 5 | 1 |
| 13 | 10 | 6 | 2 |
| 14 | 11 | 7 | 3 |
Even though the superstition is ancient, modern car parking spaces in Japan sometimes omit numbers 4 and 9. The Tokyo car parks shown on this page were all within walking distance of each other. Frequently the lots are numbered in the traditional right-to-left orientation - a quaint attempt to help to give (sometimes scruffy) carparks an air of authenticity.
(Click any image to enlarge)
Google's street view of the carpark shown on the left has some unusual numbering, where the number 14 is also omitted.
Fourteen doesn't carry any specific unlucky connotations in Japanese culture, except for its unfortunate association with the number 4. Therefore is some cases, any number including a 4 (14, 24, 34 etc) is omitted.
Carpark numbering is at the whim of the carpark owners. In contrast, the rules for car number plates in Japan are governed by the Road Traffic Act, and they always omit the hiragana character for 4.
It's generally the case that old hotels in Japan don't have guest rooms on the fourth floor, and that's because old hotels don't have a fourth floor! Traditional hotels seldom have more than two or three floors.
(Click any image to enlarge)Today's tall hotels (built strong enough to withstand earthquake damage) are more multifunctional than the old hotels and use the lower floors for shops and restaurants open to non-staying guests, and the upper floors for guests who appreciate the better view from their windows. That also benefits the hotel's cost of electricity for powering elevators; more visitors travel between the lower floors than the guests travelling to the upper-floor guest rooms.
A significant percentage of hotels in Japan are "business hotels", which have no need for souvenir shops and the like. Business hotels invariably have guest rooms on all floors. It's possible that some hotels with guest rooms on the 4th floor omit room number 404 and perhaps 414, 424 etc.
Similarly old hospitals don't exceed two or three floors, and as with hotel design, today's taller hospitals have more movement between the lower floors used by outpatients, than the upper floors used by inpatients. And as for room number 43 being omitted from maternity delivery rooms, it's unlikely that any actually have 43 delivery rooms!
Carparks in Japan are invariably safe but if your car is stolen or vandalised, it's more likely you parked in a dark corner, rather than if you parked in an unlucky-numbered lot.
Similarly, the number of the parking lot doesn't make you any more or less likely to have an accident when you leave the carpark. Accidents are caused by other factors.
You know that already.
The number 4 in Japanese is shi - the same pronunciation as the word for death, and the number 9 ku - the same pronunciation as 'pain' and 'agony', so 49 would be shi-ku, painful death.
However, most Japanese characters have two or more pronunciations depending on context, known as on and kun. The on pronunciation for 4 is shi and the kun pronunciation is yon, sometimes shortened to yo. Similarly 9 can be pronounced ku or a longer kyuu. As a number, 49 is actually pronounced yon-ju-kyuu (ju changes 4 to 40).
Both the on and kun pronunciations mean the same number 4, but are used for different purposes. For example in months and days, April 4th is pronounced shi-gatsu yo-kka.
As for the number 4's relation to death, it's estimated only about 1 in 365 people die on April 4th.