Yakudoshi - predicting your years of misfortune

Bad luck affects us all, and Yakudoshi is a superstition where you will experience unusually bad luck when you reach certain ages. And some of those ages will bring worse bad luck than the others.

"Ages"

Here's where a lot of confusion begins.

"Age" for Yakudoshi is not the number of years since you were born.

When you are born, your Yakudoshi age immediately starts at 1, and then increments each year on New Year's day. So if you were born on 31 December, a couple of days later you'd be aged 2, since you were in the second calendar year of your life. This is the crux of Yakudoshi; it is an astrological superstition based on the calendar, not on how many years you've been alive.

Therefore on this page, "age" means the Yakudoshi age, and "years old" means the number of birthdays you've had.

How old you are:		Yakudoshi age
when you are born	0	1
Your first New year
before your 1st birthday	0	2
after your 1st birthday	1	2

A further confusion is what date the Yakudoshi increments. It's normally 1 January, but alternative dates do exist.

To counter the bad luck effects of Yakudoshi, you must go for exorcism (yes, really!) at a shrine or temple, most of which follow the Gregorian calendar and use 1 January for incrementing the age.

But some shrines and temples use a date they consider to be the first day of spring which is 3, 4 or 5 February. Occasionally shrines will use the Lunar New Year to increment the age, but that's more complicated and the Georgian New Year or first day of spring is usually preferred.

Finding your Yakudoshi age for

Men will have bad luck when they reach the ages of 24, 42, and 61, where the age of 42 brings the worst bad luck. Women will have bad luck when they reach the ages of 19, 33, 37, and 61, where the age of 33 brings the worst bad luck.

Male			Female
How old you are:		Yakudoshi age	How old you are:		Yakudoshi age
Before your birthday	22	24	Before your birthday	17	19
After your birthday	23		After your birthday	18

Before your birthday	40	42	Before your birthday	31	33
After your birthday	41		After your birthday	32

Before your birthday	59	61	Before your birthday	35	37
After your birthday	60		After your birthday	36

			Before your birthday	59	61
			After your birthday	60

Finding your unlucky, very unlucky, and your most cataclysmic Yakudoshi age

The ages in the table above are all unlucky, but some are unluckier than others; Yakudoshi age 42 for men and 33 for women.

And even the unlucky ages have mildly unlucky years before and afterwards. In a maeyaku year (the year before an unlucky age) signs of the bad luck appear. In a goyaku year (the year after an unlucky age) the bad luck fades away. The maeyaku and goyaku years require the same attention as the main unlucky year.

The following table shows:

	- mildly unlucky age when signs of the bad luck appear or fade away
	- unlucky age, or mildly unlucky age before or after a cataclysmic age
	- most cataclysmic age

Male			Female
How old you are:		Yakudoshi age	How old you are:		Yakudoshi age
Before birthday	21	23	Before birthday	16	18
After birthday	22		After birthday	17
Before birthday	22	24	Before birthday	17	19
After birthday	23		After birthday	18
Before birthday	23	25	Before birthday	16	20
After birthday	24		After birthday	17

Before birthday	39	41	Before birthday	30	32
After birthday	40		After birthday	31
Before birthday	40	42	Before birthday	31	33
After birthday	41		After birthday	32
Before birthday	41	43	Before birthday	32	34
After birthday	42		After birthday	33

Before birthday	58	60	Before birthday	34	36
After birthday	59		After birthday	35
Before birthday	59	61	Before birthday	35	37
After birthday	60		After birthday	36
Before birthday	60	62	Before birthday	36	38
After birthday	61		After birthday	37

			Before birthday	58	60
			After birthday	59
			Before birthday	59	61
			After birthday	60
			Before birthday	60	62
			After birthday	61

What you should do at the start of an unlucky year

yakuharai ritual
(Click to enlarge)

On New Year's Day a huge number of Japanese visit a shrine, a custom called hatsumode. There, you can undergo ceremonial cleansing from evil influence and making space for good fortune in your life. This ritual is called yakuharai, sometimes translated as exorcism.

If that sounds a bit extreme and/or too expensive, there's a simpler and cheaper option where you can buy an amulet from the shrine to gain the blessings of the gods. The yakuharai rituals and amulet sales are popular every New Year's Day, irrespective of the Yakudoshi age.

Customs vary by region and blessing ceremonies often coincide with the seven-five-three (shichi-go-san) and coming-of-age rituals; that is, the years considered to be turning points in one's life. Even starting elementary school is an important milestone and there's a blessing ceremony for children's school bags.

Origin

The origin of this superstition is uncertain but commonly understood to be derived from onmyodo which is based on Yin-Yang-Gogyo philosophy, and is a technique that relies on astronomy and the calendar to predict the fortune and misfortune according to the date, time, direction, as they relate to humans.

As a tradition in Japan it can be seen in writings from the 12^th century (Heian period) and changes were made in subsequent periods.

Period	Century	Yakudoshi
Heian	12^th	13, 25, 37, 49, 61, 73, 85, 97
Kamakura	12-14^th	13, 25, 37, 49, 61, 73, 99
Tokugawa	16^th	13, 25, 37, 49, 61, 85, 99

Since then, the Yakudoshi structure has changed significantly. The astrological 12-year intervals have gone, the unlucky number 13 has bowed out in favour of the Western superstitions, and today's Yakudoshi's acknowledges gender diversity.

The unluckiest age of a father's life

As mentioned above, for men the unluckiest age is 42. When a father is aged 42 and has a son aged 2 the sum of those ages is 44. The Japanese pronunciation for the number 4 is the same as the pronunciation for 'death', therefore 44 means 'double death'. In that situation, to save the father's life it was customary for the son to be killed before it reached the age of two.

Another version of this superstition says that the boy is not killed, but simply adopted by another family for them to raise. However, that version doesn't stop the boy from becoming two and would still be the father's son. So the 44 would still be a problem.

Verity:

24

Most Japanese men graduate from university at that age. They've finished their education and can now enjoy earning a salary from a good company. Despite that being the Yakudoshi age expected to bring bad luck, in reality they expect quite the opposite.

And if they do start to enjoy a salary from a good company, then the money they tossed into the shrine that New Year was obviously money well spent. The shrine is happy too - a win-win situation.

However, woe betide those who don't toss enough money into the shrine and end up with no employment. They'd better pay more next year.

Being superstitious can be quite expensive.

42 (and 44)

Regarding the unlucky father aged 42 with a son aged 2 (above), if that superstition was seriously believed, the parents would protect themselves by avoiding having any children two years earlier.

There's clear evidence that Japanese people have used superstition for such 'birth control' in the relatively recent past. In the year 1966, there was a significant drop in the birth rate to avoid problems of the Year of the Hinoe Uma.

In any case, why take the combined year of 42+2 and not the age of 44? The concept of "double death" sounds scary but what does it mean? If the father aged 42 had twin boys aged 2, would that negate the superstition?

And hundreds of years ago in Japan, did most commoners celebrate birthdays and/or remember exactly how many years old they were?

61

The Yakudoshi age of 61 is when people are 60 years old, the traditional time people happily stop working for a living and expect to enjoy the rest of their years supported by the pension scheme they've been paying into for the past 40 years.

In other words, that's time to expect good luck, not bad luck.

More Japanese superstitions