The Calendar

The year's presiding officer. Before the dates, the office: the toshigami holds a one-year term and a compass bearing — the ehō, the lucky heading, which rotates annually by the year's heavenly stem and "determines fortune for all matters." Which is a piece of religious engineering: a god with an annual term and a moving address makes reverence renewable. Last year's direction is expired, so the household must re-consult the almanac and re-subscribe. The ehō-mairi — New Year visits aimed at that bearing — is the ancestor of hatsumōde; and the ehōmaki, the roll eaten whole and in silence facing the year's heading, went national through convenience-store marketing. A genuine onmyōdō directional rite, correctly observed by millions who know exactly where the packaging came from: accretion with a barcode.

February — the expulsion. Setsubun: beans thrown at the year's demons nationwide ("oni out!"), holly and sardine heads at the door, temples of reformed demons inverting the chant to "oni IN" — and Watanabe households skipping the whole rite on hereditary immunity earned by an ancestor's swordwork in the 990s (Ibaraki-dōji). In Kumamoto lore, February 1 is also moving day: the kappa and yamawaro swap river for mountain on a fixed date.

The 8th days (2nd & 12th months) — kotoyōka: the one-eyed visitor makes his rounds; households hoist the many-eyed basket.

Kōshin nights (every 60 days) — the vigil: stay awake so the body's three worms can't report your sins; the shōkera watches for sleepers through the skylight.

Summer — the season of ghosts. Obon welcomes the proper dead home (cucumber horses in, eggplant oxen out; Kyoto's mountains lit to guide them back) — and the improper dead ride its coattails: the funayūrei claim the Obon-night sea; the hyakumonogatari game fills August parlors ("horror as air-conditioning"), with the aoandon waiting at tale one hundred. The seventh month's dark-moon nights bring the shiranui to Kyushu's seas, with viewing protocols.

The New Year hinge — the tsukumogami's susu-harai purge (old tools out before they turn — but see the boroboroton: keeping them is no safer); old ofuda burned at Dondoyaki; the namahage at Akita's doors demanding to know if the children have been lazy; the takarabune under the pillow for the first dream, with the baku on standby.

The agricultural year runs on the same clock. The yama-no-kami commutes: in Niigata's records she arrives March 16 to become the field god, departs October 16, and returns heavenward November 16 — a deity with a timetable, welcomed and seen off. And on the 12th of the month she counts the trees, so nobody enters the mountains: go in during the inventory and you risk being counted with the timber. A monthly no-felling day, enforced by the dread of being miscategorised.

The nights you stay indoors. The almanac's imi nights — New Year's Eve, Setsubun, the kōshin nights — are when the roads belong to something else. Break the confinement in Awa and yagyō-san rides you down on a headless horse; the defence is to put a straw sandal on your head and lie flat. His name is 夜行 — the same word as the hundred-demon procession, compressed into one rider and a schedule. Tosa scheduled its dread more finely still: the warai-onna appears on the 1st, 9th, and 17th of every month, which is why the man who ignored the warning is a cautionary tale — he was warned, and the warning was a date.

And the hours within every day: ōmagatoki at dusk (the boundary opens), the ox hour at 1–3 a.m. (ushi-no-toki-mairi — the curse rite's appointment slot; the gashadokuro's claimed 2 a.m. is modern, and labeled).

The point: this calendar is not reconstructed — the beans fly every February, the fires burn every August, the namahage knock every New Year. The yokai keep time with the country.