Setsubun: Japan's Bean-Throwing Festival, Explained

On the evening of February 3, several million Japanese households do the same thing. Someone puts on a plastic demon mask, usually the father, and everyone else throws roasted soybeans at him while shouting at him to get out. Then they eat a number of beans equal to their age, which gets harder every year.

Setsubun is the day before the first day of spring in the old calendar, and it exists to get the bad year out of the house before the new one starts. It is not a public holiday, it takes about ten minutes at home and several hours at a major temple, and it is the most participatory festival in Japan.

Setsubun-sai (Setsubun) Festival

What is Setsubun?

Setsubun means seasonal division. In the old lunisolar calendar there were four of them, one before each season, and over time the word came to mean only the one before spring, because that was the one that functioned as a new year's eve.

The day it precedes is risshun, the astronomical start of spring, and the transition between one year's energy and the next was understood as a moment when the boundary between worlds thins and demons can get through. Everything about the festival follows from that.

The practice descends from tsuina, a Chinese court rite imported in the 8th century, in which officials drove out plague demons at the end of the year. It filtered down from the imperial court to temples and then to ordinary households, picking up the beans somewhere around the 14th century.

When is Setsubun?

Usually February 3, and in 2027 it falls on Wednesday, February 3.

It is not fixed. Setsubun is the day before risshun, which is calculated astronomically, so it shifts: it was February 2 in 2021 and again in 2025, the first time in over a century that it had moved earlier. Check the date if you are planning a trip around it rather than assuming.

Mamemaki: the bean throwing

Setsubun

The central act is mamemaki, scattering beans.

You use fukumame, roasted soybeans, which are sold everywhere from late January, usually with a paper oni mask in the packet. They must be roasted; raw beans could sprout where they land, which is considered bad luck.

Someone wears the mask and plays the oni. Everyone else throws beans at them and out through the door, shouting "Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi." Demons out, fortune in.

Traditionally the throwing was done by the head of the household, or by the toshiotoko, a man born in the current zodiac year. In practice now it is whoever is available, and children do most of it.

Afterward you eat beans: one for each year of your age, or your age plus one for the year ahead. Past about sixty this becomes a genuine chore, which is why bean-flavored tea exists as a legitimate substitute.

Why beans?

Several explanations circulate and none is definitive.

The wordplay one is the most cited: mame means bean and also can be read as "destroying evil," and the sound is close to the word for demon's eye. There is also a legend about a demon on Mount Kurama being driven off by roasted beans thrown into its eyes.

The agricultural explanation is simpler. Soybeans were a staple with real value, and scattering something valuable is a recognizable form of offering.

Ehomaki: the silent sushi roll

The other food custom has taken over the country in the last thirty years.

Ehomaki is a thick uncut futomaki roll, traditionally with seven fillings for the Seven Lucky Gods. You eat the whole thing, uncut, in silence, facing that year's lucky direction, and you are not supposed to stop until it is finished.

Cutting it would cut your luck. Speaking lets the luck out. It is an awkward thing to do in company and that is part of the fun.

The direction changes every year on the basis of the year's zodiac stem, and there are only four possibilities. For 2027 it is north-northwest. Every convenience store in Japan will have a poster telling you which way to face.

The custom is from Osaka, where it may go back to the Edo period, and it was pushed nationwide by convenience store chains from the 1990s. Some people treat it as a marketing invention, which is partly true and has not slowed it down.

Hiiragi iwashi

The third custom is the one nobody photographs: a grilled sardine head skewered on a holly branch, hung at the front door. Demons are said to dislike the smell of the fish and to be repelled by the spines of the holly.

It is much less common than it was, but you still see it outside older houses and some shops in early February.

Setsubun at temples and shrines

Setsubun-sai (Setsubun) Festival

This is the version worth traveling for. Major temples hold public bean-throwing from a platform, often with celebrities, sumo wrestlers and actors from that year's NHK historical drama doing the throwing into a crowd of tens of thousands.

Naritasan Shinshoji, near Narita Airport, runs one of the biggest, with sumo wrestlers and television actors. Senso-ji in Asakusa and Zojoji beneath Tokyo Tower both draw large crowds.

Yoshida Shrine in Kyoto is the most interesting: it holds a tsuina-shiki rite on the evening before, with a masked figure driving out demons in a ceremony descended directly from the court original, and a huge bonfire of old charms at 23:00 on the second night.

Mibu-dera in Kyoto performs Mibu kyogen, a silent masked comic drama, for several days around Setsubun.

Yasaka Shrine in Kyoto has geiko and maiko from the local districts throwing beans and dancing, which makes it the most photographed version.

Heian Jingu stages a full costumed reenactment of the old court exorcism.

Setsubun Festival

Expect crowds. At the large temples the beans are thrown into a packed forecourt and people compete to catch them, sometimes with plastic bags held open. Some throws include small envelopes with prizes, which is why the scramble is serious.

What "oni wa uchi" means

A few places invert the chant and shout "oni wa uchi," demons in.

This happens where the temple's deity is understood to subdue demons rather than repel them, so the demons are brought in to be dealt with, and at shrines whose founding legend involves an oni who turned out to be helpful. Families with the character for demon in their surname also traditionally skip the "out" half.

How to take part

At home or in a rental, buy a packet of fukumame from any supermarket or convenience store in late January. It costs a few hundred yen and includes the mask. Open a door or window, throw the beans out, then throw some in, shout the phrase, eat your age in beans.

At a temple, arrive at least an hour before the throwing starts for any of the big ones, and much earlier at Naritasan. Check the schedule on the temple's own site; most run several sessions through the day.

Ehomaki is sold at every convenience store and supermarket for the few days around February 3, from about ¥500 for a basic roll to several thousand for an elaborate one. Order ahead if you want a good one.

Dress warmly. Early February is the coldest part of the Japanese year and most of this happens outdoors.

Where it fits in the Japanese year

Setsubun sits in a quiet stretch. New Year is over, the cherry blossoms are two months away, and February is the cheapest month to be in Japan.

That makes it a good reason to come now rather than later. It also coincides with the Sapporo Snow Festival in Hokkaido, the plum blossom season starting in the south, and the best month of the ski year, so a February trip built around it has plenty to do.

Our guide to Japan's more unusual festivals covers what else happens through the year, and temples and shrines worth visiting covers the venues where the biggest Setsubun events are held.

For the practical side of a winter trip, our guide to what to do in Tokyo in January runs up to it, and a week-long route through Tokyo and Kyoto puts you within reach of both the Asakusa and the Kyoto versions.

If you want the older layer of belief underneath all of this, our piece on Japan's cultural traditions is a starting point, and planning the trip around early February is straightforward, because almost nobody else is doing it.

The short version

Setsubun is on February 3 in most years, including 2027. You throw roasted soybeans at a relative in a demon mask, shout at the demons to leave, eat your age in beans, and then eat an entire sushi roll in silence facing north-northwest.

Nobody will explain any of this to you at the time. Join in anyway; that is the whole point of it.