On July 23, 2021, the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympic Games made many people frightened, and the eerie and cold painting style made the outside world confused and shouted "I can't understand".
In fact, this is a deliberate demonstration of Japanese culture.
The emergence of Japan's unique culture is inextricably linked to its geographical environment and the stage of social and economic development.
Among the various types of traditional Japanese culture, there are some that are really incomprehensible and shocking.
One of the most criticized by outsiders is called "Night This".
According to the Japanese dictionary, "night" is synonymous with Chinese, and "this" means creeping and climbing. "Night this", that is, "night climbing", refers to (night male to female) adultery.
Whether the woman is unmarried, married, or widowed, as long as she acquiesces, the man can climb to the door at night. No one, including the woman's parents, husbands, and in-laws, must not only interfere and obstruct, but even facilitate the night climbers.
Night climbing has been popular since the Asuka period (592-710) in Japan. The ManyoShu, written in 759, includes this custom in Volume XII, and is also recorded in the Tale of Genji and The Tale of Taketori a thousand years ago.
Night climbing has a special background and reason for being produced and popular in Japan and has lasted for thousands of years.
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First of all, in ancient Japan, the concept of men and women was quite open.
In Shintoism, there is a story of Japanese origins, saying that the Japanese archipelago and the Yamato nation are the products of the brothers and sisters of the god Amaterasu. This shocking myth invisibly opens the door to open ideas.
As early as the Yayoi period two thousand years ago, it became common for Japanese to have intercourse in Tanaka, Panasonic, Watanabe, and Koizumi.
What's more, after the festival or samkura (a regular blessing and disaster relief event held by shrines and temples), everyone must "sleep with miscellaneous fish" together.
"Miscellaneous fish sleep" refers to the men, women and children in the village, gathered in the main hall of the shrine to sleep together, no taboos at night, you can do anything, you can't leave halfway, you must wait until the chickens are singing before you can go home.
In celebrations such as the Oda Festival, which continues to this day in Japan, there is still a traditional culture of praying for the prosperity of people and promoting openness of behavior.
Second, the organization and conception of matrilineal clans in Japan began to disintegrate, and the era of patriarchy arrived.
In the Asuka period, Japan evolved into a feudal society, agriculture was dominated by the cultivation of rice, iron tools were widely used, water conservancy projects were widely popularized, men took on more heavy physical labor, social status began to rise above women, and matriarchal clans disintegrated.
In the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy, men gained more privileges, and night climbing was one of them.
Third, for the needs of the prosperity of the villagers.
The continuation and growth of a village, the reproduction of the population is the top priority. As a result, the custom of climbing at night came into being, increasing the opportunities between men and women, which is naturally conducive to having more offspring.
In addition, in the past japan, the winter was bitterly cold, long nights, and the main nighttime pastime of men was to go to the night climb, which added some excitement and adventure. Sometimes, wives see that their husbands are busy during the day and bored at home at night, and even encourage him to go out to "scatter his mind".
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Japanese people have always followed the rules, and after the rise of the night climb, it is natural to make rules.
First of all, night climbing is different from the ancient Japanese "wife visiting marriage".
"Wife-visiting marriage" means that husband and wife live separately, and the husband and wife live with their mother and half-mother brothers and sisters. The husband spends the night at his wife's house, leaving early the next morning for a short time and staying in the woman's house for several years, and the children born live with the mother.
In "wife-visiting marriage", the man has the responsibility to support his wife and children financially. Night climbing is different, the man and woman are not married, and they are not responsible for the living expenses of the woman and her children.
Secondly, the rules for night climbing are set by the village's Wakari group.
The Wakari Group is a traditional Local Organization in Japan that regularly gathers young people aged fifteen or sixteen to teach them local lifestyles and folk rules, while having the right to manage the night climbs in the village.
They can even have a relationship in the name of mentoring newlyweds. For married men, night climbing demonstrations are conducted, rules are explained, and disputes are mediated.
There are mainly the following rules for night climbing.
1. Consent of the woman is required. However, this rule gradually became a formality. In fact, even if some people look very ugly, women do not look at it, and they can not climb at night.
2. The woman's husband must climb at night when her husband is not at home to avoid crashing.
3. If more than one man crawls into the woman's home on the same night, the order of "one", "two" and "three" is determined by drawing lots. If a woman does not object, she can spend time with multiple men before the sunrise rises.
4. If a woman is uncared for a long time because of her old age or ugly appearance, if the group will come forward to coordinate and take shifts, lottery and other methods to ensure that the rain and dew are evenly exposed.
5. Households should open the door for night climbing. For example, some people should install a ladder on the low wall of the courtyard to facilitate the entry and exit of night climbers.
In the homes of the Kii Peninsula, the doors are wide open at night, and there should be leftovers on the kitchen stove, and a pair of dishes and chopsticks should be placed so that the men who returned from the night crawl could be hungry at any time when they were hungry.
6. Night climbing is limited to men and women from the same village. If outsiders enter the village at night and climb, they must rise up in groups, expel them from the village, and punish them if necessary.
With the passage of time, the concept of "fertile water does not flow into the fields of outsiders" gradually changed, and some villages began to form night climbing partners with neighboring villages.
In some mountainous areas, where the two villages are sometimes 20 to 30 miles apart, the woman prepares meals in advance to supplement the additional consumption of the men of the neighboring villages.
In addition, if there are distinguished guests in the village who visit, the women who stay in the house are responsible for providing "services". For the ancient Japanese who had inconvenient transportation, were separated by tribes, and many of them did not leave the village in their lifetime, this was a rare opportunity to obtain external "resources", and as a woman, this "service" was also an honor.
7. If the night crawl has a child, they will be treated equally, and it does not matter who the child's father is, there will be no discrimination, anyway, they are all "children in the village".
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By the Edo period, local governments began to prohibit night climbing in laws, ordinances, and village statutes.
The shogunate and the clan forbade night climbing, which was more economically considered.
During the Edo period, a large number of women's houses, pavilions, verandas, and tours began to rise, creating a large amount of income for the government. "Tour" means play in Japanese, and "Tour" is actually the Qinglou. The establishment of the tour is officially managed and protected, and must be operated with a license and paid according to the regulations.
Night climbing, which belongs to unlicensed and unpaid services, has no contribution to local finances, and forms an alternative competition with Youkuo, impacting the business of Youkuo, of course, it must be banned.
However, in the vast rural areas, the ban is not observed, it is like waste paper, continue you ban yours, I climb mine.
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In the Showa era, a terrible case occurred, which finally endangered the existence of night climbing.
Mutsuo Toei, born in 1917, was raised by his grandmother when his parents died of tuberculosis when he was 6 years old, and has been living in the Kaiwei tribe in Tomata-gun, Okayama Prefecture.
At the end of 1937, young people of school age were required to undergo conscription medical examinations, and Toi was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was identified as C (unqualified).
In Japan at that time, women had a tendency to worship men of the first class. Since then, the women of the same village have refused to continue climbing at night with him on the grounds that today's medical examination and tuberculosis are also tuberculosis.
In general, men with tuberculosis have a particularly strong desire. In the past six months, Dujing has been repeatedly rejected, and he has not climbed a night climb, and he can't help but be ashamed and angry.
On the night of May 21, 1938, two women who had had a night climb with Toi, later married to a foreign country, and recently returned to the village to visit their relatives, refused to climb with The Toi who came to the door, which made Toi completely explode.
Within an hour and a half, he killed 30 people in the village and seriously injured 3 others.
Before dawn, Dujing climbed to the summit of the Immortal City, 4 kilometers away, wrote a suicide note, and committed suicide.
Of the 30 people killed, including Toi's grandmother. He said in his suicide note: "It would be too pitiful to let her live and face everything."
The Mutsuo Toi incident shocked Japanese society.
Scholars began to angrily denounce night climbing. Folklorist Kunio Yanagida bluntly said that this is simply "obscene and bad habits". Critic Atsushi Kotani believes that this is a coercive act with a criminal nature.
The Osaka Mainichi Shimbun slammed this "deep-rooted habit of relationship between men and women that still persists in deep mountain villages."
Since then, Japan has taken stricter measures to ban non-governmental night climbing.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > abolished</h1>
In August 1945, Japan surrendered in defeat.
Under the auspices of the U.S. military stationed in Japan, the Japanese criminal law was amended. Night climbing was identified as a serious crime of using "violence, coercion" against the woman's wishes.
In the face of severe punishment, the custom of night climbing gradually declined.
However, in Japan's remote mountainous areas and fishing villages, night climbing still occurs from time to time. In 1956, the village of Ishicheshira in Gifu Prefecture still retained the custom of night climbing, and Hiroyoshi Murakami, who witnessed it, wrote a special reminiscence article.
In some remote areas of nagoya today, the custom of climbing at night still remains. In Japanese cities, there are also some non-governmental organizations that play the sign of "Night Here" to attract people's attention.
With the progress of the times, some bad habits in Japanese culture have gradually disappeared in the long river of history.
Resources:
Folklore of the Night Here
Edo Japan