What is omikuji?

The Encyclopedia of Shinto defines omikuji, also called mikuji, as divination used to make a decision or to judge how an undertaking will turn out. It notes that the word kuji can point two ways: toward chance as an impartial way to settle something, or toward asking the will of the gods. Mikuji belongs to the second sense.

The set most often traced in research is the Ganzan Daishi hundred lots (元三大師百籤). It has 100 poems of four lines, five Chinese characters to a line. Izuru Ohno's study of these books, described in the National Diet Library's catalogue, holds that many modern omikuji still derive from this set.

The common form at shrines today is a numbered stick drawn from a cylinder, followed by a printed fortune with the matching number. Many places now sell folded paper fortunes from a box or vending machine, and the reader opens the paper to find the grade.

Fortunes usually carry a grade and may add notes on love, lost items, money, travel and childbirth. The grades are not uniform. The Encyclopedia of Shinto lists daikichi, chukichi, kichi, shokichi and suekichi for shrine fortunes, and notes that many shrines do not stock unlucky ones. The old Ganzan Daishi books include many lots marked bad fortune (凶).

Japan had its own ways of consulting the gods by lot. The Encyclopedia of Shinto describes an old method of writing possible outcomes or names on twisted paper (hineribumi), praying over them and picking one. Some local festivals still choose ritual officers in a related way, by waving a wand of paper streamers over written names.

Written verse oracles of the numbered kind are thought to have been modeled on Chinese practice. A book said to be from the Southern Song, the Tianzhu lingqian (天竺靈籤, Tenjiku reisen in Japanese), is said to be the oldest illustrated collection of oracle verses in China. Iku Hidaka of the University of Tsukuba reports that its verses reached Japan by the 17th century, and studies a Japanese edition of 1695. Tohoku University holds a Japanese copy under a related title with a postscript dated 1662.

Tradition credits the hundred lots to Ryogen (912 to 985), a monk of the Tendai school known after death as Ganzan Daishi. A legend adds that the bodhisattva Kannon revealed the verses to him, which accounts for another name, the Kannon hundred lots.

Their wide use is linked to the Tendai monk Tenkai, who died in 1643. A story told by one of his disciples has Ryogen appear to Tenkai in a dream and say the verses had been lost for centuries, after which copies turned up at Togakushi Shrine in Shinano Province. The set then spread to many temples, including ones outside the Tendai school.

Printed copies from this period survive. A book at Kyoto University, the Ganzan Daishi hyakusen wakai, collated by the monk Mokugan, is a recut of 1813 with a colophon going back to 1628. Another at Tohoku University has a colophon of 1684. Books explaining the lots were published in numbers during the Edo period, and Ohno's study compares them in date order.

We found no early document for the credit to Ryogen. The Tenkai dream comes from his own disciple, so it cannot serve as independent evidence. It should be read as a story.

A wooden container of lots at Tendai-ji in Iwate Prefecture is reported to be dated 1409. That would place lot-drawing in Japan by then, but we know it only at second hand and have not seen the inscription.

Four popular claims are repeated widely, and we found no early source for any of them: that omikuji began in the Heian period, that paper slips began at a named shrine, that slips should be tied to trees, and that a set percentage of lots must be bad.

On that last point the old books themselves do not agree. A 2016 Japanese magazine article gives 30 bad lots in 100. The 1813 printing has 31 of 100, and the 1684 copy has 28 of the 98 lots it preserves.