Omikuji – Accuracy, Profitability and Women’s empowerment in Japan

After making my previous post about the unique Omikuji I found in Kanazawa I became interested about the profitability of Omikuji , after all it feels like 99% of Shrines (and sometimes Temples) have them and they all tend to have a price of 100yen . Through some low-key research I found that there is a book (in Japanese) called “The cost of Omikuji is only 1 yen, business that survives through the ages”.

I haven’t read the book but there are excerpts that I found online which I found interesting. While learning about Omikuji I also I ended up learning about how it is has contributed to women’s empowerment in Japan, particularly in Shinto.

The article is split into 3 parts :

1. The accuracy of Omikuji.
2. The profitability of Omikuji.
3. Omikuji’s involvement in Women’s Empowerment.

If you don’t know what Omikuji are , they are pieces of paper which display your fortune. Usually there are 5-12 variations of what fortune you can draw from a shrine or temple. It is relatively common for people to draw their fortunes when they visit a shrine or temple , particularly on New Year’s Day.

How accurate are Omikuji?

According to a survey done in 2008 by iShare Co., Ltd  with a online group (372 online users) it was found that 34.7% of respondents obtain an Omikuji on New Year’s day. The survey sought to see how accurate Omkuji are.

Of those who drew “very good luck” fortune 25% had a very lucky year, of those who drew “middle luck” fortune 33.3% had mid luck year. Of those who drew a “small good luck” fortune 37.5%  said the had a small luck year. Of those who drew a “(normal)luck” fortune 35.3 % said they had a normal luck year.

88.2% responded “(the year)was good or better” than what they drew. 100% of those who drew a “a lot of bad luck” fortune said they had a year with bad luck – however only 5% of respondents received a “a lot of bad luck” fortune.

Overall, 30-50% of respondents said that had the exact luck as what they had received on their Omikuji. 30% of respondents also said they did not remember what result they got but they believe they had a “mid luck” year.

The article additionally said that some people get the Omikuji paper more than once on New Years’ Day. 75.2% of respondents said they got the paper once, 15.5% of respondents said they got it twice and 8.5% said they got it thrice. Of those in their 20s almost half said they get the Omikuji fortune twice, with 12.5% of women saying they get it thrice.

To a certain extent you can say that Omikuji may be a reliable fortune telling device. No wonder many people seek them out when they go to shrines/temples.
Personally, I get one whenever I go visit a new shrine or temple .

The profitability of Omikuji

Itmedia describes Omikuji as a “high margin, long selling product”.  Indeed, assuming that the individual cost for a shrine to buy 1 Omikuji sheet is 1 yen and that they resell the Omikuji to visitors at 100yen we can say that the Omikuji business is highly profitable. This is the logic the book mentioned above follows.

Itmedia estimates the profit at Fushimi Inari like this :

Worshipers on New Year (3rd day) : 2.5 million
Omikuji purchase rate: 35%
Omikuji purchasers : 875,000 people
Assuming 1 Omikuji is 100 yen – total sales from Omikuji : 87.5 million yen
Gross Profit : 86.6 million yen
Profit Margin: 99%

They go on to estimate it on a national scale
New Year’s day worshipers in Japan : 98.2 million
Omikuji purchase rate: 35% (same as above)
Total Sales : 3.437 billion yen
Gross profit: 3.426 billion yen

The “3.4 billion” profit (excluding profit from other Shrine goods) is very similar to TSUTAYA’s profit (managed by Culture Convenience Club). TSUTAYA’s fiscal year profit in 2007 was approximately 3.4 billion yen. It can be said that shrines can make what TSUTAYA does in a year, in 3 days.

That being said the costs of maintaining a shrine are high. For example, the annual maintenance cost of Yasukuni Shrine is 2 Billion Yen, with large scale renovation costs being at 50 Billion Yen [x]. Most shrines are also much larger than Yasukuni Shrine. If you take into account that some shrines are on mountains or are on large of areas of land, it is very likely that most shrines have very high maintenance and renovation costs.
So, even if a shrine gets a lot of profit from Omikuji and other sales it will disappear soon enough due to maintenance and renovation costs.

Omikuji’s involvement in Women’s Empowerment

While Omikuji has been around for 1000s of years, the current style of Omikuji has only been around since the Meiji Period.  70% of Shrine/Temple Omikuji throughout Japan is currently produced by Joshidōsha. Joshidōsha is a small company and a women’s right group affiliated to Nishoyamada Shrine in Shunan City , Yamaguchi Prefecture.

Nishoyamada’s Omikuji printing business began with it’s founding priest Shigetane Miyamoto. It is often cited that he started the business as a way to raise funds for his shrine’s magazine “Joshido” (The Woman’s Path). The magazine was dedicated to increasing awareness of women’s role in society. (街中のギモン).

Shigetane Miyamoto lost his father at the age of 3 and became a shrine priest at the age of 15. It is said that he grew up watching the hardships of his mother and that when he was 17, Miyamoto received a “revelation” from God to help women.

Meiji Era and the call for societal change

The Meiji Period is particularly know for being a period of male chauvinism, women were prohibited from serving as priests at Shinto Shrines (x). In general ,during the Meiji Era, women were expected to stay at home and act modestly.
In the 1910s, Shigetane Miyamoto challenged this idea. He believed that Shinto fundamentally did not see women as impure or that there was significant reason as to why they weren’t able to hold priest roles at the shrine. He stressed the importance of historical women’s priestly roles as a reason why they should be able to hold priest positions.

According to the information on Joshidōsha’s website some notable quotes by Miyamoto are “Women should not stay at home, they should go out and enter the world of work !”.”Let’s exit this society, let’s change this strange point in present Japan which is disadvantageous to women”. “It is said that men are domineering and that women should just be silent and listen to them. The future of Japan cannot become bright with this sentiment. The uplift of this country lies in the family. If the family is bright and lively, it is natural the country will also move in a good direction.”

Women empowerment magazines

Originally Miyamoto used Joshido zasshi (The Women’s path magazine) as a way to promote his shrine and his local association to women. However, in 1905, after shifting his focus from a local to a national one, he revised and created new regulations for his association. With a national focus, he gave the association the name “Great Japan Kami-Revering Women’s Association”. This association is now seen as one of the first associations that promoted women’s independence and sought to improve the status of women. The Great Japan Kami-Revering Women’s Association was formed earlier than the “Blue Stockings” – another company/magazine which ran from 1911-1916 and is also credited to promoting equal rights of women through literature and education. [x]

Great Japan Kami-Revering Women’s Association

During the war Shigetane Miyamoto published thousands of magazines free of charge but soon ran out of funds. According to Joshidōsha that’s when he came up with an idea to manufacture and sell Omikuji to raise funds for the magazine and his association’s activities.

There were two regulations that made Miyamoto’s association unique at a time women faced significant difficulties (Odaira,2015).
1. Establish institution(s) for women’s education.
2. Lecturers will be invited as the occasion arises to teach women scholastic topics and craftwork skills appropriate for them.

Overtime Miyamoto opened various branches of his association in Japan and overseas too (Hawaii).
Miyamoto was also involved in discussions surrounding High School education for women. Particularly, Odaira notes, Miyamoto was critical of topics taught in High School as he believed they were not practical for women at the time.

Omikuji vending machines were another innovation by Miyamoto that helped popularize Omikuji across Japan.

Joshidōsha states that Miyamoto stopped his activities around in 1944, due to considerable hardships that the women’s liberation movement faced during the war. However his work was not in total vain, after the war ended, the there were records of women becoming priests from September 1946[x].

Present Situation

Presently, making Omikuji is still a common side job that many housewives still do in Shunan City. Joshidosha employs about 60-100 housewives in the city to make Omikuji that are sent nationwide and overseas. Each sheet is handmade and takes about 80 minutes to make, from printing to folding. It is said when someone has made 7000 sheets in one day that they have reached veteran status of Omikuji making[x]. 

As of 2018,according to Association of Shinto Shrines, women make up 16% of Shinto Priesthood in Japan (21000 people who have priesthood qualifications nationwide,3500 being women)[x]. In 2008, there were 2000 women with priesthood qualifications. It is expected that the number of women priests are likely to increase particularly with older (male) priests passing away or retiring more.

Sources:

1. Ambros, Barbara (2015) Women in Japanese Religions Volume 1 https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=7VtACQAAQBAJ&dq=Miyamoto+Shigetane+women+shrine&source=gbs_navlinks_s
2. Awashima, Hiruko (2020) 女性ってどれくらいいるの？ https://note.com/minegi3/n/n6f634a5a68c7
3. Chart, David (2019) Female Shinto Priests https://www.mimusubi.com/2019/08/11/female-shinto-priests/
4. Chua, Redmond James (2021)  How the Spread of “Omikuji” Became Related to the Women’s Empowerment Movement  https://web.archive.org/web/20210614102446/https://nrev.jp/2021/03/15/how-the-spread-of-omikuji-became-related-to-the-womens-empowerment-movement/
5. Cnet Japan (2008) おみくじが「吉」だった9割、その年の運勢も「吉」以上と認識  https://japan.cnet.com/article/20385293/
6. Fujii, Seiji (2014) おみくじの原価はたったの1円！～おみくじの歴史とその経済効果 http://www.siruzou.jp/rekisi/10532/
7. ITmedia Online (2009) おみくじの原価はいくら？　粗利益34億263万円の“ビジネス” https://www.itmedia.co.jp/makoto/articles/0905/29/news013_3.html
8. Joshidosha https://omikuji-joshidosya.hatenadiary.jp/joshidosya1
9. Nikkei Gendai  (2007)  街中のギモン https://books.google.co.jp/books id=4tvYnHbsgwwC&dq=Joshido+omikuji&source=gbs_navlinks_s
10. Odaira, Mika (2015). Modern Women’s Education and Religion in Yamaguchi Prefecture. Journal of Religion in Japan, 4(2-3), 212–239. doi:10.1163/22118349-00402010
11. Sakagami, Ryo (2016) 「おみくじ」の秘密 〜その起源から大吉と凶の割合、製造元まで https://gendai.ismedia.jp/articles/-/47193?page=5