My alarm clock goes off at 5:55 a.m. I don’t necessarily get out of bed then, but it is important for me to see this number first thing in the morning. Five is pronounced as “go” in Japanese. I want to start my day by seeing my clock say “Go! Go! Go!”.
Japanese are superstitious about numbers. For example, we tend to avoid the number four, because another word with the same sound, “shi”, is death. Because of this unfortunate association with the number four, my mother always bought five of everything for a family of four. Five sweets, five coffee cups and five bananas. Most Japanese steer clear of the number four to avoid inadvertently inviting bad luck.
One of my young friends says that she faces a predicament with numbers every morning when she packs lunch for her children. She believes that everything has to be one, two or five pieces, so she has a big decision to make: one carrot, two carrot or five carrot sticks? I asked,
“Three can be bad too?”
“Of course!” she explained to me. “Mikire” which means three pieces, according to her, can also mean cutting a body. “Mi” means three or body, and “kiru” means to cut in Japanese. So “mikire”, which means three cut pieces could also mean cutting a body. It’s a good thing that my mother didn’t know about this. She could easily have been tormented by something like this.
Many Japanese also try to stave away from the number nine which is pronounced “ku”, a sound that also suggests pain. My mother was born on September ninth. I always wondered what she thought of her birthday, but I never dared to ask her. However, in old days, Japanese celebrated the Chrysanthemum Festival on September ninth, a tradition we learned from China. They believed that chrysanthemum had the power to keep you healthy and give you longevity. I wish we had kept that tradition: that would have lifted my mother’s spirits.
Probably the most ominous number in Japan is forty-two. If you read the two numbers separately, they can be pronounced “shini”, which sounds very close to “shinu”, a word that means to die. So, if your flight number is 42, for example, you may want to go to a Shinto shrine before you go to the airport in order to secure your safety up in the air as well as for the landing.
In addition, there are two sets of unlucky years in Japan. For women the unlucky years are nineteen, thirty-three, thirty-seven and sixty-one years old. For men, they are twenty-five, forty-two and sixty-one.
I agree that it’s a good thing to take time to review your life during these unlucky years, and for example improve your eating habits. Still, I have to wonder if there is any real benefit by paying attention to these numbers. We may be happier if we can forget all about the numbers.
Recently I’ve learned that there are only four gospels in Christianity, although there had been more gospels before Constantine became a Christian in 312 A.D. and started supporting Roman Catholic church. But he decided that four gospels was the appropriate number of them. There were, after all, four cardinal directions (North, South, East and West), and people of that time also believed that the world was square.
One of my American heroes, Jackie Robinson, became the first African American Major League Baseball player for the Brooklyn Dodgers. He fought against discrimination and wore the number forty-two on his jersey. His number was retired throughout Major League Baseball in 1997. He certainly made an enormous contribution to the sport wearing the number forty-two.
On the good luck side of things, the number seven is lucky in Japan. And in China, the number eight is a good number. The shape of the Chinese character for eight spreads out in each direction, implying increased prosperity as time goes on. This is the reason why I intend to keep my car’s license plate as long as it lasts; it has number eight in it.
The number nine, as I mentioned before, tends to be avoided in Japan because of the association made with the word for pain. However, in Chinese, number nine is pronounced as “jiu” and has nothing to do with “ku” (pain). Actually “jiu” shares the same sound with another Chinese character that means “a long time.” So, I decided at some point, the number nine is my lucky number. My mother and my daughter and myself all have a connection to the number nine, so I want to be positive about it.
On one hand I don’t want to be superstitious about the numbers, but on the other hand I don’t have the guts to befriend the number four and risk a bad luck. I’m willing to buy bananas in a bunch of four in the U.S., but I may not do the same if I lived in Japan.
Someone I love once told me that numbers that can be divided by eleven are special. I turned fifty-five this year, and my son who was born when I was forty-four will become eleven. For this reason, I am expecting that 2017 could be a very good year for my family. I was fairly happy with my self-prediction, and enjoyed telling other people about it. That was until one day I mentioned my age in a seminar.
Over the years, when I facilitate training programs for Japanese only groups, I have hinted at my age, as I could tell some people were concerned about it. Who is this person? How much experience does she have? In fact, several times in the past when I didn’t reveal my age, an executive would come up to me during a break and timidly ask about my age. So, to get this awkwardness aside sooner and have them focus on the subject, I shared my age.
Then, however, at the end of the training, one of the top executives told me that it was intimidating.
“Intimidating?” I’m very small. Smaller than life, really. I use a pillow when I drive to see better. How can I be intimidating? But then he continued.
“Young executives may be intimidated by your age.”
A number is just a number. But depending on where you’re coming from, a number can have unexpected implications.