A Letter from Tokyo — Tori-no-ichi, and the Meaning of Clapping Hands
When November arrives, the nights in Asakusa glow a little brighter.
Paper lanterns, and somewhere in the distance, the sharp, cheerful clap of hands.
It means Tori-no-ichi has come.
Tori-no-ichi is a festival held on the Day of the Rooster in November, a day to pray for good fortune and thriving business.
This year, those days fall on November 7th and 19th.
In Asakusa, stalls selling kumade line the streets around Otori Shrine in Senzoku and the neighboring Chokoku-ji temple, well after the sun goes down.
A kumade was originally a farm tool, a rake for gathering fallen leaves and grain.
Over time it became a charm for "raking in" good fortune.
The large ones are decorated with a treasure ship, gold coins and the smiling mask of Okame, and they hang in shop entrances and company shrines to watch over the year ahead.
There is a particular way to buy a kumade.
First, you bargain with the seller, face to face. Then the amount the seller knocks off the price is handed back to him as a gift, a gesture of goodwill called goshugi. And finally, seller and buyer clap together in a shared rhythm, called tejime.
I don't think it is only about settling a price. It is a few minutes of looking each other in the eye and wishing each other a good year in business. It is a transaction of money, and yet it always ends in applause and smiles.
A kumade is not finished when you buy it. The following year, you carry it back to the market, thank it for the year, leave it there, and welcome a new one.
We feel our shoes are a little like this.
Our headquarters, where our craftsmen make each pair by hand, is in Asakusa too. Our relationship with a pair of shoes begins when it reaches your hands: you wear it in, you care for it, and you keep wearing it for years. We believe that something made by hand is not finished when it is made. That is where it truly begins.
A small update from our side.
As autumn deepens, our thoughts have already turned to January. We will be at Maison&Objet in Paris once again, and we would be glad to see any of you there.
Until then, we send this from a city already clapping its hands for the year to come.
HeWhoMe.Tokyo
Noriko Onozaki
Photos: Hiroshige, "One Hundred Famous Views of Edo" (public domain) / Yoshikazu TAKADA (CC BY 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons