One of the jobs I did through Jinja Honchō last year was assisting with the translation of a full set of omikuji, for Joshidōsha (Girls’ Way Company). The company itself has a very interesting history, as it was set up in the Meiji period to support girls’ education by a priest who campaigned for women to be allowed to become priests, and sold paper omikuji to jinja to fund those activities. However, in this post I am writing about the omikuji.
Omikuji are often called “fortunes”, although these are called “written oracles”. They are available at almost all jinja, and the standard offering for one is ¥100. There are a lot of varieties, but Joshidōsha is one of the main sources. Although it is a company, it is still run by the chief priest of the jinja served by the priest who founded it, which is why they qualified for Jinja Honchō’s assistance.
Most people who draw omikuji just look to see whether they have “kichi”, “daikichi”, or whatever. These are overall assessments of your fortune, and this was the first translation problem. “Kichi” is “good fortune”, but it comes with various qualifiers of degree. Unfortunately, they sound a bit rubbish if translated directly into English: Big Good Fortune, Middle Good Fortune, Good Fortune, Small Good Fortune, End Good Fortune.
So we spent some time thinking about that. In the end, we chose light imagery: Kichi (literally just “Good Fortune”) became “Bright Fortune”, and the others have similar translations. This had the added bonus of making the ranking of the various categories a bit ambiguous — different people have different opinions on where “Kichi” falls in the sequence.
However, this is not supposed to be the main thing on an omikuji. The main thing is a waka poem, and its interpretation. You are supposed to read that, and think about how it applies to your situation. So that was a problem. Waka are hard to translate in the first place, because they are short and draw on traditional imagery. Translating them in a way that would support the same interpretations as the Japanese — that was far more work than I was being paid for. And I’m not sure it is actually possible.
So, we decided to merge the waka and the interpretation in the English translations, and provide poetic imagery taken from the waka as a metaphor for the main points. I hope this will give people who draw the omikuji food for thought.
An omikuji also includes a set of short fortunes for specific topics, such as romance, study, and childbirth. Even if the omikuji’s general fortune is quite good, these might be discouraging — the one I have in front of me is Bright Fortune, but under “Romance” it just says “Give up”.
If you visit Japan, you will have a chance to pick up omikuji at a jinja (or several). If the jinja is offering bilingual omikuji, there is a good chance that they will be these. (If the overall fortune is expressed in terms of light, then they are.) If you do draw one, I hope you get what you wish for.
That sounds really interesting, it would be fun to compare the Japanese and English versions. Do you know which Jinja are selling the English versions?
Also yes, translating the waka into a similar English version sounds super hard!
The English ones are bilingual, with Japanese on one side and English on the other. But I’m afraid I don’t know which jinja have them. It would just be the luck of the draw — literally.