Winning the Lottery

[Jesus]

Yet another translation from one of the Japanese weeklies. Josei Jishin is directed at young women, although I have certainly seen enough middle-aged men reading copies of it on the subway.

Priests purify losing lottery tickets to burn away bad luck

Pitiful punters take heart. There's a Tokyo shrine that offers prayers for losing lottery tickets to turn them into winners, according to Josei Jishin (6/26 issue).

"People from all over the country send us losing lottery tickets instead of throwing them away in the hope that they might turn into winners the next time," Jugo Fukuda, head of the Horoku Inaba Shinto Shrine in Tokyo's Shinjuku-ku, tells Josei Jishin. "We gather up a year's worth of losing lottery tickets and offer prayers to them."

The shrine prays for losing lottery tickets in a ceremony every May.

"We collect the losing tickets from across Japan and the Shinto priests say prayers over them before the tickets are burned in a purifying ceremony," Fukuda says.

Josei Jishin notes that Horoku Inaba Shrine's reputation as a haven for losing lottery tickets came about in the Edo Period, which went from 1603 to 1868. A farmer living in the area was a compulsive gambler who constantly bought lottery tickets that turned out to be losers. One day, he had a single remaining lottery ticket and prayed to the gods that he would win so he could give his wife an easy life. The farmer's ticket turned out to be a huge winner and he used some of the proceeds to build the shrine in its current location.

"That fortune meant whoever offered up a losing lottery ticket for prayer would get a winner next time," Fukuda says. "We get letters of thanks and postcards from across the country from people saying that they've won on the horses, or sending us copies of winning bet stubs."

Takashi Tamura, who recently wrote a best-selling book about how 90 percent of people who clean their toilets open themselves to the opportunity of good fortune, says that it's vital for objects to be discarded with reverence if they are sought to become sources of luck.

"I've got a friend who has twice won more than 1 million yen in a lottery. Before she throws anything away, be it a computer or a TV or whatever, she wipes off all the dust and polishes it until it's like new. It's when you throw something away that you're best able to tell if it has been treated well. If you look after something well, that good treatment comes back to you in the form of money. That's how losing lottery tickets can end up being winners," Tamura says.Tamura adds that making a losing lottery ticket a winner requires veneration.

"If there's a fold in it, you should iron it out until it looks like new, then place it in a pure white envelope and place it on an altar to be prayed over for a single day. This will purify it inside and out, after which time it can be disposed of as burnable rubbish," he tells Josei Jishin, adding that there are other ways of ensuring luck. "Of course, another method of gaining fortune is cleaning the toilet and making sure the lid is shut properly. Financial fortune is easily influenced by smell. If a place smells, people will shun it. If people shun a place, so will fortune. Clean and polish your toilet and shut the lid. Ever since I started cleaning my toilet and shutting its lid, I've never lost a yen in trading on the stock market." (By Ryann Connell)

The Mainichi Daily News (Tokyo)
Thursday, June 14, 2007
http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/waiwai...dm026000c.html