Setsubun marks the turn from winter to spring in the old calendar, and the nationwide observance is mame-maki: roasted soybeans thrown out of the door with the cry "demons out, fortune in", followed by eating one bean for each year of your age.
At Kasuga Taisha in Nara the evening takes a different form. The shrine's three thousand lanterns — a thousand bronze hanging lanterns along the corridors and two thousand stone ones along the approach, donated over eight centuries — are all lit at once.
No attendance figure is collected in this pass.
The date is fixed at 3 February. The same lantern lighting is repeated in mid-August, which is the summer counterpart and is easier to attend in comfort.
PlanningFixed on 3 February, Setsubun — bean-throwing happens nationwide the same day.
Dates
computed from the rule
Computed from the recurrence rule we record for this entry, not copied from a listing. A date marked ~ comes from a calendar conversion and the observance may fall a day or two either side.