We thought that the old superstitions did not have any logical meaning. However, for example, 'You must not cut your nails at night'. Well of course, many years ago, there were no electric lights. Cutting your nails in the dark would be dangerous. So, we learn that there is wisdom in the superstitions of our ancestors. Some of these uperstitions we had never heard before, so we learned a lot through writing this article. We hope you too have enjoyed learning about these Japanese superstitions. If you have some superstitions you would like to share with us, please let us know. We hope to add more superstitions to this page.

Miwako Fujita   Mai Sasaki Department of Chinese Kanda University of International Studies

Ken Shellberg This was a very interesting and challenging article for me to work on. I did not know anything about Japanese superstitions, and I do not read or write Japanese. Plus, there wasn't much time. So, I had to ask a Japanese friend lots of questions to help me understand the superstitions well enough to be able to offer suggestions on how the English text should read. I am pleased that I could help, and I just hope my suggestions were useful.