Traditional representations about twins in Japan

Representations about the nature of twins are different in different cultures: the attitude toward them varies from fear to veneration. In olden times in Japan, the attitude toward twins was mostly negative. To prevent the birth of twins, women followed various protective prohibitions: food, behavioral, and performed ritual actions. Pregnant women avoided eating fused chestnuts and the fused fruit of other trees, forked radishes daikon, carrots, fused eggplants, and eggs with double yolks. The following prohibitions were observed in everyday life: they did not go to bed at the junction of straw mats with tatami, so that the slit “did not divide the child”, did not share food with another mother of twins and did not borrow products from her etc. On the day of the ritual bandage “Motherhood belts” were strictly followed by strict prohibitions. Fearing that women living next door could become infected with this disease, relatives and elders of the clan often expelled mothers of twins, and various punishments and hardships could apply to the twins themselves, their parents or even to the family as a whole. Therefore, between two born twins, one would be detached from the family - killing one of them, or giving them to a Buddhist temple or adoption, trying not to leave a record about it, so information about twins in the history of Japan is extremely scarce. The first reliable mention of twins is contained in the chronicle “Nihon shoki” (720), and since then, up to the twentieth century, we can only speculate on the basis of indirect information and legends. Presumably, the children in the families of Emperor Saga (786-842), Takeda Nobuyoshi (1128-1186), Tokugawa Ieyasu (1542-1616), in the family of Taira (1662-1694) and even in the imperial family - the younger sister of Emperor Showa could be twins (1915-1995). In the era of Edo (1603-1868), a negative attitude toward heterosexual twins could be provoked by the plays of Chikamatsu Monzaemon's “Suicide of lovers at Sonezaki” (1703) and “Suicide of lovers on the Isle of Heavenly Networks” (1720), which talk about the idea of the inseparability of lovers in future births, which could be understood precisely by the opportunity to be reborn as twins. However, such notions did not exist in all regions of Japan. Currently, despite the popularity of twin groups in show business in Japan, mothers of twins often hear negativity in their address and feel rejection from other. This shows the deep-seeded roots of twin superstitions in the Japanese people.