When Japan’s governing party leaders scheduled national elections for July 6,1986, they were testing the fates as well as the political waters. Any of them could have looked a calendar and realized right off that it was the worst possible day for such a significant undertaking.
Millions of Japanese, politicians included, put full faith in a lunar-year system borrowed long ago from China, a six-day cycle of lucky days, unlucky days and so-so days, when good fortune may come in the morning only to disappear in the afternoon.
Get sick on an unpropitious day, and the illness is certain to linger. Pick the wrong day for a funeral, and another burial will soon follow.
No day in the cycle is luckier than one designated taian, and none worse than one called butsu metsu December 8, 1941, was a taian day. That was the date in Japan planes attacked Pearl Harbor. In the United States it was December 7, butsu metsu
Japanese understand from an early age what butsu metsu is all about. In a newspaper poll of 3,000 people early last year, 68 percent agreed that a wedding ceremony is best avoided on that day. “We have very few butsu metsu marriages”, said Hideo Shiiya, an official at the Okura, a major Tokyo hotel.
Butsu metsu fell on July 6, Election Day. Never before in Japan had general election been held at such an unpromising time. Various exigencies forced the political calendar to override the lunar one.