the Japanese imperial court summoned two people.
Both were court sorcerers.
The emperor’s consort, the lady Fujiwara no Ishi 藤原威子,
was due to give birth that month to the emperor’s bebe.
Since it was a royal bebe, seks was super important.
I mean, its seks was super important.
There were 3 sekses possible for the bebe:
boy, girl, or dead.
Not to be transphobic, but a dead bebe was undesirable.
If it came out a boy, he could be the next emperor.
If it came out a girl, she could marry the next emperor.
If it came out dead, there would be a sad emperor.
So the court called up the two men to ask
them how the delivery would go,
because childbirth back then was like foster care today,
decent chance you’ll end up with a dead bebe.
The first man the court called was Abe no Yoshihira 安倍吉平.
He went home and started calculating something called hanshi 反支,
which were basically times of bad luck.
Yoshihira gave a report to the court.
See if you can guess the pattern.
It was the year of the boar,
so hanshi would be active in the 6th month,
meaning the 6th month was an unlucky month.
Since the Lady Ishi was due in the 12th month, she was safe.
Lady Ishi was 28, which meant hanshi also
fell on Month 4 and Month 10. Safe again.
It was the 12th month at the time,
so the second day was hanshi,
which already passed. Safe.
He also calculated hanshi for the bebe.
Since the bebe was due in the year of the boar,
its hanshi was in the 2nd month, not the 12th.
Did you figure out the pattern?
If you pay attention to the table,
you can see a pattern located nowhere.
Sorry, there’s no clear pattern, just go with it.
It was good news for Lady Ishi,
no hanshi for her delivery...
UNTIL that sonovabish Kamo no Morimichi 賀茂守, the other sorcerer,
came back disagreeing with Yoshihira,
waving around his bishy calculations.
He said the hanshi of a 28-year-old woman
fell on the 12th month, Lady Ishi’s month.
She could die giving birth.
The court was in a polite uproar.
“WTF, my good sirs. We thought these calculations were scientific!
Depart and verify your sources.”
Morimichi went home and dug through old documents,
while the first sorcerer Yoshihira went home
and got sick actually so he didn’t do anything.
Morimichi combed through old reports of a
famous dead sorcerer and confirmed that crap,
Yoshihira was right.
The hanshi for a 28-year-old woman
for that year was in the 4th and 10th months, not the 12th.
Yoshihira was correct,
but then he actually died 2 weeks later from his sickness,
so who really won? Should’ve checked his own hanshi.
Lady Ishi went on to give birth that month,
without taking any steps to protect herself.
Why was this hanshi thing soo important?
The idea came from China, and at first,
it was only Japanese court sorcerers who practiced it for childbirth,
but later in the Heian Period [794 - 1185],
it became the realm of doctors.
Doctors served in the imperial court under the Bureau of Medicine.
They took care of the royal family and the nobles in court.
Much of Japanese medical knowledge at the time
came from China, like they used Chinese herbal medicine,
acupuncture, and burning moxa.
But enough about things that don’t work.
They also used rituals and spells,
techniques we don’t usually associate with doctors today.
People thought that spirits and gods were real,
real psychopaths who could fck up your health.
Kicking out evil spirits was just as important as treating the physical body.
There were doctors who cared for only the
women of the court, but they didn’t actually.
Medieval OB-GYNs each led a team of female doctors,
and they looked after women, especially pregnant women.
Usually women didn’t do jobs like this, but high-ranking men probably felt weird
about another man examining the naked bodies of their wives.
These female doctors were allowed
to peek under the kimonos of noblewomen,
to ensure the health of their husbands’ egos.
The female doctors were picked at ages 15 to 25
from families of low-ranking workers in the court.
Their main job: to help noble ladies through pregnancy and childbirth.
These noble ladies were high ranking women and consorts to the emperor.
The road to Japan’s future extended from their vejainas,
vejainas were matters of national security,
so female doctors treated their job seriously.
Would’ve been real embarrassing if the next
crown prince died because they recited the wrong spell.
Avada Kedavra. Oh crap.
A noblewoman usually had a team of female servants and midwives to help
deliver her bebe, and the female doctors often served as midwives.
The male doctor did provide his expert opinion and advice, but without examining
the mother himself, he could only go by what his female doctors described to him.
One of the most important jobs of a doctor for women was to calculate hanshi.
When Japan was young,
it looked up to big brother China for culture and knowledge.
China told Japan about hanshi.
Apparently there was a calendar spirit who was active during certain times,
and you had to be careful in such times.
Japan took the idea and ran with it.
China then told Japan that mom and dad adopted him, which made Japan cry.
There were different types of hanshi,
each depending on different things like the year,
the month, or your age.
A doctor had to bust out his calendar and quantum physics formulas
to calculate all the possible hanshi times, to prepare for the birth.
We still use these formulas today
to interpret test results from the Large Hadron Collider.
So after all the calculations, if mommy wasn’t due on a hanshi day, cool.
But if she was, it meant danger.
Sakura, you better hold that kid in until next month.
Keep that lil fcker locked up.
But sometimes, bebes escape, especially if the prison has a hole.
So the mother couldn’t do anything too impure during hanshi.
Like if she dared to let her birthing blood or bodily fluids
touch the floor, it meant death for her and her bebe.
Now they could have just done nothing, letting the bad luck run its course,
taking the child or the mother with it.
But you can’t throw the bebe out with the blood water.
One ritual to protect against hanshi was to put
2 pieces of cowhide on the floor side by side,
spread ashes on it, lay a silk cloth over that, then spread a birthing mat on top.
The mother gave birth on that magical mattress
to ensure no motherly juices touch the floor.
Afterwards, her servants would wash that stuff off
and store it in a container until hanshi ended,
which could be until the end of the month.
One text said that if someone gave birth or breastfed during hanshi,
and wasn’t doing it on top of cowhide or ash, she would die.
As if hanshi wasn’t enough, there was another calendar-related threat:
direction gods.
A god named Nichiyū lived in a direction depending on what day it was.
What does that even mean?
Well, it means one day he might be in the North,
the next day he might be in the East,
and the next day he might be in the Northwest.
He’s like your father.
That still doesn’t make sense, you say?
How do you inhabit a general direction?
Well, let me tell you something that my history teacher once told me.
Sit down and shut up.
So whatever direction Nichiyū is in, it’s an unlucky direction.
If Nichiyū is north on your due date,
your birth-giving ass best not be in the northern part of town.
You shouldn’t even give birth in the northern part of the house,
and good gods don’t face north during labor.
Okay so avoid the Nichiyū direction, not too hard to remember.
Until you find out that there were something like 9 other directional gods.
They were all moving around in different
cycles residing in different directions,
each one either a lucky god or an unlucky one.
The Japanese really had a thing for directions.
Once, a noble lady’s delivery was taking a bit long,
so the doctor ordered the east gate of the residence to be opened.
To allow more space for the bebe to come out I guess.
So what happened at Lady Ishi’s delivery,
even though she didn’t make preparations for hanshi?
She pushed out a baby girl, who grew up having a
pretty good life, becoming empress consort to an emperor.
Looks like that first sorcerer Yoshishira was right,
her due date was not an unlucky day.
Giving birth in the Heian Period was wild.
There were people smashing plates and monks yelling.
All kinds of shenanigans.
Click here to see what all the chaos was for.
Also, don’t forget to donate to the fundraiser
that The Shogunate and I are doing.
We’re about halfway there. The goal is $10,000,
all going towards medical aid for people affected by the war in Ukraine.
Okay we have some new patrons on Patreon this week:
AmeNoUzume&Apollo, Alisha Barron, Bob BAAL, and Rein.