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鬼は外福は内 oni wa soto fuku wa uchi Devils Go Out Fortune Come In

鬼は外福は内 (oni wa soto fuku wa uchi), demons out, fortune in, is the call shouted while throwing roasted beans on the eve of spring. A Zen abbot recorded it in his diary in 1447, already calling it this country's form of a Chinese rite. This study follows the call through Edo jokes and picture-books, and into English from 1822.

Japanese Scroll of Devils Go Out Fortune Come In (oni wa soto fuku wa uchi) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Devils Go Out Fortune Come In鬼は外福は内oni wa soto fuku wa uchi

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

鬼は外福は内, demons out, fortune in, is the words shouted while throwing roasted beans on the eve of spring, first recorded in 1447 in the diary of Zuikei Shūhō 瑞渓周鳳, a Zen abbot who already called it this country's form of the older Chinese demon-expulsion rite. The call has no author: Shūhō wrote its four Chinese characters himself only to record what he heard, and every witness since that writes Japanese rather than Chinese writes it with its kana. Its two halves have swapped order across the witnesses, but its sense has not moved since the abbot's diary. English has carried the call since Isaac Titsingh's Illustrations of Japan of 1822, which translates both halves, Evil spirit, depart hence! and God of riches, enter this house!; demons is in print by 1876, and Hearn's Devils out! Good-fortune in! came in 1894.

Overview

The sense. The words have meant one thing since 1447 and the rite has hardly changed: at dusk on the eve of spring, roasted beans thrown through the house, the demons ordered out and the fortune in. What the witnesses add is a point of view. The abbot sees it as a scholar: it is this country's version of the Chinese rite. The joke-book hears it as a setup for a pun. Santō Kyōden 山東京伝 hears the beans. Fujii Otoo 藤井乙男 counts the calls. The encyclopaedia explains where it came from: the court's 追儺 of the last night of the year, itself Chinese, moved to the eve of 立春 and into the houses.

The words. 鬼, oni, is the demon of the rite, the plague-demon of the court's old year-end exorcism; devils and demons are both used in English, and demons is the usual modern word. は, wa, is the topic particle, not a subject marker: the call has no verb for a subject to belong to, so it reads as for the demons, out; as for fortune, in. 外, soto, is outside; 福, fuku, is good fortune, and in the dictionaries' gloss the god of it, 福の神, who is invited in; 内, uchi, is inside, the house. Ten syllables of Japanese, six characters with four kanji among them, not a four-character idiom. Two things vary among the witnesses. The order: the 1447 diary and the antiquarians write 鬼外福内, demons first, while the kyōgen of the 1640s and the 1910 dictionary's gloss say 福は内 first, and the dictionaries today list both. The writing: the diary gives the call as four characters because a Zen monk writing Chinese records ten syllables of Japanese that way; every witness that writes Japanese rather than Chinese writes it with its kana.

The proverb in English. The call was never translated as literature, but it entered English early and as a rite's words: Isaac Titsingh's Illustrations of Japan of 1822 translates both halves, Evil spirit, depart hence! and God of riches, enter this house! [1]; Hepburn's dictionary of 1872 prints it untranslated under oniyarai [2]; The Ladies' Repository of 1876 has Demons begone. Happiness enter! [3]; Greey's boys' book of 1882 and Hearn's Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan of 1894 translate it, Hearn as Devils out! Good-fortune in! [4] [5]; Brinkley's dictionary and Aston's Nihongi, both of 1896, carry it [6] [7]. The English proverb collections mostly pass it by: Okada 1958 and Buchanan 1965 have it, and David Galef's three Tuttle collections (1987, 2000, 2012), Guy Zona's book of 1996 and Edward Trimnell's of 2004 do not [8] [9].

The historical record

1425, the eighth day of the first month of 応永 32. 花営三代記, the shogunal household record. 八日。己卯。天晴。節分大豆打役。昭心カチグリ打。アキノ方申ト酉ノアイ也。アキノ方ヨリウチテ。アキノ方ニテ止, the eighth, clear: the bean-throwing at 節分, with dried chestnuts, カチグリ, thrown as well, from the lucky direction, which that year lay between west-southwest and west, and back to it. The rite, twenty-two years before the call [10].

1447, the twenty-second day of the twelfth month of 文安 4, which is early 1448 by the Western calendar. Zuikei Shūhō, abbot of 相国寺, in his diary 臥雲日件録. 廿二日。明日立春。故及昏、景冨每室散熬豆。因唱鬼外福内四字、蓋此方驅儺之樣也。 The twenty-second. Tomorrow is the first day of spring. So at dusk 景冨 scattered roasted beans in every room, and called the four characters demons out, fortune in; this is our country's form of the demon-expulsion. The punctuation is the critical edition's, 大日本古記録 of 1961, which ends the clause at 昏 and so makes 景冨 the one who threw, a person's name; nothing in the entry says who that was [11]. The copies disagree on that word: the typeset of 1893 and the 精選版日本国語大辞典 read 景富 without the comma, which can be taken as the rich; 屋代弘賢's 古今要覧稿 of 1883 reads 景當; the 日本社会事彙 of 1891 drops it and reads 昏景 as dusk; and the National Diet Library's own essay on 節分 reads 景家, houses [11] [12] [13]. The diary itself is lost; what survives is the excerpt that 惟高妙安, a later monk of the same temple, made from it in 1562 [11]. The abbot is describing a custom already established and already Japanese, and comparing it to the Chinese rite. This is the 精選版日本国語大辞典's first citation for the call [14].

1623, in a printing of 1658. Anrakuan Sakuden 安楽庵策伝, 醒睡笑, a collection of comic tales finished in 1623. A samurai dreams a nest flies into his house; the interpreter, punning on ふく, fortune, and ふくろ, owl, tells him それは目出し鬼はそとへふくろは内へと申ならはして候程に, that is lucky: as everyone says, demons out and the owl in, and is given a robe for it. A pun on the call means everyone knew it [15].

Early 1640s. The kyōgen 節分, in the Ōkura school text of Ōkura Toraakira 大蔵虎明, 1642. ふくはうちふくはうち、おにはそとへおにはそとへ, fortune in, fortune in; demons out, demons out: the other order, and the 精選版日本国語大辞典's first citation for it [16].

1776 to about 1800. The Edo joke-books and picture-books. おにはそとへふくはうちへとまめをまく in 新落噺初鰹 (1776); 鬼は外へとうつ豆は雨霰のごとく, the beans thrown at demons out fall like rain and hail, in Kyōden's 四時交加 (1798), fiercer, he adds, than Sakanoue no Tamuramaro 田村麿's arrowheads [17].

Edo to Meiji. The antiquarians. From 華実年浪草 through 事言類考, 打聞 and Yashiro Hirokata 屋代弘賢's 古今要覧稿 (printed 1883) to the 日本社会事彙 of 1891, a chain of reference books quotes the diary and says the same thing, and the 1891 sentence was copied word for word into four more by 1902: 惡鬼を逐ふ事は、除夜の追儺の、朝儀の民間に移れる者ながら、炒豆を屋中に撒するは、四五百年以還の俗にて、其より古き物に管見せず、臥雲日件録に…, driving out demons is the court's New Year's Eve rite passed to the people, but scattering roasted beans in the house is a custom of the last four or five hundred years, and I know of nothing older than the 臥雲日件録. That sentence is still true [12].

1910. Fujii Otoo, 諺語大辞典. 【鬼ハ外】追儺の時、福は內鬼は外と、三聲づゝ唱へて豆を打つことあり, at the demon-expulsion one calls fortune in, demons out, three times each, and throws the beans. The manner, recorded [18].

What is not a source. The call has no author and no text behind it; it is a rite's words, and the diary is a witness to the rite, not its origin. The court's 追儺, with its peach bows and reed arrows, is the rite's ancestor, documented in the 延喜式 of 927 [19]. Houses that call 鬼は内, demons in, are regional variants and another matter; the answers from Obama in Wakasa to the 諸国風俗問状 of the 1810s record a few [13]. There is no Chinese four-character phrase behind 鬼外福内; the abbot made those four characters himself, to write down what he heard.

The dictionaries today. 精選版日本国語大辞典 under 鬼は外福は内: 節分の夜の豆まきのときに唱えることば, with the diary as first citation. デジタル大辞泉 files it under 福は内鬼は外: 節分の夜、豆まきの行事をするときに唱える言葉。幸運を招く福の神は内へ、禍をもたらす鬼は外への意, and the 日国 there adds the season word, winter. The 日本大百科全書 on 節分, by Inokuchi Shōji 井之口章次: the court's demon-expulsion came to be held at 節分 from the Muromachi period on, 室町時代以後; the rite has two forms, a costumed demon chased out and beans thrown from a measuring box; in an ordinary house the head of the household, as the year's man, scatters the beans through the rooms calling 福は内、鬼は外, and each person eats as many beans as their years [14].

The proverb in English

1822. Isaac Titsingh, Illustrations of Japan, London, page 131. The Japanese are accustomed to throw scorched beans against the walls and floors of their houses, repeating three times with a loud voice the words, Oniwa soto, signifying: Evil spirit, depart hence! and then saying in a lower tone: Foukouva outche, or, God of riches, enter this house! The same passage stands in the French edition of 1820, Mémoires et anecdotes sur la dynastie régnante des djogouns. The earliest known English translation of the call, both halves, and the only witness here that says the second half was said more quietly [1].

1872. James Curtis Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, second edition, under ONI-YARAI. The ceremony of driving out evil spirits at the Setsu-bun, or last evening of the old year, by throwing about parched peas, and crying, oni wa soto fuku wa uchi. The call enters English untranslated, as the words of a rite; the fourth edition of 1888 keeps the entry at page 485 [2] [20].

1876. Fair Weather and Foul in a "Far Country", The Ladies' Repository, volume 36, number 1, July 1876, page 31, a letter from Japan at the New Year. The parched beans, of which I have before made mention, have been scattered throughout the dwelling, and affrighted evil spirits have fled in hot haste, pursued by the startling refrain of the householder: "Oni wa soto, Fuku wa uchi" "Demons begone. Happiness enter!" The earliest known demons [3].

1882. Edward Greey, Young Americans in Japan, Lee and Shepard, Boston. A whole chapter, The Ceremony of Oniwa Soto, and the cry, Fukuwa uchi oniwa soto (Good fortune come in, bad go out) [4].

1891 to 1903. The handbooks. Chamberlain's Handbook for Travellers in Japan (1891) has the townspeople scattering beans on the evening of the Setsubun (3rd February) to expel evil spirits, without the call [21]; Lange's Text-book of Colloquial Japanese (1903) sets it as an exercise, the master of the house scatters roasted beans in every direction and says: "Luck in, demons out" [22].

1894. Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, volume two, the chapter Two Strange Festivals, page 498. On the eve of the Setsubun, a little after dark, the Yaku-otoshi, or caster-out of devils, wanders through the streets from house to house, rattling his shakujo, and uttering his strange professional cry: Oni wa soto! — fuku wa uchi!, with his own gloss in brackets, Devils out! Good-fortune in!; and of a New Year toy, this comical symbolism of good wishes for the New Year: "Oni wa soto! — fuku wa uchi!" Devils is Hearn's word; Titsingh had evil spirit and Greey bad [5].

1896. Frank Brinkley, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary, Sanseido, page 877, under oniyarai. Scattering parched peas about in an occupied house to drive out evil spirits, celebrated on the last night of December, or of the early part of January (o.s.), crying aloud the while fuku wa uchi (fortune inside), oni wa soto (devils outside) [6]. The same year, Aston's Nihongi, volume two, page 359, in a note on the court's year-end exorcism: This reminds one strongly of the Japanese formula used on this occasion: "Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi" — "Devils out, luck in." [7]

1913. Harrison, The Fighting Spirit of Japan, Unwin, page 245. The male head of the family, who goes round the rooms sprinkling peas from a tray which he holds in his left hand, shouting at the top of his voice, "Oni wa soto, fuku wa uchi!" ("Demons out, happiness in!") [23].

1958. Okada, Japanese Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, Japan Travel Bureau, page 44. Fuku wa uchi, oni wa soto. In with luck! Out with …, the last words lost in the text layer, with the bean-scattering drawn as figure 11 and the note that it is done on the night of setsubun (the parting of the seasons) [8].

1959. Sargent, The Japanese Family Storehouse, Cambridge University Press, a note to Saikaku. Setsubun mame: in the old calendar Setsubun (the dividing point between winter and spring) was the night before New Year’s Day, and at this time it was customary for all members of a family to scatter beans about their house as a form of exorcism of evil spirits, shouting at the same time: Fuku wa uchi, oni wa soto! (Luck come in, devils go out!). The custom is still widely observed; the layer reads ucht and ont, read as uchi and oni [24].

1965. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, page 154. Fuku wa uchi, oni wa soto: "Good luck inside, devils outside." This formula is used when beans are thrown around the house on "setsubun" (the days of the vernal equinox), to drive out evil influences and bring in good ones. The master of the house, early in the morning, goes from room to room, scattering beans to the four corners while shouting the phrase: "In fortune, out devils." Special services on this day are also held in many Buddhist temples, and crowds gather to catch the beans scattered to them by the priests. The rendering is fair and the temple scene is right. Two things are wrong: 節分 is the eve of 立春, the first day of spring by the old calendar, in early February, not the vernal equinox, which is six weeks later; and the diary of 1447 puts the throwing at dusk and the dictionaries today at night, 節分の夜, not early morning [9].

1974. Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, fourth edition, page 264, under 福. 福は内！鬼は外！ In with fortune! Out with the demon (evil)! / Fortune in, Devils out! [25].

1984. Mackenzie, The Autumn Wind, Kodansha International, page 120. Issa's hokku, Kakurega ya / Ha no nai kuchi de / Fuku wa uchi, The tucked away cottage — No teeth in the mouth now, But, luck's in the house!, with the note that "Fuku wa uchi" is the cry raised at the "bean scattering" festival of Setsubun [26].

Today. The house rendering, Devils Go Out Fortune Come In, supplies the verbs the Japanese leaves out and is a fair one, in the line of Hearn 1894, devils and all; demons is the more usual modern English for 鬼 in this rite, in print since 1876. Word for word the Japanese says demons out, fortune in, with no verb. What a rendering must keep: the two halves as a pair, the out and the in, and the sense that these are words shouted, not a maxim.

A reading

The best evidence for the call's age is one sentence long: on the eve of spring at the end of the year 文安 4, early in 1448, the abbot of 相国寺 wrote in his diary that at dusk roasted beans were scattered through every room and demons out, fortune in was called, and that this was his country's form of the Chinese demon-expulsion. I read the 景冨 who threw them, with the critical edition, as a person; who, the diary does not say.

References

  1. Isaac Titsingh, Illustrations of Japan, London, 1822, p. 131. https://archive.org/details/10359666bsb
  2. James Curtis Hepburn, 『和英語林集成』, 2nd ed., American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1872, s.v. ONI-YARAI. National Diet Library pid 993689. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/993689
  3. Fair Weather and Foul in a "Far Country", The Ladies' Repository, vol. 36, no. 1, July 1876, p. 31. https://archive.org/details/sim_ladies-repository-a-monthly-periodical-devoted-to_1876-07_36_1
  4. Edward Greey, Young Americans in Japan; or, The Adventures of the Jewett Family and Their Friend Oto Nambo, Lee and Shepard, Boston, 1882, the chapter The Ceremony of Oniwa Soto. https://archive.org/details/youngamericansi01greegoog
  5. Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, volume two, Houghton Mifflin, 1894, Two Strange Festivals, p. 498. https://archive.org/details/glimpsesofunfami02hear
  6. Frank Brinkley, Nanjō Bun'yū and Iwasaki Yukichika, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary, Sanseido, 1896, s.v. oniyarai, p. 877.
  7. W. G. Aston, Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697, volume two, Kegan Paul, 1896, p. 359.
  8. Okada, Japanese Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, Japan Travel Bureau, 1958, p. 44 and fig. 11.
  9. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1965, p. 154.
  10. 花営三代記, 応永三十二年正月八日, in 塙保己一 編『群書類従』第十七輯, 経済雑誌社, 1894, under 同卅二年. National Diet Library pid 1879818, scan 427. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1879818/1/427
  11. 瑞渓周鳳『臥雲日件録』, as excerpted by 惟高妙安 (臥雲日件録抜尤), in 近藤瓶城 編『続史籍集覧』, 近藤活版所, 1893, p. 24. National Diet Library pid 769659, scan 15. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/769659/1/15 · the critical edition, 東京大学史料編纂所 編『大日本古記録 臥雲日件録抜尤』, 岩波書店, 1961, at 文安四年十二月廿二日: 故及昏、景冨每室散燃豆 in the text layer's snippet, 燃 read as 熬 (National Diet Library pid 3436273, library-only) · 屋代弘賢『古今要覧稿』, 1883, reading 景當. National Diet Library pid 897541. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/897541 · 「臥雲日件録」, 日本大百科全書 (田中博美), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/臥雲日件録
  12. 『日本社会事彙』, 1891. National Diet Library pid 898057, scan 915. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/898057/1/915
  13. 国立国会図書館「本の万華鏡」第21回 大豆, 第1章 節分と豆まき. https://www.ndl.go.jp/kaleido/entry/21/1.html
  14. 「鬼は外福は内」・「福は内鬼は外」・「節分」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典・デジタル大辞泉・日本大百科全書 (井之口章次), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/鬼は外福は内
  15. 安楽庵策伝『醒睡笑』, 1658 printing of the 1623 text. National Diet Library pid 2554787, scans 39–40. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2554787/1/39
  16. 「福は内鬼は外」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, citing 虎明本狂言 節分 (大蔵虎明, 1642), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/福は内鬼は外
  17. 富川吟雪『新落噺初鰹』, 1776; 山東京伝『四時交加』, 1798.
  18. 藤井乙男『諺語大辞典』, 有朋堂, 1910, 【鬼ハ外】. National Diet Library pid 862766, scan 109. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/862766/1/109
  19. 「追儺」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典 (citing 延喜式, 927: 各執桃弓葦矢) and 改訂新版 世界大百科事典 (伊藤唯真), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/追儺
  20. James Curtis Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, fourth edition, Z. P. Maruya, Tokyo, 1888, s.v. ONIYARAI, p. 485. Internet Archive japaneseenglishe00hepbuoft. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishe00hepbuoft
  21. Basil Hall Chamberlain, A Handbook for Travellers in Japan, 3rd ed., John Murray, 1891. https://archive.org/details/a-handbook-for-travellers-in-japan-1891
  22. Rudolf Lange, A Text-book of Colloquial Japanese, tr. Christopher Noss, 1903. https://archive.org/details/textbookofcolloq00languoft
  23. Harrison, The Fighting Spirit of Japan, Unwin, 1913, p. 245.
  24. G. W. Sargent, tr., Ihara Saikaku, The Japanese Family Storehouse, Cambridge University Press, 1959, note 9 to book four, chapter one.
  25. Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, 4th ed., Kenkyusha, 1974, s.v. 福, p. 264.
  26. Mackenzie, tr., The Autumn Wind: A Selection from the Poems of Issa, Kodansha International, 1984, p. 120.

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1, Takase Studios, LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · grok-4.6 (xAI), 2026-09-05, citations · gpt-6-astra (OpenAI), 2026-09-05, citations

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 鬼は外福は内 (oni wa soto fuku wa uchi)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/oni-wa-soto-fuku-wa-uchi.