wordsomamori御守 / お守り

The word takes a compound for every need, which is how a reader can tell what a given charm is for without opening it: kōtsū-anzen for traffic safety, yaku-yoke for avoiding evil, kaiun for opening fortune, gakugyō-jōju for study and passing examinations, shōbai-hanjō for business, en-musubi for finding a partner and marrying, anzan for a safe pregnancy and delivery, kanai-anzen for the household's safety and peace.

The object is a brocade bag over paper or wood carrying a written prayer. Custom says not to open it — opening it loses the benefit — so the inscription is a thing the owner owns and does not read. Charms are customarily replaced once a year, returned to the shrine or temple they came from, and burnt rather than thrown away, as respect to the deity that helped through the year. Most returns come on or just after the Japanese New Year.

Yanagita Kunio, writing in 1969, put the dating carefully: 'Japanese have probably always believed in amulets of one kind or another, but the modern printed charms now given out by shrines and temples first became popular in the Tokugawa period or later, and the practice of a person wearing miniature charms is also new. The latter custom is particularly common in cities.'

The word is now on objects a shrine never touched. Materials have widened from paper and wood to bumper decals, bicycle reflectors and credit cards. Where popular shrines cannot meet demand they turn to factories, and priests have complained about the “quality and authenticity” of factory products. Shops sell generic omamori with Mickey Mouse, Hello Kitty, Snoopy or Kewpie on them, not issued by any shrine or temple and not presented as religious. Both of those are called omamori, by their sellers and their buyers. This atlas reports that and leaves the argument where it is.