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The story
On his radio show, Maple Chogokin’s Kazlaser raised questions about “Kamikorogashi,” a ritual held at Yaizu Shrine in Shizuoka. The custom involves spinning infants aged 0 to 2 three times, with the belief that the louder they cry, the sturdier they’ll grow up to be. On 5ch, reactions ranged from speculation that it was once a way to check a baby’s health, to pushback against criticizing tradition.
Kazlaser of the comedy duo Maple Chogokin appeared on the radio program “Weekly! Shaberaser” (SBS Radio) on the 21st, where he questioned the “Kamikorogashi” ritual held at Yaizu Shrine in Yaizu City, Shizuoka Prefecture.
Kamikorogashi is performed to pray for children’s healthy growth. Two shrine representatives work in pairs, spinning infants aged 0 to 2 three times while chanting “An-etton.”
It’s said that the louder the baby cries, the sturdier they’ll grow up to be.
Source: sirabee.com / Original article here
What people said
That still traumatizes me. The guy inside the costume was drunk and it was terrifying.
If you're not tough enough, this guy'll come after you — better watch out if you're weak lol
That one actually makes sense.
Shichi-Go-San happens way too often. It costs a ton of money, and if you skip it your kid might feel unloved — it's rough.
He also said Tanabata is unnecessary, because it doesn't boost the economy like Valentine's or Halloween. (Tanabata: the Star Festival)
Inducing fear actually activates the brainstem's survival response.
Sounds like it's a lot milder these days though.
Do it the old-fashioned way nowadays and you'd get a burglar dressed as Namahage showing up at your door — the "yami baito" kind. (yami baito, or "dark part-time job," refers to Japan's recent spate of crimes recruited through shady gig ads)
Well, thanks to that you grew up healthy, so it worked out, didn't it? Worth being scared for.
If a baby showed zero crying and zero distress, that'd actually be more worrying.
The Japanese people making a living off it would be the Shinto priests, so Kazlaser better be ready for what's coming.
Background and Key Points
Kamikorogashi is a hyper-local rite, not a nationwide rule: it belongs to Yaizu Shrine in Shizuoka and sits inside a much larger family of Japanese child-blessing customs — hatsumiyamairi (a newborn’s first shrine visit), Shichi-Go-San (blessings at ages 3, 5, and 7), and mochi-carrying rituals like issho-mochi — that trace back to eras of high infant mortality, when simply surviving to childhood was not guaranteed. Many of these customs pair prayer with a deliberately induced fright or hardship (Namahage’s costumed scolders, the shishimai lion “biting” children’s heads), on the folk logic that a strong reaction — crying, fear — was itself evidence of vitality, or in some tellings a rough way of screening for developmental problems before modern pediatrics existed.
The thread’s actual disagreement isn’t over whether the ritual is real or harmless — nobody defends it as medically sound — it’s over whether a comedian is entitled to publicly question it. One side reads Kazlaser’s “does it earn a yen” framing as symptomatic of reducing culture to economic output, noting he’s leveled the same complaint at Shichi-Go-San and Tanabata; the other treats the health-screening theory as plausible ancestral wisdom and argues detached critics haven’t stood in the parents’ shoes.
What outsiders likely miss is the economic subtext: small shrines like this one are often financially precarious, and rituals such as Kamikorogashi are literally how local Shinto priests earn income, which is why several posters treat “questioning tradition” as also questioning someone’s livelihood — a dimension the thread raises but never fully explores.
*This article was compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “Kazlaser questions the Japanese Shinto ritual of spinning infants three times, “Kamikorogashi”: “Why make them cry? I wouldn’t do that to my own kid.”“
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