The Strangest Jobs in Feudal Japan

For all the chaos, bloodshed and crazed killers stuffing decapitated heads with bamboo grass, there was a beautiful simplicity to the Sengoku period. During the 150 or so years of civil war, samurai tried to kill each other for land and glory while everyone else tried to stay out of their way. Then the Edo Period rolled around, peace was achieved, and the old rules went out the window together with a bunch of jobs.

That was when many samurai retrained themselves and became cops. As for commoners, they looked for anything that allowed them to make a living, and in the process, some of them carved for themselves the strangest niches in Japan’s labor history.

The Fart-Claiming Nun

During the Edo Period, farting was a very gendered issue. While it was hilarious when a man did it, women were expected not to produce a single toot, squeak or rumble that people could hear. That proved difficult in autumn when all of Japan enjoyed roasted sweet potatoes, one of the most powerful flatulence fuels ever.

If a young woman broke wind in front of a customer at her parents’ shop or, worse, in front of a prospective husband, the shame was apparently big enough to drive some to suicide. That’s why smart sweet potato-lovers employed the services of a heoibikuni.

Translated to “the nun who takes responsibility for farts,” these were usually older women who were sometimes actual Buddhist nuns or just wore their clothing. On the surface, they were employed as handmaidens or ladies-in-waiting.

Their real job, however, was to be by a young woman’s side and say, with their hands raised, “I did it” if anyone heard a “rear cheer” or smelled an ill wind. Apparently, the idea of blaming it on the dog hadn’t yet been invented.

It didn’t matter if everyone knew who really farted. Feudal Japan operated on appearances, and as long as there was a party willing to take the blame, then everything was fine. As were the farting nuns themselves, who were forgiven on account of their age.

“hanji-mono”: a type of pictoral kangaemono from the 19th century by Utagawa Kunimori

Brainworm Remover

Edo (modern-day Tokyo) was a literate city. Many of its 500,000 commoners liked to read. However, in many places, books were hard to come by. One option to pass the time was to wait for a kangaemono peddler.

Kangaemono were printed puzzles and brainteasers distributed for free by wandering gannin. Sometimes described as “religious performers” or “monk-like beggars,” gannin were men who often had some religious training but were never ordained in any order.

They performed a variety of activities, such as proxy pilgrimages to sacred sites (which could get a little wild and dangerous), but also earned money in more secular ways, like distributing kangaemono.

If they gave them away for free, though, how did they make money? Simple: they didn’t give away the answers. A gannin would typically visit a part of Edo, give away all his puzzles, and leave, allowing the mystery to consume the neighborhood.

People would rack their brains, consult with each other, and focus all their energies on the problem, but the puzzles were intentionally very difficult. In the evenings, they would come back and offer answers to the kangaemono, for a small fee. Many were willing to pay for the brainworm removal.

The puzzles were frequently based on puns, wordplay, and Moon logic, like: “How does one (as in the kanji character for the number one: 一) become a priest?” Here, “one” signifies a “first step,” meaning “an acolyte.” To become a priest, he needs “perseverance” (shinbo), which is also the homophone for “pole” or “vertical line.”

So, when you add “perseverance” (vertical line) to “an acolyte” (horizontal line) you get 十, a character for the number 10 (juji) which is also a homophone for “head priest of a temple.” If you’re furious right now, just know that it’s the same anger that parts of Edo felt centuries ago.

An Araijuku aratame-baba depicted in the series “Fifty-Three Stations of the Two Brushes” by Utagawa Hiroshige

Genital Inspector

One of the ways the Tokugawa shogunate kept the country from plunging into another civil war was by controlling provincial lords via the Sankin-kotai (alternate residence) system. It forced every major lord to alternate between living within their own lands and in Edo.

The cost of keeping two households was a huge drain on their resources. The system also mandated that the lord’s family stay in Edo indefinitely as the shogun’s “guests,” which was a much nicer word than “hostages” even though that’s what they were.

Many tried to sneak their wives and children out of the capital, but they were often stopped at a check-point. The main roads connecting Japan’s major cities were full of them.

They inspected government-issued permits to make sure you had the right to be on the road. Some tried to get around it with forgeries and dressing their family members as the opposite sex, but that’s where the aratame-baba came in.

Also called hitomi-onna, they were check-point staff who did the feudal version of airport secondary security screening. Travel permits had physical descriptions of the holder, so the aratame-baba would see if those matched the person, looking at their distinguishing marks and things like that.

Some check-points, however, were also adamant about confirming the person’s gender in case they were a lord’s family trying to escape the shogun. At those places, people were expected to lift their dresses, remove their kimono, or drop their pants and flash the aratame-baba.

This ultimately depended on the individual check-point and wasn’t an everyday occurrence. But the artists of feudal Japan had a field day with it, depicting the aratame-baba as intrusive weirdos obsessed with genitals. By the early 1800s, the genital inspector profession went away.