Tradition: Japanese Mythology
Alternative Names: 兎の祟り, Curse of the Rabbit, Hare’s Curse
Category: Rabbit
The Myth
Usagi no Tatari, meaning “the curse of the rabbit,” refers to Japanese folk beliefs associating the consumption of wild rabbits with illness and supernatural retribution. A 1937 article in the medical journal Kansai Ikai Jihō recounts an incident in Kawasaki Village, Shibata District, Miyagi Prefecture. On the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth lunar month, four young men caught a rabbit at the foot of Mount Zaō and ate it. Shortly afterwards, their tonsils became swollen and they developed lumps as large as chicken eggs. Medical examinations revealed that they had contracted tularemia, an infectious disease associated with wild rabbits. Local people, however, feared that the illness was a manifestation of the rabbit’s curse.
The physician and tularemia researcher Ōhara Hachirō (1882–1943), who came from Fukushima Prefecture, recorded several regional beliefs concerning rabbits in his book Yato-byō (Tularemia). In Oguni Village, Date District, dead wild rabbits were reportedly found in the mountains from late autumn through the beginning of the new year. Although people had once eaten them without apparent consequences, illnesses resembling fever reportedly became common after larch trees were planted on the mountainside. In Ōura Village, Iwaki District, rabbits that ate young wheat shoots in spring were said to die, and eating them was believed to cause fever. Other accounts attributed rabbit deaths to red berries, claiming that people who ate the affected animals could suffer severe vomiting, diarrhoea, and even death.
In Nakamura Town, Sōma District, people believed that preparing a dead wild rabbit for food would inevitably cause chills and swollen lymph nodes. Rabbits that had lain dead on the ground for an entire night were considered unfit to eat, regardless of the cause of death. These traditions reflect the dangers associated with consuming diseased wild animals. Although the illnesses were interpreted locally as a rabbit’s curse, the historical accounts suggest that folk prohibitions against eating certain rabbits may have preserved practical warnings about a disease that was not yet fully understood.
Sources
“Usagi-tata.” 新版TYZ 妖怪図鑑 (New TYZ Yokai Encyclopedia). https://tyz-yokai.blog.jp/archives/1081457824.html