Chapter 25 fire horse year

Superstitions also have the potential to have a huge impact on society as a whole.According to ancient Chinese calendar books, each year is made up of two elements: twelve zodiac signs (such as sheep, monkey or rooster) and five elements (such as earth, gold or water).The Year of the Fire Horse occurs every sixty years.Maybe that's not such a bad thing, since the Year of the Fire Horse is often seen as a sign of bad luck.According to legend, women born in this year are violent by nature, so they are never good wives.Although this legend is old, it has been passed down to this day because of a musical film, which revolves around the story of Eight Hundred House Ah Qi. In 1682, Ah Qi fell in love with a young monk. She thought that creating a small fire would help cement their love. Unfortunately, Ah Qi was born in the year of the fire horse, and the fire was out of control , and eventually almost destroyed the entire Tokyo.

The last year of the fire horse was 1966, and Japanese researcher Huiger Kato decided to use the opportunity to see if superstitious thinking affected the Japanese population as a whole.It turns out the answer is yes, and it's pretty shocking. In 1966, Japan's birth rate fell by 25% (equivalent to a decrease of nearly 500,000 babies in that year), while induced abortions increased by more than 20,000.Subsequent research found that the effect was not limited to Japan itself, but spread to California and Hawaii, where birth rates among Japanese populations also fell.Driven by curiosity, Kato Huige conducted further in-depth research on the data at hand, and as a result, he made an even more jaw-dropping discovery.According to legend, women born in the Year of the Fire Horse will be particularly unlucky and have a very dire fate.In 1966, it was not easy to know the sex of a baby before birth, so the only feasible way to ensure that the number of female offspring was reduced was to kill female infants.Are parents really going to put their daughters to death because of ancient superstitions?Kato Whig observed neonatal mortality from accidents, poisoning, and external violence from 1961 to 1967.The results are chilling. In 1966, the death rate of newborn girls was much higher than in the preceding years, but this was not the case for newborn boys.Kato Huige concluded from this: Japanese baby girls born in the year of the fire horse did "sacrifice because of folk superstitions and legends".

Japanese researcher Kenji Hirai and a team from Kyoto University assessed the financial costs of another type of Japanese superstition.Before 1873, Japan used a six-day lunar calendar. These six days were called Xiansheng, Yubi, Xianbei, Buddha's death, Tai'an, and Chiguchi.To this day, people still regard Tai'an as an auspicious day according to tradition, and regard the death of Buddha as an unlucky day.Because of this, patients in many hospitals hope to be discharged on Tai'an Day.According to the data of hospital visits in the past three years, many patients deliberately stay a few days longer in order to be discharged on an auspicious day.The researchers estimate that this superstition costs Japan around £14m a year.Not only in Japan, but also in Ireland there is a date superstition: If you leave a place on a Saturday, you probably won't be there for long.It is also the so-called "Saturday flash, quick turn back".The researchers analyzed 77,000 birth records over a four-year period and found that about 35 per cent fewer women were discharged on Saturdays than expected, while 23 per cent and 17 per cent more women were discharged on Fridays and Sundays, respectively.

The conclusion is self-evident.Superstitions are not limited to innocuous taps on wood or crossed fingers, but also affect housing prices, traffic casualties, abortion rates, monthly death statistics, and even force hospitals to waste vast sums of money on completely unnecessary medical care Nursing. Given how powerful superstitions are, it's no surprise that a large number of researchers pay close attention to them.They are eager to know: Why do so many people prefer to let these irrational thoughts influence their thinking and behavior patterns?