Yaoya Oshichi Day

What Is Yaoya Oshichi Day?

Every March 29th is also "Yaoya Oshichi Day" (八百屋お七の日, Yaoya Oshichi no Hi) in Japan. On the 29th day of the 3rd month of Tenna 3 (April 25, 1683, in the modern calendar), a young girl named "Oshichi" (お七), the daughter of a greengrocer (八百屋, yaoya), is said to have been burned at the stake at Suzugamori execution ground in Edo for the crime of arson (some sources give the 28th). Oshichi had set fire to her family's home in the hope that the resulting emergency would allow her to reunite with a young man she had fallen in love with while evacuated to a temple during a previous fire. Her story became one of Edo period Japan's most famous tales of love and tragedy.

The Story of Yaoya Oshichi

Very little about the real Oshichi can be confirmed; a contemporary record notes little more than that a girl named Oshichi of Komagome set a fire. According to "Tenna Shōishū," an account considered relatively reliable, the Great Tenna Fire of early 1683 forced her family to take refuge at a temple, where she fell in love with a temple page named Ikuta Shōnosuke. After her family returned home, she set fire to her house hoping to be sent back to the temple. The fire was quickly put out, but arson was punishable by burning at the stake. The temple and the lover's name (Kichisaburō in Saikaku's version) vary from work to work.

From History to Art

Oshichi's story was dramatized soon after her execution — Ihara Saikaku (井原西鶴) included her story in his 1686 collection "Five Women Who Loved Love" (好色五人女, Kōshoku Gonin Onna), and her tale became a recurring subject for kabuki theater, puppet plays, novels, and popular songs in subsequent centuries. The appeal lies in the combination of innocent love, desperate action, and tragic consequence that makes her story a Japanese equivalent of Romeo and Juliet.

Love and Consequence in Japanese Literature

Yaoya Oshichi's story is part of a broader tradition in Japanese literature and performance of depicting the tragic consequences of romantic love that defies social norms — a tradition running from the Genji Monogatari through the Edo-period love suicides (心中, shinjū) dramatized by Chikamatsu Monzaemon to modern fiction. The destructive power of love — beautiful and devastating simultaneously — is a recurring motif in Japanese cultural imagination.

Fun Facts

• The age anecdote: A famous story tells of a sympathetic magistrate who tried to reduce her sentence by fudging her age, only for Oshichi to honestly state her true age. This anecdote appears in later popular accounts, and her age itself varies by source (16, 18, and others).
• The fire-tower scene: From the 1773 puppet play "Date Musume Koi no Higanoko" onward, stage versions have Oshichi climb a fire watchtower to ring the alarm to save her lover instead of committing arson — the highlight of kabuki and bunraku versions.
• Suzugamori: Suzugamori (鈴ヶ森) execution ground in what is now Shinagawa Ward, Tokyo, was one of Edo's major execution sites; its remains are preserved today as a historic site. A grave said to be Oshichi's stands at Enjōji temple in Bunkyo Ward.