Story of the "Tori no ichi" Market

"Tori no Ichi" means the market on the Chicken's Day (or Rooster's Day).  The custom of buying a Kumade (literally means rake) every year in a "tori no ichi" to gather good business fortune is well observed by all kinds of companies in Japan, including the foreign investment firm's Tokyo branch where I consult for.  The so-called rake is decorated with all sorts of lucky goods such as the money-gathering cat, cranes, pines, gold foils, and etc, and varies from the size of a large pizza to that of a wreath.  The price changes with the size, the amount of the decoration, and most important of all, the wealth of the buyer.  Typically people pay from a few thousands to tens of thousand yen, but I heard some might go up as high as millions.  That is pretty expansive considering that it is only made from bamboo, wood and straws.

(Click on the picture of the right to see a larger version)

Well the best part about this rake is not its profit margin, but the mandatory upgrade call.  For a business to stay in good fortune, it has to come back every year to exchange the old rake with a new one which preferably costs more.  The business model of Japanese rake sellers are way ahead of Microsoft's.  The two are similar because both products have minimal material cost, both require constant upgrades, but the Japanese ingenuity shines through in the remaining fronts.  First of all, the Japanese sellers can rest for a whole year between the upgrades, while engineers at Microsoft has actually work very hard to add more and more useless features to their product to confusing existing users.  Moreover, people might decide not to upgrade their software in a bad year, but a fortune calling rake is exactly what a business needs in such a year.  Finally, the Japanese way has been around for thousands of years, I would recommend the "Japanese Chamber of Chicken Business" to get a patent on this business model, sue Microsoft, and get 50 yen on every dollar that Microsoft illegally makes.

Anyway, the story of Chicken's day market goes like this: thousands of years ago, in the mythical age, the king of orthodox (Yamato) Japanese launched a successful crusade against the barbarians on the East (somethine we call genocide today).  To celebrate the victory they decorate their shrine with their rakes (at that time was used as a weapon).  The day of celebration was exactly the Chicken's Day in November (following Chinese tradition, each day is assigned one of the 12 Zodiac animal signs).  How the victory celebration evolved into business fortune praying is a mystery to me, whoever knows the story please enlighten the rest of us in the "discussion forum".

Depending on the year, in November sometimes there are 2 chicken's days and sometimes there are 3 (because the chicken's days have to be 12 days apart).  So the days are called "First Chicken", "Second Chicken" and "Third Chicken".  On every chicken's day the shrines put on the Chicken's Day Market.  Rumor has that the year with 3 November Chickens is doomed with more fire accidents.