Shiwasu: Sweeping Away the Year’s Soot and Other Traditional Annual Events in December

Workers busily clean a home in an illustration from a work depicting different seasonal events in Edo. (Courtesy National Archives of Japan)

A group of cleaners (left) perform dōage at the completion of their chores in a print by Utagawa Kunisada (courtesy Tokyo Metropolitan Central Library Special Collection Room); a scene from an illustrated book of customs and manners by Kikuchi Kiichirō showing workers stripping a house nearly bare to get at all the dust and soot (courtesy National Diet Library).

People mill among the stalls during Sensōji’s toshi no ichi in a print by Utagawa Hiroshige. (Courtesy National Diet Library)

A print by Utagawa Kunisada depicting mochitsuki at a household. A person who is presumably a tobi pounds the freshly cooked rice with a mallet while others prepare the mochi. (Courtesy National Diet Library)

At left, individuals wear formal overvests (kamishimo) during mame-maki in an illustration by Kikuchi Kiichirō; at right, the legendary character Sakata no Kintoki pelts the powerful ogre Shuten-dōji with beans in a work from Hokusai manga by ukiyo-e artist Katsushika Hokusai. (Both images courtesy National Diet Library)

Foxes gather to visit Ōji Inari Shrine on the last night of the year in a print from Utagawa Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. (Courtesy National Diet Library)

Revelers in fox masks and makeup during the Ōji Fox Parade on December 31, 2017. (© AFP/Jiji)