Guest
“Are any of you lazy? Are any of you crybabies?” Every New Year’s Eve in communities on the Oga Peninsula, Akita Prefecture, men in demonical masks and barbaric costumes of straw barge into homes and growl angry questions like these in the local dialect, their voices booming through the room where the family is gathered. Small children inevitably burst into tears at this apparition. Then the head of the household offers them sake. With this, they turn jolly. “This sake’s good!” they declare, and they do a h
