Drawing lots, tossing poe blocks, and pulling omikuji: Ways of "asking the gods" in Taiwan, Japan, and Vietnam seen from anthropology

Why place poe tossing, divination lots, and omikuji side by side?

Tossing poe in Taiwan, pulling omikuji in Japan, and drawing xam lots at a Vietnamese temple are all very short actions: a person shakes a bamboo tube, drops two wooden blocks on the ground, picks up a slip of paper. But anthropology does not read them as personal superstition; it reads them as a structured procedure of communication between people and the invisible world. Placing the three practices side by side makes clear both what is shared across East Asia and what is specific to each place, instead of lumping everything under a vague label of "divination."

How are poe tossing and lot drawing in a Taiwanese village described?

In fieldwork in a Hokkien village in southwestern Taiwan from autumn 1966 to summer 1968, David K. Jordan described villagers using two wooden blocks called poe to ask the gods questions with binary answers: yes or no, true or not true. Jordan observed that the villagers themselves were aware poe was a "statistical device," both believing it to be a means of communication controlled by the gods and understanding that it required human cooperation to work properly.

For more complex questions, villagers went up to large temples to use chhiam, that is, divination lots. These lots are slips of paper printed with numbers from one to sixty or one to one hundred, pasted on a board at one side of the temple; on the altar there is a tube holding bamboo sticks numbered to match. The petitioner draws a bamboo stick, then uses poe to confirm that the paper with the same number really contains the answer to their question; once confirmed, the paper is read, and it carries a four-line poem.

This procedure is notable for splitting into two steps: a "drawing" step and a "checking" step. The checking step with poe is where the questioner is allowed to doubt the result just drawn, and also where the procedure protects itself against mistaken draws.

Is ritual practice in communicating with power?

Kind of knowledge: School: Emily Martin AhernSchool's interpretation. How one school or one book reads it; other schools may read it differently. The five labelsEmily Martin Ahern, in Chinese Ritual and Politics, read Chinese ritual as a procedure of dialogue with the gods, and placed it alongside procedures of dialogue with officials in everyday life. In that reading, people do not only "beg" but also "present," "negotiate," and even "complain" to the gods, using gestures similar to those used when commoners face the administrative apparatus.

This reading helps explain why poe tossing and lot drawing are so procedural: there are steps, confirmation, reading of results, and the possibility of doing it again. It also explains why people do not treat a "no" from the gods as a collapse of faith, but as an answer that needs further handling.

When do people go to diviners, and what for?

Stéphanie Homola, in an article in the Journal of Chinese Religions in 2013, surveyed the practice and social standing of divination in contemporary Taiwan, and asked when and why people seek out diviners. This article belongs to the body of work that describes divination as a social activity with its own place, not merely a matter of personal belief.

That framework is useful when looking at Vietnam: people drawing lots at the start of the year usually do not go to "know the future" in general, but to handle a specific question hanging in their mind, or to fulfill a duty toward the temple, the family, or themselves.

How does omikuji in Japan differ from lots in Taiwan and Vietnam?

Ian Reader and George J. Tanabe Jr., in Practically Religious: Worldly Benefits and the Common Religion of Japan, surveyed the "this-worldly benefits" current of religion in Japan, including omikuji slips, protective amulets, and practices seeking concrete benefits such as passing exams, success in business, and safety.

The biggest formal difference: omikuji are usually a slip of paper drawn at random from a box, without the confirmation step using two wooden blocks as with poe in Taiwan. Results may be great blessing, blessing, small blessing, curse, or great curse. At many Japanese shrines and temples, a person who draws a curse slip can tie the paper to a bamboo rack in the precinct to "return" the bad luck, a gesture showing the slip is not a fixed sentence but something that can be handled.

Kind of knowledge: School: Reader and TanabeSchool's interpretation. How one school or one book reads it; other schools may read it differently. The five labelsReader and Tanabe also stressed that these practices are tied to concrete benefits in life, not aimed at liberation or enlightenment. This makes omikuji closer to lots at Vietnamese temples and lots in Taiwan than to meditative practices.

Table comparing the studies and their data scope

So how does lot drawing at a Vietnamese temple read through that framework?

Nhat Nguyet's suggestion: this section is the site's interpretation, not the result of an anthropological study published in this article's source list.

If the custom of drawing lots at the start of the year at a Vietnamese temple is placed in Jordan's and Ahern's framework, a few formal similarities appear: there is a drawing step, a confirmation step (usually tossing two yin-yang poe blocks), a reading of the poem, and the possibility of asking again if unsatisfied. The difference lies in that the Vietnamese custom is usually tied to the start of the year, to temple space, and to a general wish for the new year rather than a narrow question like "should I buy this plot of land?"

It should also be said clearly: the studies in this article's source list were all conducted in Taiwan and Japan, on Taiwanese and Japanese people, in the periods noted. No result here is extrapolated to Vietnamese people. To speak about lot drawing at Vietnamese temples with anthropological data, a study on Vietnamese people themselves, in the Vietnamese context, is needed, and this article does not yet have one.

For a closer look at the ritual and cultural meaning of drawing lots at Vietnamese temples, see the article The custom of drawing lots at the start of the year at temples: A guide to ritual and cultural meaning.

Where the evidence is still lacking

In this article's source list, there is no anthropological study examining the custom of lot drawing at Vietnamese temples. There is also no study directly comparing the three practices in Taiwan, Japan, and Vietnam. The Vietnam section of this article is the site's interpretation based on Jordan's and Ahern's comparative framework, not a research result.

Some concepts often mentioned in discussions of divination, such as "self-fulfilling prophecy" or "confirmation bias," are not in this article's source list, so the article does not use them as grounds. If readers want to verify those concepts, they need to consult specialized psychology literature.

Why is reading these three practices side by side useful?

Poe tossing, lot drawing, and omikuji are all short, cheap, easy procedures that can be repeated. That is precisely why they have existed long and widely. Reading them as procedures of communication with power helps show that practitioners are not passive at all: they choose the question, the temple, the timing, and how to handle the result. What is shared across East Asia lies in the procedural form; what is specific to each place lies in which occasion, which space, and which wish the procedure is attached to.