Butsumetsu is one of the six traditional calendar labels known as rokuyo, and it has long been regarded as an unlucky day. In modern Japan, however, everyday life continues as usual. People still go to work, shop, travel, and make ordinary plans even when the calendar says butsumetsu.
It tends to matter more when people are choosing a date for something special, such as a wedding, marriage registration, or taking delivery of a new car.
How much it matters depends greatly on the person. If the only available date at a desired wedding venue happens to be butsumetsu, some people will simply take it. Some venues may even offer lower-priced plans on butsumetsu, which can make the date more attractive. Others dismiss rokuyo altogether because there is no scientific basis for treating one date as luckier than another.
At the same time, a person does not have to believe that something bad will actually happen in order to avoid butsumetsu. If several dates are available, they may simply think, “Why deliberately choose the one that is considered unlucky?”
Family can matter too. A couple may not care about butsumetsu at all, while their parents or grandparents do. For an event involving the whole family, they may decide that choosing another date is easier than making relatives uncomfortable. In modern life, whether people avoid butsumetsu is not determined only by whether they personally believe in it.
Despite its name, butsumetsu is not a Buddhist teaching. Rokuyo is better understood today as a traditional calendar custom used to mark days as lucky or unlucky, and it still appears in customs surrounding important events.
So butsumetsu is not a day when anything is forbidden. For someone who does not care about rokuyo, it is simply another day. For someone who does care, it may be a reason to move an important event to another date. And even people who do not believe in it themselves may still take it into account because someone around them does. That is roughly how butsumetsu continues to exist in modern Japanese life.
