I was watching this video during an English class and I get intrigued by the salt (white powder) being poured around the sleeping people (you can see this from 00:20s). Can anyone explain what is happening there? It’s some kind of signaling? Or are they dead?
____
UPDATE: A hint from/u/Klajv helped me to find this documentary called Salaryman from where I think the video report has extracted the footage! The salt thing is just a performance art to call attention to the overwork issue.
https://vimeo.com/618495667
https://www.reddit.com/r/japan/comments/ux4x2a/why_the_salt/
6 comments
In Shinto salt is your one-stop-shop for cleansing, purifying, and warding off all evil spirits.
Whatever they are doing in that video is not something that ever happens in Japan, and is not a part of Japanese culture. I imagine it is some kind of performance art footage that got mixed in with regular footage of Japanese office life, and the reporters could not tell the difference.
Salt is used in Shinto religious contexts such as purification rituals and in folk traditions, but not like this. You typically find it piled in front of restaurants and massage parlors, or tossed in the air by sumo wrestlers.
Daemonic possession is an ever present danger here.
A sleeping mind is an empty pot for the unholy forces of evil to piss in. However, street warlocks are able to effect a field hexagrammaton, to gird the naked minds of … *resting* office warriors.
Remember: Don your armour of contempt, and have no truck with the myrmidons of the nether regions.
Salt has antimicrobial properties, which would have made it seemed magical in a world that didn’t understand what caused diseases. For this reason, it is used to ward off bad juju in a number of cultures.
Oh, I think that footage is actually from a viral marketing campaign (Ogilvy if I remember correctly was behind it) where they did corpse outlines around people pissed out on the streets of Tokyo. I forget what the campaign was for though..
ded