That's a lot of bad luck in one photo!

The pieces of paper are called omikuji (御神籤). At all shrines you can buy your fortune. It's most common around New Years, but you can buy them at any time. I have even started to see vending machines at shrines offering them.

There are various levels, ranging from great luck all the way down to bad luck. If you get middle or good luck, you say thanks and take it with you, but if you get bad luck the thing to do is tie the paper to a tree or some lines like in the photo and pray for the bad luck to stay with the tied up paper and not follow you around.

So I guess this isn't so much wishes for better luck, but rather a bad luck trap^[1].

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.

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1. Don't cross the streams. ↩