Kotodama, the spirit residing in words, is why norito are read rather than improvised, in a grammatical register a thousand years dead, from a folded paper held at a fixed height. The belief is that correctly formed speech acts on the world, so the form matters more than the sincerity of the speaker's phrasing — which is the opposite of the Protestant instinct about prayer. Its everyday survival is in imikotoba, avoided words: you do not say cut or return or leave at a wedding, or say numbers that sound like death or suffering in a hospital, and Japanese hotels frequently have no room 4 or 42. The Man'yōshū calls Japan the land where the kotodama brings good fortune. The idea was also weaponised in the twentieth century as an argument for the unique spiritual properties of the Japanese language, which is where it stops being charming.