5698


In the hospital where Sakakibara was having his checkups and where Sanae
worked, the elevator had no 4th floor.

Now, I know in Japanese culture the numbers 4 (四 _shi_ ) and 7 (七 _shichi_ )
have "shi" in them which is "death" (死 _shi_ ) and the Japanese are very
superstitious, so they have alternate names for 4 and 7 ( _yon_ and _nana_ ).

So I'm wondering, is it just in _Another_ , where the theme is death, that the
4th floor (and possibly the 7th floor, never really noticed) is missing, or is
it a cultural thing in Japan to label the 4th floor as the 5th floor?


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culture another
Why does the hospital in Another have no fourth floor?


This is true for many East Asian cultures, because, as you pointed out, 4
sounds like "Death". You can read about it
[here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetraphobia). It's the same as the idea
that many western hotels skip the 13th floor and instead label it the 14th
floor because 13 is a superstitious number.

Japanese hotels sometimes also skip the 13th floor.


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[@kuwaly's answer](https://anime.stackexchange.com/a/5698/1908) is essentially
correct.

I'd just like to add that I've never heard of the 7th floor being excluded
from a building. The major numerical superstitions in Japanese (and probably
Chinese, etc.) surround the numbers 4 (四 _yon_ or _shi_ ) and 9 (九 _ku_ or
_kyuu_ ), since they sound like "death" (死, _shi_ ) and "suffering" (苦 _ku_ ).
To the best of my knowledge, there are no similar superstitions surrounding
the number 7 (despite the fact that, as you correctly point out, 7 can be read
_shichi_ ).

Also, just to make this clear - the presence of "alternate" readings like
_yon_ and _nana_ (for 4 and 7 respectively) isn't purely because of
superstition. Rather, it's because there are two parallel schemes for counting
in Japanese, one of which uses native Japanese words ( _hito_ , _futa_ , _mi_
, _yo_ , _itsu_ , ...), and one of which uses Chinese imports ( _itsu_ /
_ichi_ , _ni_ / _ji_ , _san_ , _shi_ , _go_ , ...). This is vaguely similar to
how English has native words (one, two, three, four, five...) and Greek/Latin
imports (mono / uni, di / bi, tri, tetra / quad, pent / quint, ...). If you're
interested in learning more, consider asking a question on
[**Japanese.SE**](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/)


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