Published by the Charles E. Tuttle Company, Inc.
of Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo, Japan
with editorial offices at
Osaki Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo 141-0032
Copyright in Japan, 1965 by Charles E. Tuttle Co., Inc.
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 65-12970
ISBN: 978-1-4629-1127-1 (ebook)
First edition, 1965
Thirty-eighth printing, 1998
Printed in Hong Kong
INTRODUCTION
LIKE people of the West, Eastern people have a zodiac. Unlike that of the West, however, the Eastern system has a cycle of twelve years instead of months. Each year of the cycle has its own particular animal symbol whose roots of meaning, origin, and influence stretch back to ancient India and China.
One of the traditional Japanese stories pertaining to this zodiacal system and how it started runs as follows. On a certain New Year's Day, ages ago, Buddha called all the animals of the world to him. He promised that those who came to pay him homage would receive a gift for their fealty. As a mark of honor, they would be given a year which would thereafter be named for them. Of all the animals in the world, only these twelve came, and they came in this order: the rat and the ox, the tiger and the rabbit, the dragon, the snake, and the horse, the sheep and the monkey, the cock, the dog, and the boar.
When each animal received its year, each contributed its characteristic traits to that year, making the year distinctly its own. According to Japanese belief, people born in one of the cycle's years will have those characteristic traits peculiar to the year's animal.
From these twelve zodiacal symbols a person's fortune may be told. His character index may be gauged, and his strength and weaknesses may be known. What are his talents and how may he use them? What are his limits and how may he recognize them? These questions and their answers, answers for good or ill, are based upon the knowledge of when a person was born; and the elements of that person's birth year, coupled with the understanding of those elements, will determine the course of his or her life, socially, personally, and, in Japan, to some extent even politically.
There are three phases in a person's life span, and the fortune of each phase is clearly defined. Japanese fortune-tellers say that they are able to determine the events for all of these phases and advise or counsel alternative courses to avoid misfortune.
People born in one year may have the characteristics and traits belonging to those born in another. This is not at all unusual. Allowances must be made for those traits peculiar to the individual.
The order in which the animals appear in all cycles is always the same. The animals, as we have noted, are: rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, cock, dog, and boar. As with any of the preceding cycles, the first year of the present cycle began with the year of the rat in 1960. The cycle will end in 1971, the year of the boar. The new cycle will begin in 1972, and it will start, again, with the year of the rat.
Serving as a guide, the end pages of this book have six cycles of the Japanese Fortune Calendar dating from 1900 to 1971. The animal years are in their proper sequence, and the standard calendar years on which they fall are listed. To discover your animal year, count backward from this present year in reverse order of the animal-year sequence, to the year of your birth. If you were born in 1928, for example, and this is 1965, the year of the snake, you would count: snake, dragon, rabbit, tiger, ox, rat, boar, etc., etc. backward until you reached your birth year, which would be the year of the dragon.
Coincidentally and conveniently enough, the 1900's started with the year of the rat. If you wish to count forward from the year 1900 to your birth year, you may find it easier. The Japanese find it easier for them to count from the present year back.
CONTENTS
THE YEAR OF THE RAT
PEOPLE born in the year of the rat are noted for their charm. However, they are fussy about small matters and have a tendency to pinch pennies. When such people want something very much, they will work hard for the thing desired. Because they are thrifty, they are able to save a great deal of money. Unfortunately, they may lose what they have saved by spending it on someone they love who does not love them. Curiously enough, only through love does a person born in this year become generous.
Although people born in this year can maintain an outward show of control, they are easily angered. Their value lies in the fact that they are able to control their discontent or anger. Small-minded as these people are, they are quite honest and ambitious and have a tremendous capacity for pursuing a course to its end. They love to spend money on themselves, denying themselves nothing, but they don't lend. They love to gossip, and because of this characteristic they are apt to have short-term friends.
They will have good fortune in the first phase of their life. But in the second phase they will lose everything they have at one time through a mistakenly taken chance or a shattering love affair. Yet in the latter part of their life they will live well and comfortably.
A person born in the year of the rat would do well to marry someone born in either the dragon, the monkey, or the ox year, for people of these years are temperamentally suited to those of the rat year. The next best choice would be one born in the year of the rat, tiger, snake, dog, or boar. The worst would be with one born in the horse year, and it would be doubly disastrous for a rat-year man to marry a woman born in the year called the "fire horse year," which comes every sixty years. A popular superstition claims that a man marrying such a woman does not live out his full span of life.