New Year 2015 was a calendar-true nine-day holiday; in 2016, taking December 28 off also made nine days. From late 2016 into New Year 2017 it is only six days in a row — a rather quiet year-end. Today is the 29th, so only five days left. Some of you may have given up on overseas travel.
Palaceside Building will be closed December 31 (Sat) through January 3 (Tue), as on ordinary holidays; the east and west entrances and the escalator from the subway gates will be shut. On December 29 and 30 some first-floor and first-basement shops and restaurants will be open. Please check with each shop.
2017 is Hinoto-tori in the ten stems and twelve branches. As the note at the end explains, “hinoto” comes from “younger brother of fire” (the sun in nature) and “tori” is metal. Fire melts metal — fire overcomes metal — so in the five phases it is “mutual overcoming.” Wood overcomes earth, earth water, water fire, fire metal, metal wood. In the Hinoto-tori pairing, hinoto wins over tori.
The ten stems are ten characters showing plants maturing and withering. 2017’s “tei/hinoto” is said to mean a man in his prime, plants in full form. A sense of being in one’s growing years.
The twelve branches evoke animals, but also a plant’s life; the rooster character depicts a wine jar, extracting sake from the harvest, “ripening,” fruit fully mature and growing no further.
What does pairing “growing years” with “no more growth” mean? An investment trust firm has a report relating it to the market. According to it—
First the twelve branches. There is a market proverb: “Tatsumi at the ceiling, Uma sliding down, Hitsuji patience, Saru-tori stirring, Inu laughing, I settling, Ne prospering, Ushi stumbling, Tora running a thousand ri, Usagi leaping.” In plain terms: Dragon and Snake years see a peak, Horse a fall, Sheep endurance, Monkey and Rooster wild swings, Dog a rise, Boar consolidation, Rat a further rise, Ox a fall, Tiger a big rise, Rabbit a rise too.
The ten stems have no proverb, but averaging TOPIX returns over the past six cycles, Tei and Kanoe years were negative, the others positive. The same six-cycle tally for the branches: Ox and Horse fell, the others rose; Rooster had the second-highest gain after Rat.
Will hinoto win, or tori? Then again, fire melts metal. Let’s forget that and believe “the rooster stirs.”
In any case, we only wish for a brighter world. A happy new year to you all.
<The ten stems and twelve branches> “Kan” in jikkan comes from a tree trunk: ko, otsu, hei, tei, bo, ki, ko, shin, jin, ki, matched to the five phases (wood, fire, earth, metal, water) and paired in turn with e (yang, elder brother) and to (yin, younger brother): kinoe, kinoto, hinoe, hinoto, tsuchinoe, tsuchinoto, kanoe, kanoto, mizunoe, mizunoto.
“Shi” in junishi is a branch of that trunk. In ancient China the sky was divided into twelve directions: ne, ushi, tora, u, tatsu, mi, uma, hitsuji, saru, tori, inu, i. Matched to the five phases from Rat to Boar they are water, earth, wood, wood, earth, fire, fire, earth, metal, metal, earth, water.
The stem–branch pairing cycles every 60 years (the LCM of 10 and 12), hence “sixty kan-shi,” or simply “eto.”