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Eto and junishi in Japan: native readings, regional animals and a civil calendar remade in 1873.

Eto · 干支 · more than an animal label

The Japanese cycle

In careful usage, eto is a stem and a branch together. The twelve animals belong to the junishi, the branches. Popular speech often calls the animal alone your eto; this foundation keeps both meanings visible.

Japan did not merely translate every animal

The characters and sixty-pair mechanism arrived with continental calendrical knowledge, but Japanese readings are their own: 甲子 is kinoe-ne, not Jia-Zi.

Two English labels make the regional difference especially visible. Japanese 未 is hitsuji, sheep; 亥 is i and its animal is inoshishi, wild boar—not the Goat and Pig labels commonly used for the Chinese cycle.

The twelve branches

A modern boundary with a historical cut

For modern Japan, the civil year changes on 1 January. That convention begins with the Meiji reform: the day after Meiji 5, month 12, day 2 was declared 1 January 1873. The calculator starts there and refuses to backfill older dates with a calendar Japan had not adopted. Read the calendar contract →

Bodhastra documents what astrological traditions have said, and when they started saying it. It is presented as cultural history and entertainment. Nothing here is medical, psychological, financial or predictive advice, and nothing here is a claim about what will happen to you.

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Place data from GeoNames, used under CC BY 4.0.