Facts & lineage · transmission and scope
A calendar lineage, not a copied horoscope
The evidence tracks experts, texts, calendar offices and reforms. It does not show twelve timeless Japanese personality types arriving in one package.
What the record can date
The Nihon Shoki record summarized by the National Diet Library says the Japanese court asked Baekje in 553 for calendar texts and a calendar expert. Its timeline records an expert arriving in 554 and the first use of the Genka calendar in 604.
Under the later legal state, the Onmyoryo—the court bureau for yin-yang matters—handled calendar production. This places stem-branch notation inside an institutional history of timekeeping rather than a free-floating animal horoscope.
Eto is not all of Onmyodo
The National Museum of Japanese History describes onmyoji working with calendars and astronomy, then also with divination, ritual and charms as the tradition changed. The twelve branches participated in some of those systems, but they do not name the whole field.
So this phase does not turn a year animal into an “Onmyodo reading.” A responsible Onmyodo section would need its own sources, historical periods and claim boundaries.
What stays in quarantine
Structure first
Modern animal personalities and compatibility tables remain unpublished until Japanese sources can be compared claim by claim. Rewording a Chinese zodiac list with Japanese animal names would erase exactly the regional history this section exists to show.