Four Pillars without a birth hour: why Japan reads charts without it

A fortune-telling parlour in Seoul. As soon as you sit down, the teacher takes out paper and a pen.

"What time were you born?"

Say you don't know, and the pen stops.

"Try calling your mother. I'll wait."

Almost the same thing happens in Taiwan. A reading that starts without the hour of birth is treated as somehow only half a reading.

Come to Japan, though, and the air changes. In magazine horoscope pages and fortune-telling apps alike, all you enter is your date of birth. Without ever asking the hour, the results come out neatly.

When I first noticed this difference, I was quite surprised. We use the same stems and branches, so why is it so different?

First, let us see how much the hour matters.

Imagine two people born on the same day, both on a Jia (甲) day. One was born around 6 in the morning, the other around 6 in the evening. The morning person tends to be read as someone who breaks a path with their own words and strength. (Their hour pillar is Ding Mao, 丁卯: Hurting Officer and Rob Wealth among the Ten Gods.) The evening person tends to be read as someone who builds up learning and earns trust within a set frame. (Their hour pillar is Gui You, 癸酉: Direct Resource and Direct Officer.)

The birthday is exactly the same. Only the hour of birth differs. Yet the last pillar of the chart shows such a different face.

In numbers, a chart has eight characters, and the hour pillar is two of them, a quarter of the whole. Each character's share is one eighth with eight characters and one sixth with six, so the weight of a single character changes by about 25%. Of course the eight characters do not all weigh the same; the old books first give weight to the Day Master and the month of birth. Still, once you count the relations the hour pillar forms with the other pillars, what is lost without the hour is not small.

So do people in Japan not know their hour of birth? Not at all. In Japan the time of birth is often written in the maternal and child health handbook (boshi techō, 母子手帳) that Japanese parents receive. It is the booklet parents get when a child is born, and it keeps the birth record. Japanese Four Pillars teachers, too, advise people who don't know their hour to look for that handbook first. So in Japan, too, there are plenty of clues to the hour. Then why did fortune-telling that never asks the hour spread so widely?

The clue to the answer lies in Japan having two streams. One is Shichū Suimei (四柱推命). It shares its roots with Korean saju and Chinese bazi, and in principle uses all four pillars. The other is Sanmeigaku (算命学). It uses the same stems and branches but, from the start, does not use the hour of birth. It is the kind of fortune-telling known for the word Tenchūsatsu (天中殺). I will write about it in detail in the Japan instalment.

From here on, this is still at the hypothesis stage. Including the parts I have not been able to confirm, I will set down what I think now. Fortune-telling by date of birth alone lets anyone, anywhere, find their own answer at once. No need to hunt for a handbook or call your parents. In places where many people read at the same time, like magazine horoscope pages or TV fortune corners, that convenience must have been a great strength. Print one quick-reference table of birth dates on a page, and every reader can find their own answer. Fortune-telling that needs the hour of birth cannot do that. I believe the reason systems that do not use the hour have been so widely loved in Japan, side by side with Shichū Suimei, is that this convenience suited its era. In Korea and Taiwan, by contrast, fortune-telling still strongly keeps the form of a one-to-one consultation. You ask even the hour to build a chart for the one person in front of you. Perhaps the shape of that setting is what has kept the habit of valuing the hour.

You may be thinking, "So the Japanese way is wrong?" I don't think so. What I have said throughout my lessons is that old readings are words born on the assumptions of their own era. The structure is the same, but the channels through which it shows differ from age to age. The same goes for countries. Depending on which road the same Four Pillars came in by, who learned it and where it was used, what people gave weight to has changed. Being wrong and being different must be told apart.

In this special series, we will look at the Four Pillars of five places in turn.

Japan: a Confucian scholar of the Edo period introduced a Chinese manual, and after passing through many schools, Shichū Suimei and Sanmeigaku grew up side by side. Korea: in the Joseon dynasty, the state selected officials of fate calculation (命課學) by examination. From what I have heard from my teachers, it was also passed on as family learning in scholar-gentry households because of marriage, and after the Korean War it developed as a way to make a living. Mainland China: it shrank sharply after 1949, then returned to popular life and publishing after reform and opening. Taiwan: people and books that crossed the sea were added on top of the folk tradition already there. Hong Kong: a commercial city where people and schools from all over China gathered. From what I have seen, it is a place where the art has been honed very precisely.

I studied Four Pillars in Korea for more than twenty years, and I am now in Taiwan to learn the Four Pillars of Taiwan and Hong Kong. After Taiwan, I plan to study in Japan too. That is why I have always wondered about these differences.

People in Japan have the maternal and child health handbook; people in Korea have their parents' memories. The quarter of your chart you have not yet seen may still be waiting there.

Mingyeong uses the hour of birth to set up all eight characters, and corrects the time by the longitude of your birthplace. On that basis it shows which paths historical figures with a similar temperament chose in their own era.

It is fine if you don't know your hour of birth. You can read with three pillars. If you answer five questions about your tendencies, Mingyeong may also suggest likely time slots in light of traditional readings. This is only an estimate, though, and it is not a feature that finds out your actual time of birth.