Da You to Ding: a samurai-turned-merchant asks about his future

1871 (Meiji 4) · Fukae, a close friend of Takashima from a samurai family of Saga · 中文版

The cast

Hexagram 14 Dà Yǒu (Great Possession), line 1 moving, changing to Hexagram 50 Dǐng (The Cauldron).

Original text

佐賀縣士族深江某。余之親友也。明治四年。從事紙石灰等商業。來橫濱。爲奸商所敗。此人雖有才學。不慣商業。請余占後來運氣。筮得大有之鼎。爻辭曰。初九无交害。匪咎。艱則无咎。斷曰。此卦大有。足見後運昌盛。今九居初爻。是將近運來之時。故不免爲小人所害。雖近來有意外之損失。元來足下於商業本未慣習。雖有小害。未足咎也。今謀出仕官途。將來必得升遷。但一値盛運。不思厥艱。咎必難免。惟持盈保泰。雖有而不忘其艱。時時刻苦自勉。以今日之苦。期他日之亨。即得他日之亨。又仍慮今日之苦。不忘其艱。則无咎也。如是則可長保其有矣。願足下勉之。後果如此占。

In plain words

Fukae, from a samurai family of Saga prefecture, was a close friend of Takashima. In 1871 he went into trade in paper, lime and the like, came to Yokohama, and was ruined by a crooked merchant. He was able and learned but had no experience of business, and he asked Takashima about his future. The cast gave Da You with its first line moving, changing into Ding. The line reads: "Nine at the beginning: no dealings with harm; this is no fault; mindful of hardship, there is no fault."

Takashima's judgment: the hexagram is Great Possession, which shows good fortune ahead. The yang line in the first place means good times are near but not yet here, so he could not avoid being harmed by petty people. Though he had suffered an unexpected loss, he had never been trained in business, and a small setback was nothing to blame himself for. He now planned to enter government service, and would surely be promoted.

But if, once fortune favoured him, he stopped thinking of hardship, mistakes would surely follow. He must keep what he had with care: though well off, not forget hardship, and push himself constantly; use today's hardship to aim at tomorrow's success, and when that success came, still remember today's hardship. Then there would be no fault, and he could keep what he had for a long time. Takashima urged him to take this to heart.

It turned out as the reading said.

How Takashima read it

Only one line text is read: with one moving line, the first line of Da You is read.
The hexagram is read as abundance: great possession points to good fortune ahead.
The line's place is the bottom: a yang line at the start means good times are coming but not yet here, which explains the present setback, "no dealings with harm; no fault".
"Mindful of hardship, no fault" is expanded into a warning about holding on to success, shifting the question from "will things improve?" to "how will you keep them once they do?"

About the outcome

"It turned out as the reading said" is Takashima's own record; it does not say what post Fukae took or how far he rose. This site does not treat it as evidence. What is worth reading is how one line is used both to explain a past failure and to warn against future complacency.

Applying it to your situation

After a setback, what we most want to know is whether things will get better. This line asks one more question: once they do, will you remember now? How do you plan to carry this lesson into the good times?

Original: Takashima Kaemon, Takashima Ekidan (expanded edition), recorded by Yanagida Ikusaku, Chinese text by Wang Zhiben, 1901. Translation, notes and reflection by this site.

These are historical records kept by the diviner himself. The outcomes are his own account; this site uses them to study how the lines were read, not as evidence that divination predicts events.

Cast a hexagram · All of Takashima's cases · The 64 hexagrams