Sui to Dui: whether to marry a daughter to a widowed gentleman

Date not recorded · Judge Bitō of Kumamoto, who had studied the Changes with Takashima · 中文版

The cast

Hexagram 17 Suí (Following), line 2 moving, changing to Hexagram 58 Duì (The Joyous Lake).

Original text

熊本縣人尾藤判事。甞學易於余。同氏有孃。年十八。容貌艷麗。時某縉紳喪妻。以媒求婚於氏。氏因請占其吉凶。筮得隨之兌。爻辭曰。六二。係小子。失丈夫。斷曰。此卦剛從柔之象。而非柔從剛之時也。今足下卜嫁女。則女家爲柔。而男家爲剛也。爻象以剛從柔。殊嫌相反。二爻曰。係小子。失丈夫。想某縉紳必是老夫也。令孃或不喜之。宜嫁少年小子。斯兩相得也。氏聞之。如有所感悟曰。夫婦者。女子終生之事也。不可以親之所好。枉女子之志。遂謝縉紳。

In plain words

Judge Bitō of Kumamoto had once studied the Changes with Takashima. He had a daughter of eighteen, a beautiful young woman. A gentleman who had lost his wife sent a go-between to ask for her hand, and the judge asked Takashima whether the match would be good. The cast gave Sui with its second line moving, changing into Dui. The line reads: "Six in the second place: holding to the young man, one loses the grown man."

Takashima's judgment: this hexagram is the firm following the yielding, not a time for the yielding to follow the firm. In asking about a daughter's marriage, the bride's family is the yielding side and the groom's the firm; but the hexagram has the firm following the yielding, the reverse of this match. The line says "holding to the young man, one loses the grown man": the gentleman must be an older man, and your daughter may not care for him. She would do better to marry a young man, so that the two suit each other.

The judge seemed struck by this, and said: marriage is the matter of a woman's whole life; a parent's preference must not override the daughter's own wishes. He declined the gentleman.

How Takashima read it

Only one line text is read: with one moving line, the second line of Sui is read.
The hexagram is read as the firm following the yielding: firm Zhen sits beneath yielding Dui. Assigning the groom's family to the firm and the bride's to the yielding, the match runs against the figure.
The line is taken literally: "the young man" is a young man, "the grown man" an older one, from which Takashima infers that the suitor is well on in years.
It ends with the daughter's own wishes: "your daughter may not care for him" is the reminder Takashima draws from the lines; the decision is left to the father.

About the outcome

This case records no outcome, only the judge's decision. The suitor's age, which Takashima inferred, was something the judge already knew; the hexagram's role here looks more like helping a father see the matter from his daughter's side.

Applying it to your situation

When deciding for others, we often assume we know what is best for them. What the judge said in the end was that a parent's preference must not override the daughter's own wishes. In what you are deciding on someone else's behalf, have you asked what they actually want?

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