Xiao Chu to Da Chu: Okada Heizō starts a business

March 1871 (Meiji 4) · Okada Heizō, a merchant of the early Meiji years and a friend of Takashima · 中文版

The cast

Hexagram 9 Xiǎo Chù (Small Taming), line 5 moving, changing to Hexagram 26 Dà Chù (Great Taming).

Original text

明治四年。三月。友人岡田平藏氏來曰。余今將創一業。請占其成否。筮得小畜之大畜。爻辭曰。九五有孚攣如。富以其隣。斷曰。此卦有畜積貨財之象。定可得商利之滿足也。但必得一信實夥友。以主其事。獲利之後。當分肥及之。庶幾相與有成也。後果如此占。

In plain words

In March 1871 Takashima's friend Okada Heizō came and said: I am about to start a business; please divine whether it will succeed. The cast gave Xiao Chu with its fifth line moving, changing into Da Chu. The line reads: "Nine in the fifth place: there is trust that binds them together; rich together with the neighbour."

Takashima's judgment: this hexagram has the image of accumulating goods and wealth, so the business will surely bring satisfying profits. But he must find an honest and reliable partner to run it, and once there is profit, share it with him; then they may well succeed together.

It turned out as the reading said.

How Takashima read it

Only one line text is read: with one moving line, the fifth line of Xiao Chu is read.
The hexagram is read as accumulation, mapped onto goods and profit.
The line's "trust that binds" becomes the need for a partner who can be trusted.
The line's "rich together with the neighbour" becomes sharing the profit with that partner. Xiao Chu has only one yin line, the fourth, right beside the fifth, so the "neighbour" has a place in the figure.

About the outcome

"It turned out as the reading said" is a single line; the text does not say what the business was, how much it made or who the partner was. It is Takashima's own record, and this site does not treat it as evidence. What is worth reading is how one line text is split into two concrete pieces of advice: find someone trustworthy, and share the gains.

Applying it to your situation

A venture often succeeds only with others. "Rich together with the neighbour" suggests that those willing to share are the ones who keep their partners. In what you are about to start, who is the trustworthy "neighbour", and how do you plan to share the results with them?

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