he mother of the family rests very largely the determining of
lucky and unlucky days for the beginning or transaction of different
kinds of business. A fortune-teller is consulted for important things,
such as removals or marriages, but in every-day life one cannot be
running to a fortune-teller about everything; and yet there is bad luck
lurking in the background that may baffle all our plans if we do not
observe the proper times and seasons for our undertakings. Just as the
Japanese calendar divides time into cycles of twelve years, each year
named for a different animal, so also the days and hours are divided
into twelves and bear the names of the same twelve animals,--the Chinese
signs of the zodiac. These animals are as follows: the rat, the bull,
the tiger, the hare, the dragon, the snake, the horse, the goat, the
monkey, the cock, the dog, and the boar. Each animal brings its own
kind of good or bad luck into the hour, day, or year over which it
presides, and only a skillful balancer of pros and cons can read aright
the combinations, and understand what the luck of any particular hour in
any particular day of any particular year will be. For instance, the
rat, which is the companion of Daikoku, the money god, is a lucky animal
so far as money is concerned. A person born in the year of the rat will
never need money, and will be economical, possibly miserly; and in one
born on the day of the rat in the year of the rat these chances and
qualities will be doubled. But the luck of the rat may be very seriously
interfered with by the bad luck of the monkey or of the proverbially
unlucky dog, when their days and hours occur in the rat year. On the
other hand, their bad luck may be counteracted by the good luck of the
tiger or hare, for as a rule three animals of different portent are
presiding over human prospects every hour. This makes prophecy a
ticklish business, requiring a wise head, but it also leaves much room
for the subsequent explanation of failures by the superior and unusual
influence of one or another of the animals, as the case may require.
Momentous questions of this kind have frequently to be settled by the
Japanese wife and mother, and she gains dignity and value in her home
and neighborhood according to her skill in interpreting the portents of
the day and hour.

For the greater events of family life the home prophecies are felt to be
too uncertain, and the services of the fortune-teller must be called