Qian to Lü: Matsukata Masayoshi asks about the harvest

1883 (Meiji 16), month not recorded · Matsukata Masayoshi, then Minister of Finance · 中文版

The cast

Hexagram 1 Qián (The Creative), line 3 moving, changing to Hexagram 10 Lǚ (Treading).

Original text

明治十六年某月。謁松方大藏卿。卿曰。今春以來。深雪霖雨。寒氣殊甚。余竊恐年穀之不登。子幸占其豐凶。筮得乾之履。爻辭曰。九三君子終日乾乾。夕惕若。厲无咎。斷曰。乾者純陽之卦。故曰乾爲天。是乾者天也。取象於大陽。且六爻皆陽而無一陰。其辭曰終日乾乾者。乾乾猶干干也。即旱魃之義也。今九三變而互卦見離之日。是全卦無雨水之象。可知本年必旱。夕惕若者。謂炎熱至夜而不去也。雖人民多畏久旱。而五穀豐熟。故曰厲无咎也。且二爻曰見龍在田。即田稻豐登之象。今三爻變離。見離火照徹田面。縱旱不爲虐。是以无咎。卿曰。占之驗與否姑舍是。其於活斷。可謂老成練熟者也。

In plain words

In 1883 Takashima called on the finance minister, Matsukata Masayoshi. Matsukata said: since the start of spring we have had deep snow and long rains, and it has been unusually cold; I privately fear a poor harvest, so please divine whether the year will be good or bad. The cast gave Qian with its third line moving, changing into Lü. The line reads: "Nine in the third place: the noble one is active all day long, and at dusk still wary; danger, but no fault."

Takashima's judgment: Qian is pure yang, which is why it is called "Qian is heaven", and its image is the sun; all six lines are yang, without a single yin line. The line says "active all day long", and here the doubled word can be read in its other sense of "dry", that is, drought. Now that the third line changes, the inner trigrams of the new figure show Li, the sun. The whole figure has no image of rain or water, so the year will surely be dry. "At dusk still wary" means the heat does not leave even at night.

Though people would fear a long drought, the grain would ripen well, hence "danger, but no fault". Moreover, the second line says "a dragon appears in the field", an image of a rich rice crop; and with the third line turning into Li, the fire of Li lights up the fields, so even a drought would do no harm. That is why there is no fault.

Matsukata replied: whether the reading proves right or not, let us leave aside; as a flexible interpretation, it is the work of a seasoned hand.

How Takashima read it

Only one line text is read: with one moving line, the text of that line, the third of Qian, is read.
The hexagram is pure yang: with no yin line, and yin able to stand for rain and water, "the whole figure has no image of rain". Yin and yang are mapped straight onto the weather.
A word is taken in another sense: the doubled word is usually understood as tireless effort; Takashima uses its other sense, "dry", to get drought. This is play on the word, not the line's plain meaning.
The changed figure is read through its inner trigram: the second to fourth lines of Lü form Li, the sun and fire, which strengthens the image of drought.
A neighbouring line is brought in: the second line's "dragon in the field" gives a good rice crop, and "danger, but no fault" ties it together as a drought that does no harm.

About the outcome

The text does not record how the harvest actually turned out, only Matsukata's remark that whether the reading proved right could be left aside; what he praised was the flexibility of the interpretation. That is also how this site reads these cases: for the reasoning, not for whether they came true.

Applying it to your situation

When we fear a bad year, we tend to picture only one way it can go wrong. Takashima put "drought" and "good harvest" in the same judgment: poor conditions do not have to mean a poor result. In the thing you are worried about, is there a part that would still hold even in the worst case?

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