Lü to Song: business is slow; move to Tokyo?

Date not recorded · A merchant in Yokohama · 中文版

The cast

Hexagram 10 Lǚ (Treading), line 1 moving, changing to Hexagram 6 Sòng (Conflict).

Original text

橫濱商人某氏來告曰。近來商業不振。得不償失。欲移居於東京。別創事業。請占前途吉凶。筮得履之訟。爻辭曰。初九素履往。无咎。斷曰。此卦兌之少女。履乾父之後。明明敎人以謹守先業。商務之通塞。未可拘一時而論。物價高低。隨時變換。前失後得。亦事之常。何必遽作改計。不如守舊。久必亨通也。故曰素履往。无咎。某氏聞之。隨絕改圖之念。仍在橫濱。從事舊業。未幾而商機一變。大獲利益。

In plain words

A Yokohama merchant came and said: business has been slow lately and I am losing more than I make; I am thinking of moving to Tokyo and starting something new. Please divine how it will go. The cast gave Lü with its first line moving, changing into Song. The line reads: "Nine at the beginning: plain steps forward; no fault."

Takashima's judgment: in this hexagram Dui, the youngest daughter, walks behind Qian, the father, which plainly teaches keeping carefully to the business one inherited. Whether trade flows or stalls cannot be judged from one moment; prices go up and down with the times, and losing first and gaining later is normal. Why rush to change course? Better to keep to the old business; in time it will prosper. Hence "plain steps forward; no fault".

Hearing this, the merchant dropped the idea of changing course and stayed in Yokohama in his old trade. Before long the market turned, and he made a large profit.

How Takashima read it

Only one line text is read: with one moving line, the first line of Lü is read.
The trigrams are read as family roles: Dui below is the youngest daughter, Qian above the father, and "the daughter walking behind the father" becomes following the path of those before, that is, keeping to the old business.
The line's "plain steps" means one's ordinary, unadorned way, which Takashima turns into carrying on as before rather than starting over.
The rest is ordinary commercial sense: markets rise and fall, and one bad spell does not settle the future.

About the outcome

The turn in the market and the large profit are Takashima's own record. Markets do turn, so it is no surprise that someone who stayed caught the upswing, and the book would not record those who stayed and never saw it. This site does not treat it as evidence; what is worth reading is how the two trigrams are read as a family relationship.

Applying it to your situation

When you want to start over somewhere else, "plain steps forward" suggests first asking whether the trouble lies in the place or in the season. If this is just a low point in the cycle, how much would moving actually fix?

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