Saturday, April 4, 2009

大安(taian)

Japanese people tend to choose the good date to do something important such as wedding or moving or buying something expensive. The luckiest day is called taian (大安) in rokuyo (六曜), the Japanese calendar. There are 6 days in a cycle of that calendar. They repeat in the following order: sensho (先勝), tomobiki(友引), senpu(先負), butsumetsu(仏滅), taian(大安), shakku(赤口).
Each meaning is
sensho(先勝): good in the morning, bad in the afternoon
tomobiki(友引): only noon is bad
senpu(先負): bad in the morning, good in the afternoon
butsumetsu(仏滅): worst all day long
taian(大安): lucky all day long
shakku(赤口): only noon is good, morning and evening are bad
This idea came from China and became popular in the Edo era.
There are many weddings on taian and few weddings on butsumetsu. People avoid having funeral on tomobiki because friends (友:tomo) will be taken (引く:hiku) to the other world.
Today is Saturday and taian, I think there are many weddings here and there.

1 comment:

  1. Fascinating Thank you. My Japanese relative told me it was tai-an today so I looked it up and found your blog

    ReplyDelete