2004: Year of the Wood Monkey
甲申
kinoe-saru
MonkeyanimalWoodelementYangpolarity22 January 2004year begins22age in 2026
What a Wood Monkey year is read as
Metal cuts Wood, and the Monkey is a Metal branch, so this is one of the openly adversarial pairs. The tradition reads it as pruning: the animal's improvisation constantly trimming the stem's longer plans, which either shapes them or kills them. Wood asks for commitment to a single line of growth; the Monkey's whole reputation rests on abandoning a line the moment a better one appears.
The animal repeats every twelve years, the element every ten, so this exact pairing comes round once in sixty. For the animal on its own, see the Monkey.
If you were born in January or February
The Chinese zodiac year of the Monkey began on 22 January 2004. Anyone born in 2004 before that date belongs to the previous animal, the Goat, in Chinese reckoning.
Japanese eto works differently. Japan moved to the Gregorian calendar in 1873, and the Japanese zodiac year turns on 1 January. So a person born in early 2004 is a Monkey in Japan and a Goat by the Chinese calendar. Both answers are correct in their own system, and this is the single most common mistake in online zodiac calculators.
Who the Monkey is paired with
Three traditional groupings decide this, and all three are fixed by position in the cycle rather than by anyone’s judgement. The san he 三合 triangle joins every fourth branch: the Monkey with the Rat and the Dragon. The liu he 六合 pairing, sometimes called the secret friend, gives it the Snake. Directly opposite, six places away, sits the liu chong 六冲 clash: the Tiger.
These are relationships between signs, not predictions about people. A clash in the old system means the two branches sit at opposite points of the circle — it is geometry that later acquired a meaning, and Japanese practice leans on it far less than Chinese practice does.
The same year returns every sixty
Ten stems and twelve branches take sixty years to line up again, so 甲申 is not just a Monkey year but this particular one. The others in living memory and in reach: 1944, 2064. A sixtieth birthday returns a person to the stem and branch they were born under, which is why it is marked in Japan as kanreki 還暦 — literally the return of the calendar.
Where 申 sits in the old system
Before the branches were animals they were coordinates. 申 marks west-southwest on the compass, the double hour of 15:00-17:00, the 7th month of the old lunisolar calendar, and autumn. Its own fixed element is Metal, and it is the phase that overcomes the Wood stem of 2004 — here the branch has the upper hand.
This is why the old Japanese name for midnight was the hour of the Rat, and why a gate facing north-east is the kimon 鬼門, the demon gate — the directions come from this circle, not from the animals.
2004 in the Japanese calendar
The zodiac is only one of the two year counts a Japanese calendar carries. The other is the era name: what 2004 is in the Japanese calendar, and how to write it on a form.