Year of the Monkey
申 saru · Japanese 猿 · sign 9 of 12
The Monkey is 申, read saru, and Japan has its own — the snow monkeys of Nagano that bathe in hot springs are the same species that gave the sign its local colour.
The word saru sounds like the verb “to leave”, which made monkey charms popular for driving away misfortune — the pun does the work, not the animal. The three wise monkeys carved at Nikkō are Japanese, and their names are a pun too: mizaru, kikazaru, iwazaru.
Years of the Monkey
Each year page gives the exact date the zodiac year began, the element that goes with it, and what it means if you were born in the weeks before that date.
The character readings above are traditional characterisations with a long history, not predictions. The arithmetic on this page — which animal, which element, which date the year turns — is exact and checkable. What the tradition makes of it is culture, and we report it as culture.