Year of the Rabbit
卯 u · Japanese 兎 · sign 4 of 12
The Rabbit is 卯, read u. In Japan the moon is not a man but a rabbit pounding rice cakes — the shape people are taught to see in the full moon — so the animal carries a lunar association that the Chinese original does not emphasise.
Traditional characterisation: careful, diplomatic, quick to sense an atmosphere and quicker to leave a bad one. The Vietnamese zodiac replaces this sign with the cat, which is the clearest evidence that these twelve animals were localised rather than handed down unchanged.
Years of the Rabbit
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.