Year of the Rooster
酉 tori · Japanese 鶏 · sign 10 of 12
The Rooster, 酉, read tori, uses the general word for bird rather than a word for chicken. Traditional readings give it punctuality, frankness and an eye for detail that other people find exhausting.
The sign gives its name to the Tori no Ichi fairs held on Rooster days each November, where businesses buy decorated bamboo rakes to “rake in” fortune for the coming year. Some Novembers have two Rooster days and some have three, and the three-fair years are traditionally said to bring fires.
Years of the Rooster
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.