Japan is a country with several calendars. The Western, or Gregorian, is common in the Asian country, which also has its own calendar, based on the “Eras”, the reign periods of its emperors. But in the culture of the country there is still the embers of another calendar, the one based on the traditional Chinese calendar.
In 2026 we can verify to what extent this embers is still alive in the Japanese archipelago.
To understand why we have to go a complete cycle behind, at the year 1966. That year Japan experienced a significant phenomenon: a Fall marked in birthan abrupt contrast with the historical series. If in 1965 around 1.82 million children were born, in 1966 the figure was 1.36 million, 25% less, he explains Japan Times. The births were immediately recovered: in 1967 they rolled 1.94 million. The collapse in the birth can also be seen in the Japanese Ministry of Health. As explained by the international agency, the fertility rate went from 2.14 in 1965 to 1.58 in 1966, to “bounce” up to 2.23 the following year.
The data was not the result of a statistical anomaly or a disaster, neither natural nor created by the human being. We can see this reflected in an increase in induced abortions in the country, which recorded a study published in 1974 in the magazine Annals of Human Biology. It was the fault of a superstition.
The year 1966 corresponded (approximately) to the year of the horse of fire in the cycle on which the traditional Chinese calendar is based. The calendar based on the sexagesimal cycle used in some Asian countries relates each of the 60 years of its cycle with one of twelve animals (which includes the rat, the tiger, the dragon and also the horse), and one of five elements (wood, fire, earth, metal and water).
And what is special for the year Hinoeuma? According to Japanese superstition, women born during the Fire horse year They will kill their husbands or, according to translations, will be at least the cause of the death of their spouses.
This would have taken many couples of childbearing age to avoid pregnancy (or even interrupt), at a time when, as Emi Suzuki and Haruna Kashiwase explain in an article for the Data Blog of the World Bank, there was no possibility of a selective abortion depending on sex. Another important detail mentioned in its article is that the phenomenon occurred more marked in rural Japan and not so much in the urban context, which reflects the greatest follow -up that this type of superstitions used to have in the rural world.
60 years of change
60 years is a long time and Japanese society is no longer the one. Will something be repeated again similar in 2026? There are two reasons why it can be suspected that, if the fall in birth rate occurs, this will be of a minor magnitude of experienced in 66.
The first reason is in the slightest weight that today has the superstitious in society. Japan lived an abrupt transition series between the end of the EDO era and the present. One of the most vertiginous progress is the one that led a country ravaged by war to become a worldwide technological innovation pole. 1966 can be seen as a year of transition in this context, 2026 not so much. In any case, the peculiar relationship between Japanese tradition and modernity is often difficult to understand from the western point of view, so it is not convenient to venture into this direction.
However, there is another fact that takes us away from that year 1966: 1.15.
We said at the beginning that between 1965 and 1966 the Japanese fertility rate went from 2.1 to 1.6. The fall associated with the year Hinoeuma It was punctual and was reversed the following year, but if we looked at the set of the Historical data We see that it is a small detour in a curve with a marked trend: Japan runs out of birth progressively.
According to data from the Japanese Ministry of Health cited by Suzuki and Kashiwase, the Japanese fertility rate was descending throughout the second half of the twentieth century, first quickly and then slower. In 1989 the birth rate would be located again in 1.58 and has not been recovered or expected to do so. It was known as the “shock of 1.57 ”when the rate fell below the year Hinoeuma. Today the rate is already at 1.15.
A few years before, in 1987, Japan celebrated a kind of “Fiesta de Quintos”, a celebration in honor of the generation that had turned 20 in the previous months, those born in Hinoeuma. The newspaper The New York Times It echoed that celebration and superstition that had diminished the generation held that year. Then it seemed clear that the “fifths” of 86 would be the smallest promotion in history, but they would only be for a short time.
In WorldOfSoftware | While the population of Japan sinks irremediably, Tokyo grows. There is an explanation: Ikkyoku Shūchū
Imagen | Evgeny Tchebotarev
