Tenshō Year Four (1576)

Tenshō Year Four (1576), the Year of the Rat, is identified through a conversation between Toranaga and an old friend about when the friend arrived in Japan. The correction from the third year to the fourth makes the date precise while opening onto a larger stretch of remembered history: Toranaga observes that much has happened in the intervening twenty-four years.

Era Names and Imperial Authority

The date belongs to the era called Tenshō, whose name means Heaven Righteousness. Era names were selected by scholars from ancient Chinese books for auspicious meaning, but the Emperor chose when an era began or ended. A catastrophe or a godsend might mark that change; an era could last a single year or fifty. The calendar therefore measures time not only by numbered years but by an imperial decision that could recast the historical period.

The Year of the Rat

Each year carried both a number within its era and an animal designation from a twelve-part succession also used to mark the hours of the day: Hare, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Goat, Monkey, Cock, Dog, Boar, Rat, Ox, and Tiger. The first year of Tenshō fell in the Year of the Cock, making its fourth year the Year of the Rat. The passage identifies 1576 with that combination of era year and animal cycle.

A Date Within a Long Retrospect

The date is established in a brief exchange: Toranaga asks whether his companion arrived in the third year of Tenshō, and the friend corrects him to the fourth, recalling it as the Year of the Rat. The correction is followed by Toranaga’s reflection on the twenty-four years since that arrival. The previous year had brought a great tidal wave in which two hundred thousand people died, giving the calendar’s orderly sequence a stark historical measure of disaster. Tenshō Year Four thus serves both as a precise point in the chronology and as the starting marker for a long interval of change.