Cast & Chart

Omikuji lot 18 of 100

Hemp Cloth Turned Green

吉 Kichi, Good fortune

離暗出明時

麻衣變緑衣

舊憂終是退

遇禄應交輝

Leaving the dark, coming out into a time of light.

Hemp clothes change to green robes.

Old worries recede in the end.

Meeting a stipend, brightness answers brightness.

What this lot says

The verse walks out of darkness into daylight. Coarse hemp is exchanged for a green robe, which we take to be the dress of someone holding office, and that identification is ours. Former worries fall back, and pay and light meet at the close.

Kichi, Good fortune, is the grade in the book as printed. A change of clothes marks the change of standing, and nothing in the four lines pulls against it.

Applied to modern life, the image is of a visible change in role after a long plain stretch. Which old worry have you kept wearing after the reason for it has gone?

A lot is a prompt for reflection. It cannot promise a result, and it is no substitute for medical, legal or financial advice.

The printed text

No differences from the 1684 printing are recorded for this lot.

Credits

The verse and grade were read from the two scanned printings named here. The title, translation and reading are our own and modern.

Our own English. The kana commentary printed under each verse in the old books was not read.