Japanese Zodiac Calculator (干支)

The Japanese zodiac, called eto (干支), is a traditional 12-year cycle that assigns one of twelve animals to each year — Rat, Ox, Tiger, Rabbit, Dragon, Snake, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Rooster, Dog, and Boar. Each animal is paired with one of ten heavenly stems (representing the five elements in their yin and yang forms) to produce the larger 60-year sexagenary cycle. Eto is still used in Japan on New Year cards (nengajou), shrine plaques, and cultural references.

Your Japanese zodiac is determined by the year you were born, with the cycle restarting every 12 years. Enter your birth year in the calculator above and the tool returns your animal sign, the corresponding heavenly stem, and the full sexagenary year name. For example, anyone born in 1984, 1996, 2008, or 2020 is a Rat (子), and someone born in 2024 is a Dragon (辰).

They share the same 12-year animal cycle and the same 60-year sexagenary structure, so most people get the same sign in both systems. The single notable difference is the twelfth animal: Japan uses the wild boar (inoshishi, 亥) while China uses the domestic pig (zhū, 豚). The cycle order, animal personalities, and the heavenly stems are otherwise the same.

The animals are identical except for the twelfth — Japan replaces pig with boar. So if a chart says "Pig" but you are reading Japanese sources, the same year is "Boar" (亥) in Japanese. There can also be a one-day mismatch around January and early February if a chart uses lunar new year as the cusp, which is why this calculator notes the Jan 1 simplification clearly.

The 60-year cycle, called jikkan junishi (十干十二支) or kanshi, comes from pairing the 10 heavenly stems with the 12 earthly branches. Because 10 and 12 share a common factor of 2, only 60 unique combinations exist before the cycle repeats. This is why turning 60 in Japan is celebrated as kanreki (還暦) — you have lived a full sexagenary cycle and are starting over.

Each heavenly stem is either yang (陽, active) or yin (陰, receptive). Yang years tend to be associated with outward action, initiation, and assertive energy; yin years with reflection, support, and patient effort. Both are equally valued — the system pairs them deliberately so that every 10 stems include both polarities of all five elements.

Strictly traditional calculators use lunar new year as the cusp, which falls in late January or early February depending on the year. Anyone born before that cusp gets the previous year's sign. Modern Japanese practice usually uses January 1, which is the convention this calculator follows. If you were born in January or early February and the result feels off, look up the lunar new year date for your birth year for the strictly traditional reading.

No animal is universally lucky or unlucky in Japanese tradition — the value comes from the stem-animal combination. The Dragon (辰) is broadly seen as auspicious, especially the Wood Dragon (甲辰, e.g. 2024). The Fire Horse (丙午, hinoe-uma, e.g. 1966) carries an old superstition about strong-willed personalities and historically saw a sharp drop in births. Most Japanese today treat eto as cultural shorthand rather than a fortune-telling system.