The Year of the Tiger and Its Reputation

Signs in the cycle carry reputations that affect behaviour in measurable ways. The tiger year has a mixed one, thought in some regions to produce children of strong and difficult character, and in Japan the related sign of the Fire Horse year, hinoeuma, which comes once every sixty years, is associated with an old belief about the fate of women born in it; the Japanese birth rate fell sharply in the fire-horse year of 1966 and demographers have documented the drop. This is worth recording because it shows the calendar is not merely decorative: beliefs attached to the cycle have influenced marriage timing, birth timing and naming across east Asia. Anyone using the system should also know that the Chinese year begins not on 1 January but at the lunisolar new year, which falls between late January and late February, so that people born in January frequently belong to the previous animal.