Shichū Suimei calculator · Japanese Four Pillars · free
Enter your date, time and place of birth to see your Shichū Suimei (四柱推命) chart: the year, month, day and hour pillars with the ten stems (jikkan) and twelve branches (jūnishi), your Day Master (nikkan), the hidden stems (zōkan) and the Ten Gods (tsūhensei), with the Japanese names beside the Chinese ones. Calculated from the solar terms, without an account and without AI.
Shichū Suimei is the Japanese reading of the Four Pillars, the method known in China as BaZi and in Korea as Saju. The year pillar changes at Risshun (立春), around 4 February, the month pillars at the solar terms, the day pillars follow an unbroken cycle of sixty days, and the hour pillars divide the day into twelve two-hour periods. AstroSensus uses one engine for all three traditions, so the pillars here are exactly those of the BaZi calculator; only the names change.
The stems keep their old Japanese readings, which pair a phase with “elder” and “younger” brother: kinoe (甲) and kinoto (乙) for Wood, hinoe and hinoto for Fire, tsuchinoe and tsuchinoto for Earth, kanoe and kanoto for Metal, mizunoe and mizunoto for Water. The branches are read as the animals of the Japanese zodiac: ne, ushi, tora, u, tatsu, mi, uma, hitsuji, saru, tori, inu, i.
Japan’s summer time of 1948–1951 is applied automatically, and the result can be read in the solar time of the birthplace. The strength of the Day Master, the twelve stages (十二運) and the ten-year luck cycles (大運 taiun) are not shown yet: schools judge them differently, and we would rather show nothing than one school’s verdict without saying so.
The same eight characters, named in Japanese. The calculator shows both names on every sign.
| Concept | Chinese (BaZi) | Japanese (Shichū Suimei) |
|---|---|---|
| Four Pillars (eight characters) | 八字 bāzì | 四柱推命 shichū suimei |
| Day Master | 日主 rìzhǔ | 日干 nikkan |
| Heavenly Stems | 天干 tiāngān | 十干 jikkan |
| Earthly Branches | 地支 dìzhī | 十二支 jūnishi |
| Ten Gods | 十神 shíshén | 通変星 tsūhensei |
| Hidden stems | 藏干 cánggān | 蔵干 zōkan |
| Five phases | 五行 wǔxíng | 五行 gogyō |
| Year pillar | 年柱 niánzhù | 年柱 nenchū |
| Month pillar | 月柱 yuèzhù | 月柱 getchū |
| Day pillar | 日柱 rìzhù | 日柱 nitchū |
| Hour pillar | 時柱 shízhù | 時柱 jichū |
Year, month, day and hour — each stem (十干) and branch (十二支) in kanji, with its Japanese reading, romanization and a plain name.
The stem of the day pillar, the point the whole chart is read from, with the image the tradition gives it.
The stems hidden in each branch and how every stem relates to your Day Master, under their Japanese and Chinese names.
How many signs of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water the chart holds, and which pillars combine or clash.
Want your Western birth chart too — planets, houses and aspects? Open the free birth chart
Korea and Japan read the same Four Pillars under their own names. The pillars are calculated the same way; only the names differ.
Shichū Suimei (四柱推命, “reading destiny from four pillars”) is the Japanese name for the Four Pillars method. Each pillar — year, month, day and hour — has one of the ten stems and one of the twelve branches, eight characters in all. It is a traditional symbolic system: it describes how a tradition reads a chart, not proven facts about a person.
The pillars are calculated the same way: the same solar terms, the same sixty-day cycle and the same eight characters. Japanese practice names them in Japanese — the Day Master is nikkan (日干), the stems jikkan (十干), the branches jūnishi (十二支) and the Ten Gods tsūhensei (通変星). Japanese schools also use further tables, such as the twelve stages (十二運), that this calculator does not show yet.
As in BaZi, the year changes at Risshun (立春), the start of spring, when the Sun reaches 315° of longitude around 4 February — not on 1 January and not at the lunar New Year. The months begin at the solar terms too, so someone born in January belongs to the previous year of the chart.
Japan Standard Time is counted from 135° East, the meridian of Akashi. Tokyo lies near 139.7° East, so there the Sun runs about 19 minutes ahead of the clock, while in Fukuoka it runs about 18 minutes behind. Some practitioners read the hour pillar from this local solar time. The calculator reads the official clock by default and offers solar time as an option on the result.
Yes. Japan had summer time from 1948 to 1951, and the time-zone history of the birthplace is applied automatically. Enter the time as it was on the clock.
Then the calculator shows three pillars — year, month and day — and leaves the hour pillar (jichū) empty instead of guessing it. The hour pillar changes every two hours.
Not in our database. It stays in your browser session for up to two hours and is deleted when you press “Forget my data”. Only if you create an account does it become the first person in that account.