“the Elder Brother of the Earth coincided with the sign of the Dog”

In one of the appendices of the Penguin edition of the 10th century Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon editor/translator Ivan Morris limns how the Japanese of the time kept their calendar. It seems the “day was divided into twelve watches … Time was specified by the Zodiacal signs. The watch of the Horse, for instance, started at noon …” Morris is able to tell us pretty precisely when a late winter pile of snow disappointed Sei Shonagon:

The fourth quarter of the watch of the Tiger on the fifteenth day of the Sprouting (First) Month in the Fourth Year of the Chotoku year-period, in which the Elder Brother of the Earth coincided with the sign of the Dog, corresponded to about 6 a.m. on 15 February A.D. 998. And it was at this moment in history that a maid announced to Sei Shonagon … that her precious snow mountain had disappeared.

If that were your mundane way of telling time, it wouldn’t be of note, would it? But isolated like that it reads like poetry.

source: The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon

translated and edited by Ivan Morris

1967. Penguin Books, New York