A Police Officer's Debt

A police officer came to Takashima. A fellow feudal subject had died serving the Emperor during the Restoration, leaving his family poor; the officer had been paying to educate three young relatives of that family and had run up a debt of 13,000 yen, while a commercial downturn had reduced his own estate to 3,000 yen. He was sick with worry and unfit for duty.

Takashima obtained Setsu (節), with the second line moving. He read Setsu — a bank holding water — as the principle that debt, like water in a pond, must be given proper outlets or it bursts. Line 2's "does not go out of the yard inside the gate; unlucky" he took to mean that it was unlucky NOT to speak: the officer had to go and talk to his creditor.

He then gave a concrete plan. Sell the estate for 3,000 yen and pay it to the creditor. Out of a monthly salary of 200, keep 50 for living and 30 for social obligations, and pay 120 monthly. Ask the creditor for 8 per cent. On those terms the debt would clear in about eleven years.

He warned that if the officer delayed past this moment he would fall into bankruptcy and the creditor would recover nothing — so a settlement served both sides. He also told him to limit his worry about the debt to one hour a day, since his own body and life were now his only estate.

The officer followed the advice and wrote a few days later that his accumulated worry had dispersed and that he felt well again.

Setsu is the hexagram of limit and articulation — the joint in the bamboo, the bank that shapes water into something usable. Its counsel is not austerity but structure: what is unbounded becomes destructive, and what is measured becomes survivable.

This case is the clearest example of the Ekidan as counselling rather than prophecy. The hexagram supplies the frame — speak, don't hoard the problem; give the pressure an outlet — and the rest is arithmetic and a limit on how much of the day the worry is allowed to occupy.