The Question
A rebellion arose at Saga in the 7th year of Meiji (1874) and the government prepared to send an army. A colonel and a lieutenant-colonel came to Takashima and asked him to divine the coming subjugation.
Takashima Ekidan · Case Study · 1874
The Saga Rebellion
Hexagram 30 → 55 · Ri (離) changing to Hō (豐), line 6
Source: Takashima Ekidan, translated by Shigetake Sugiura (1893), public domain. Quotations are from that translation.
30. 離為火 · The Clinging Fire55. 雷火豊 · Abundance
Two officers came to Takashima to have the coming subjugation of the Saga rebellion divined. He read doubled fire — a thing that flares suddenly and disappears quickly.
The Cast
He obtained Ri (離) changing to Hō (豐), with the sixth line moving: "The king employs Positive VI to undertake an expedition. Good fortune follows; the chief is beheaded, and his followers are exempted. Free from blame."
He read the doubled fire as war, and as a thing that flares suddenly and disappears quickly; that the imperial army should destroy the leader and not the followers; and, from fire burning wood in the changed hexagram, that the rebellion would be put down within thirty days.
The Outcome
As recorded: "After less than a four week's interval, the rebel was greatly defeated, and its leaders were all captured."
How to Read This Case Today
Ri is fire: brilliant, dependent on what it burns, and short-lived once its fuel is gone. The line's distinction between the chief and the followers is a statement about proportion — deal with the source, not with everyone caught up in it.
In a modern conflict inside an organisation, that is a genuinely useful separation to make, and the fire image is a reminder to ask what is feeding the flare before assuming it will last.
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