Hostname: page-component-cb9f654ff-9knnw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-08-30T23:30:39.106Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

On the use of the Chinese Hsuan-ming calendar to predict the times of eclipses in Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

John M. Steele
John M. Steele
Affiliation:
University of Durham
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

According to the Nihongi, a chronicle of Japan written in A.D. 720, the first Chinese calendar was brought to Japan in the year A.D. 554. It is now generally agreed that before this time there was no native calendrical system and that earlier dates given in the Nihongi were calculated retrospectively, and in some cases inaccurately, using Chinese systems (Nakayama, 1969: 7–8). The Chinese calendar was not only a method for keeping track of the days but also a complete astronomical system for calculating the movements of the heavenly bodies.

Information

Type
Notes and communications
Information
Bulletin of SOAS , Volume 61 , Issue 3 , October 1998 , pp. 527 - 533
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1998

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Aston, W. G. 1972. Nihongi, Chronicles of Japan from the earliest times to A.D. 697. Rutland, Vermont: Charles E. Tuttle.Google Scholar
Beer, A. etal. 1961. ‘An 8th-century meridian line: I-Hsing's chain of gnomons and the prehistory of the metric system’, Vistas in Astronomy, 4, 1961, 3–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dickey, J. O. etal. 1994. ‘Lunar laser ranging: a continuing legacy of the Apollo program’, Science, 265, 1994, 482–90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
IAU, . 1968. ‘The Epoch of Ephemeris Time’, Transactions of the International Astronomical Union, 13/B, 1968.Google Scholar
Shigeru, Kanda. 1935. Nihon tenmon shiryō. Tokyo: Koseisha.Google Scholar
Knobel, E. B. 1905. ‘On the astronomical observations recorded in the “Nihongi”, the ancient Chronicle of Japan’, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 66, 1905, 67–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrison, L. V. and Ward, C. G. 1975. ‘An analysis of the transits of Mercury’, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 173, 1975, 183–206.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nakayama, Shigeru. 1969. A history of Japanese astronomy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Newcomb, S. 1895. ‘Tables of the motion of the Earth on its axis and around the Sun’, Astronomical Papers Prepared for the use of the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac, 6/1, 1895.Google Scholar
Steele, J. M. 1998. ‘Predictions of eclipse times recorded in Chinese history’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 29, 1988, 275–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stephenson, F. R. and Morrison, L. V. 1995. ‘Long-term fluctuations in the Earth's rotation: 700 B.C. to A.D. 1990’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, Series, A, 251, 1995, 165–202.Google Scholar
Masayoshi, Sugimoto and Swain, D. L. 1978. Science and culture in traditional Japan. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT press.Google Scholar
Kiyosi, Yabuuti. 1963. ‘Astronomical tables in China from the Han to the T'ang dynasties’, in Kiyosi, Yabuuti (ed.), Chūgoku chūsei kagaku gijutsushi no kenkyū, Tokyo, 445–92.Google Scholar