BOSO
What is Grave Physiognomy (Boso)?
Boso (grave physiognomy) is a form-reading practice said to interpret the effects on a family’s descendants—family fortune and money luck—from a grave’s shape, orientation, and the features of its headstone. It is said to have been systematized in the modern era in Japan, applying to graves themselves the idea, also found in Chinese feng shui, of reading fortune from the shape of land and structures.
Overview
- System
- Form Reading (reads from a grave’s shape, orientation, and the features of its stone)
- Origin
- Japan, China
- What You Need
- Answers to questions about the grave’s shape and orientation
- Best For
- Life, money
- Time Frame
- Whole lifetime
Origins & History
Boso is a form-reading practice that extends the Chinese-derived idea of feng shui and land physiognomy—reading fortune from the direction and shape of a home—to the shape, orientation, and stone features of the grave itself. In Japan, it is said to have been systematized by practitioners through the early Showa era, but no unified classical source text has been confirmed, and the details of when and by whom it was first systematized remain unclear.
Several guidebooks by practitioners specializing in boso remain in print today, and the basic framework of judging fortune from a grave’s shape, orientation, and stone can be confirmed in these published works. However, the correspondence tables differ by school and author, and there is no single unified standard, so this service bases its readings on the system set out in one specific guidebook.
How It Works
- 01Answer questions about the grave’s shape (square, round, etc.), orientation, and the features of its headstone.
- 02Compare your answers against the boso correspondence tables in the reference guidebook.
- 03Read tendencies in family fortune, money luck, and the like from the combination of shape, orientation, and stone features.
What It Reveals
Boso is well suited to reading, in line with traditional thinking, how a grave’s shape and orientation tend to affect family fortune and money luck. At the same time, judgment criteria vary considerably between schools and guidebooks, and no unified classical basis has been confirmed, so it is best received not as a definitive judgment of fortune but as one reference point among several ways of thinking.
Related Methods
References
- Wikipedia: 矢島俯仰 (https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%9F%A2%E5%B3%B6%E4%BF%AF%E4%BB%B0)
- 矢島俯仰『墓相―よい墓のたて方・まつり方』（国書刊行会）