Natural disasters and the rise and fall of governments.

I once saw someone who had an analog watch with the days of the week that could be adjusted to either English or Japanese; the Japanese days of the week had a single character 月 (Moon) for Monday, 火 (fire-Mars) for Tuesday, 水 (water-Mercury) for Wednesday, 木 (wood-Jupiter) for Thursday, 金 (metal-Venus) for Friday, 土 (earth-Saturn) for Saturday, and 日(Sun) for Sunday. At first I thought that this was copied from the Western names for the 7-day week, but then I found out that this arrangement had been mentioned in a very early text, so even if Japanese modernizers were influenced by the Westerners, there was still an ancient Chinese basis for this. While these are all the visible "planets", did the Egyptians and the Chinese arrive at the same order independently? Patrick Moran explains.

Anyway, I never got that watch. I wanted a self-winding watch, and all they had available when I changed planes in Hong Kong was English and Spanish.

Minus the Sun and the Moon, we have 5 items 五行 that have a whole bunch of other correspondences, and the term 五行 is also used in Chinese astrology. Many of the dynastic histories have chapters titled 五行記, which record unusual or freakish occurrences that are interpreted as signs of natural imbalance related to political upheaval. So the highly unusual weather or birth of a freak or even outrageous human behavior (a woman taking over a man's role, or someone wearing clothing that is just wrong) may be a sign of approaching rebellion, or even bad government.

All of this was prompted by the daily ablution's item on blaming Bush for Typhoon Charley. Similarly, there's a Chinese item here blaming "Jiang XX" for Chinese natural disasters.