殺人剣 satsujinken Life Taking Sword

The sword that kills, and in the saying it belongs to, the killing is not a villain's: the six characters 殺人刀活人剣, the sword that kills, the sword that gives life, are one Zen master's two hands, what he takes from a student and what he gives, and a master must have both. In the sword schools the killing sword is the stroke that strikes first and ends the other's answer; the dictionaries read it as the sword that takes life beside the sword that preserves it, and it is also the ruler's sword that kills one evil so that ten thousand may live. A person who chooses this half alone may mean any of those, and which is yours. The text here writes 殺人剣 with 剣, the word as the modern dictionaries head it; the Zen books mostly write the killing half 殺人刀, with 刀, the single-edged blade. 殺人 is killing a person, which is not the same as murder.

The other half of 殺人剣, Life Giving Sword (katsujinken), is offered on its own.

殺人剣 is composed of the kanji 殺人 (read satsujin) meaning "killing a person" and 剣 Sword (ken).

Note that the Japanese word satsujin is often translated as murder but this is not strictly correct as satsujin only means "kill a person" which includes murder but it also may mean killing someone evil or killing someone in defense of oneself, one's family or one's country - so it does not have the strictly negative meaning that the word "murder" has.

The first half of a Chan saying already a proverb in the 景徳伝灯録 of 1004; the saying came to Japan with Zen in the thirteenth century, and the Japanese Zen master Kōhō Kennichi wrote this half with 劍, as the scroll does, in his sermons from 1281.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 殺人剣.

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