能ある鷹は爪を隠す nō aru taka wa tsume o kakusu The Hawk with Talent Hides its Talons

Real ability does not display itself; the hawk does not raise its talons to threaten, and the proverb is about restraint more than concealment. By 1641 a chronicle of the Hōjō of Odawara calls it a popular saying whose origin no one knows, and Edo writers used it every way: Bakin as praise, Gennai as a warning that the quiet ones are the swindlers, Atsutane objecting that in a blind world the quiet hawk is taken for a dead one. The cat that hides its claws is the same proverb with another animal.

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