能柔能剛 其國彌光 yoku jū ni yoku gō nareba, sono kuni iyoiyo hikaru Able to Be Soft and to Be Hard, the State Shines Ever Brighter

能 (read yoku) is can. 柔 (read jū) and 剛 (read gō) are the soft and the hard. 其國 (read sono kuni) is its state. 彌 (read iyoiyo) is more and more, and 弥 is its modern form. 光 (read hikaru) is to give off light, to shine. In the reading our history signs, the line also takes ni and nareba, which the characters do not write.

In the Three Strategies, as the Wikisource text gives it, the line comes two paragraphs after the soft can master the hard. Its paired sentence follows: if it can be weak and can be strong, the state grows ever more illustrious. Then come two warnings: purely soft and purely weak, the state is certain to be pared away; purely hard and purely strong, the state is certain to perish.

The Song encyclopedia that quotes the line in other words begins it soft and yet able to be hard. Nothing read for our history shows which wording is older. It quotes the line under the title Records of Huang Shigong. Whether that title is an earlier name for the Three Strategies, the sources our history read do not settle.

A Ming commentary by Liu Yin supplies a subject, the commander, and gives King Wen as its example. He was soft when his ministers offered fine women and good horses to Zhou to free him from prison. He was hard when he took up arms. The line itself names no one but the state.

A Japanese print of 1604 marks 光 to be read teru, to shine. The prints of 1885, 1911, 1913 and 1942 read it hikaru, and our history signs that reading.

A war tale by a writer of popular fiction of late-Edo Osaka opens a chapter with the passage. It sets the line, its paired sentence and the two warnings at the chapter's head. Our history read it in a printing of 1886.

In 1913 a series printed the commentary of Kanda Hakuryūshi (1680–1760), a professional reciter. As a military scholar he was invited to read military books in the houses of daimyo and bannermen. He likens the state's light to the sun and moon shining down on the four quarters, leaving no corner unlit.

A brush-writing dictionary, in its second edition of 1942, has the passage on a page facing one labeled military affairs. Beside it a note reads: if hard and soft each have their right measure, the state's light grows more and more.

The four characters 能柔能剛 also stand in the Zhuangzi, in the Liezi, and in a letter by Zhuge Liang in a Chinese novel. None of those joins them to the state shines ever brighter.

Our history reads the line as the book's answer to its own the soft can master the hard: the soft alone is not enough. Whoever holds both, our history reads the shining as the state's. The English title is our history's own rendering.

A quotation in the first section of the 三略, a Chinese military book under the name of Huang Shigong, from a book it calls the 軍讖; the Song encyclopedia 太平御覽, completed in 983, quotes the same two sentences in other words under the title 黃石公記, and the earliest Japanese witness read here is a print of 1604 with Japanese reading marks.