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白虎 byakko White Tiger

This is a philological study of the word 白虎 (byakko), following the White Tiger of the west from the Han books of rites and of heaven, through the court banners and tomb walls of early Japan and the name of a band of boys at Aizu in 1868, into English, where byakko was a white fox before it was a tiger.

Japanese Scroll of White Tiger (byakko) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
White Tiger (byakko)

White Tiger (byakko) on a traditional Japanese Scroll by Master Eri Takase.

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Abstract

白虎 is 白, white, and 虎, tiger: the White Tiger, guardian of the west, one of the four symbols, 四神, that the cosmology of Han China set at the four quarters, with the Azure Dragon in the east, the Red Bird in the south and the Dark Warrior in the north. It stands as a marching banner in the 禮記, as the west's beast in the 淮南子 and as a group of stars in the 史記, and it reached Japan with that cosmology: it is on the court's banners at the New Year of 701, on the west walls of the 高松塚 and キトラ tombs, and in the 平家物語's account of why Kyoto was a fit site for a capital. In 1868 the Aizu domain named its four units by age for the four symbols, and the youngest, the 白虎隊, became famous for the boys who killed themselves on 飯盛山, a hill outside the castle town, a story in print from 1874 whose count of the dead rose in the telling from sixteen to twenty. In English the romaji byakko was a white fox for nearly thirty years before a dictionary gave it the tiger.

Overview

The sense. A noun of the Chinese cosmology of the quarters, standard in modern Japanese. デジタル大辞泉 gives 四神の一。天の西方の守護神で、虎の形に表す, one of the four gods; the guardian god of the western heavens, shown in the form of a tiger [1]. The 精選版 日本国語大辞典 gives 西方の守護神。虎形の神で、白は五行説で西方をさす色。中国、漢代のころ四方に配した四神の一つ, guardian god of the west; a god in tiger form, white being the color that points to the west in five-phase thought; one of the four gods set at the four quarters in China about the Han, and five narrower senses: the banner that carries it; in reading a site or a house, a highway on the west side; a white tiger as an auspicious beast, 君主に徳がある時にあらわれる, appearing when the ruler has virtue; the seven lunar mansions of the western sky; and a baleful god of the diviners [1]. The four together are 四神, the four gods: 東の青竜、西の白虎、南の朱雀、北の玄武 [2]. The English white tiger names an animal, the pale tiger of the zoos. The Japanese word names the animal only in its auspicious sense; its first sense is a god of the west, and in the texts below it seldom stands without the other three beside it.

The words. 白 is white and 虎 tiger. The reading is びゃっこ, with 白 in its reading びゃく, which the dictionary's historical spelling ビャク records; the 精選版 日本国語大辞典 also enters はっこ and はくこ, and refers both to びゃっこ [1]. No dictionary read gives a native Japanese reading. Print writes the reading as the sound was spelled in its day: ビヤクコ in a print of 1623, びやくこ in an edition of 1919 [3][4].

The text in English. J. C. Hepburn's dictionary of 1867 enters BIYAKKO with the characters 白狐, a white fox, and has no entry for the tiger; so does his fourth edition of 1888 [5][6]. F. Brinkley's dictionary of 1896 is the first to enter 白虎, White tiger, filed under zoology, next to 白狐, White fox [7]. JMdict gives White Tiger (Taoist god said to rule over the western heavens) and, second, seven mansions (Chinese constellations) of the western heavens [8].

The historical record

The 禮記, 曲禮上, the Confucian book of rites. On an army's order of march: 行：前朱鳥而後玄武，左青龍而右白虎, on the march, the Red Bird in front and the Dark Warrior behind, the Azure Dragon on the left and the White Tiger on the right [9]. The four are banners carried with the troops, and the Red Bird is written 朱鳥, not the later 朱雀. James Legge's English of 1885 reads On the march the (banner with the) Red Bird should be in front; that with the Dark Warrior behind; that with the Azure Dragon on the left; and that with the White Tiger on the right [10]. The encyclopedia entry on the four finds dragon and tiger together earlier, on a lacquer lid of the early Warring States period beside the Northern Dipper and the twenty-eight mansions, and names the 曲禮 as the oldest text in which the four stand as a set: 現在の形にそろうのは《礼記》曲礼篇のものが最も古いであろう, the oldest in which they come together in their present form is probably the 曲礼 chapter of the 礼記 [2].

The 淮南子, 天文訓, the Han book of heaven. The west as one of the five phases: 西方，金也，其帝少昊，其佐蓐收，執矩而治秋。其神為太白，其獸白虎, the west is metal; its emperor is Shaohao, his helper Rushou, who holds the square and governs autumn; its spirit is the planet Venus, its beast the White Tiger [11]. Here the tiger belongs to the west as autumn, metal and a planet do, and its white is the west's color [11][1].

The 史記, 天官書, the treatise on the heavens. Among the stars of the western palace: 參爲白虎, the Three Stars are the White Tiger, with the commentary 正義 explaining that the stars 觜 and 參 together 爲白虎形, make the shape of a white tiger [12]. The tiger is a figure in the sky, as it is in the dictionary's sense of the seven western mansions [1].

The 三輔黃圖, a book of the Han capital's palaces. 蒼龍、白虎、朱雀、玄武，天之四靈，以正四方，王者制宮闕殿閣取法焉, the Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Red Bird and Dark Warrior are the four spirits of heaven, by which the four quarters are set right; kings take them as the model in building palaces and halls [13]. The character dictionary 字通 quotes this passage for 白虎, one of the four spirits, the god of the west [1].

701, the 續日本紀, the court chronicle completed in 797. The New Year audience of 大寳元年: 天皇御大極殿受朝。其儀於正門樹烏形幢。左日像青龍朱雀幡。右月像玄武白虎幡, the sovereign took the New Year audience in the Hall of State; at the main gate was raised a crow-shaped standard, on the left banners of the sun, the Azure Dragon and the Red Bird, on the right banners of the moon, the Dark Warrior and the White Tiger [14]. The earliest known Japanese record of the word: the four are banners again, now at a court ceremony, with the sun and the moon.

About 700, the 高松塚 and キトラ tombs. In the 高松塚 tomb at Asuka, of the late seventh or early eighth century, whose paintings were found in March 1972, the stone chamber carries 西壁も中央に白虎、その上に月像, on the west wall too, a white tiger in the middle, with the image of the moon above it [15]. In the キトラ tomb nearby, a fiberscope found the Dark Warrior on the north wall in 1983, and a camera in 1998 found 西壁に白虎，東壁に青竜, the White Tiger on the west wall and the Azure Dragon on the east [16]. The キトラ murals were designated a National Treasure on 23 July 2019 [17]. The dictionary's note on 四神 says the four were painted on tomb walls and mirrors 守護の役割から, for their role as guardians [2].

The thirteenth century, the 平家物語, book 5, the moving of the capital. Why the emperor Kanmu 桓武 chose the site of Kyoto, as the tale tells it. The 精選版 日本国語大辞典 gives this as the first example of the word's main sense, quoting the 高野本 manuscript: 此地の躰を見るに、左青龍、右(う)白虎(ビャッコ)、前朱雀、後玄武、四神相応の地也, looking at the lie of this land, the Azure Dragon on the left, the White Tiger on the right, the Red Bird in front, the Dark Warrior behind: a site that answers to the four gods [1]. A print of 1623 has the passage with a variant verb and its own ruby: 此地ノ体ヲ見候ニ。左青龍。右白虎。前朱雀。後玄武。四神相應ノ地ナリ, with ウ beside 右 and ビヤクコ beside 白虎 [3]. A school edition of 1919 prints 右白虎 with the ruby うびやくこ and explains the phrase in a headnote: 靑龍は東に川の流、白虎は西に大道, the Azure Dragon is a flowing river to the east, the White Tiger a highway to the west [4]. The same geomancy is the dictionary's sense of a highway on the west side of a house, for which it gives an earlier example, a line of the 性霊集 that it dates 1079: 兌白虎大道, to the west, the White Tiger, a highway [1].

1874, 大統歌訓蒙, a school primer of Japanese history. A commentary by 柳田友広 on 塩谷宕陰's 大統歌; on the eighth month of 1868 at Aizu: 會津ニ四神隊〔青龍・白虎・朱雀・玄武〕アリ、其白虎隊ハ十五歲ヨリ十七歲ノ幼童ヲ以テ編ス, Aizu had four-god units (Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Red Bird, Dark Warrior); its White Tiger unit was formed of boys from fifteen to seventeen (the four names are set in small characters in the book) [18]. The passage goes on, over the leaf: 白虎隊或ハ死或ハ逃留者十六人飯盛山ニ登城外ニ火ノ起ヲ見誤テ城已ニ陷ト思ヒ城ニ向テ拜シ皆耦刺テ死ス, of the White Tiger unit some died and some fled; sixteen who remained climbed 飯盛山, saw a fire rise outside the castle, mistook it and thought the castle had already fallen, bowed toward the castle, and all died stabbing one another [18]. The earliest known print of the band's name and of its story. The name is not the tiger's alone: it is one of the four, given to the youngest of four units.

1876, 近世日本外史, a history of recent Japan in Chinese. Compiled by 関機: 初會津編諸隊為四、曰朱雀最鋭、曰青龍次之、而老者為玄武、幼者為白虎、齡皆十五六, at first Aizu formed its units into four: the Red Bird, the keenest, the Azure Dragon next, the old men the Dark Warrior, and the young the White Tiger, all of them fifteen or sixteen years old; then 留者十六人 … 望見城外火起、以為城已陷、乃向城再拜曰、臣事畢矣。各耦刺死, sixteen remained … seeing from afar a fire rise outside the castle, they took the castle to have fallen, bowed twice toward it and said, "Our service is done," and each died stabbing another [19]. The four units are named in order of strength, and the boys' last words have entered the story.

Today, the dictionaries on the band. The 精選版 日本国語大辞典: 青龍・朱雀・玄武とともに、年齢別に編制した四隊のうちの一つで、一六～一七歳の少年で編制 … 二〇名が飯盛山まで後退。ここで城の方角に火煙が上がるのを望見して、全員自刃したが一名が蘇生, one of four units formed by age with the Azure Dragon, Red Bird and Dark Warrior, of boys of sixteen and seventeen … twenty retreated to 飯盛山; there, seeing fire and smoke rise toward the castle, all of them killed themselves, but one revived [20]. デジタル大辞泉 says 20人が自刃した, twenty killed themselves, and the Britannica entry gives the ages as fifteen to seventeen and says the name was 四神の名, the name of the four gods [20]. The survivor was Iinuma Sadakichi 飯沼貞吉, who, one biographical dictionary says, joined at fifteen claiming to be sixteen, and whose survival, another says, is how the details of the unit's deaths became known [21]. A study of 2016 counts twenty who reached 飯盛山 and nineteen dead, and quotes the monument that the city of Rome gave in 1928, unveiled on the hill on 1 December of that year [22].

1909, 島原人物誌, a local biographical dictionary. Among the verses of 丸山作楽, a waka: 白虎(しろとら)も捕(と)りて來ぬべききほひもて黑龍江を溯らなむ, with a spirit fit to catch even a white tiger and bring it back, I would sail up the Amur [23]. In the public-domain books of the National Diet Library it is the only print known to read the characters しろとら or しらとら, and the reading is ruby on one poem, perhaps the editor's: しろとら, shirotora.

What is not a source. The Aizu band is not a source of the word's sense: its name came from the four symbols as a set, and the band's story sits on the word without changing what it means [18][19]. 白虎 is not a Zen term. It occurs in 406 fascicles of the Buddhist canon as the CBETA edition holds it, 52 of them in the Chan section, and the Chan hits read there use it as the cosmology uses it, of banners, stars and divination [24]. The Zen phrase books have a different byakko, 白牯, the white bull, as in 狸奴白牯, the badger and the white bull [25].

The word in English

1867, J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese and English Dictionary, p. 29. BIYAKKO, ビヤクコ, 白狐, (shiroi kitszne.) n. A white fox [5]. The earliest known English print of the romaji, and it is the fox: 白狐, a white fox, is also read びゃっこ [26], and Hepburn has no entry for 白虎.

1881, Ernest Satow and A. G. S. Hawes, A Handbook for Travellers in Central & Northern Japan, p. 407. On the founding legend of a temple at Nikkō, the hill was called "the Mount of the Four Gods," and was inhabited by the Azure Dragon, the Vermilion Bird, the White Tiger and the Sombre Warrior, who respectively occupied its E., S., W. and N. peaks [27]. The four symbols in English in a Japanese setting, without the Japanese word.

1885, James Legge, The Lî Kî, p. 91. The 禮記 line, as quoted above, with White Tiger for 白虎 [10].

1888, Hepburn, fourth edition, p. 49. BYAKKO ビヤクコ 白狐 (shiroi kitsune) n. A white fox [6]. The spelling has changed and the fox has not; there is still no tiger.

1895, Lafcadio Hearn, "Out of the East", "Jiujutsu", p. 184. In the hall of a school at Kumamoto: One of the pictures represents the famous "White-Tiger Band" of seventeen brave boys who voluntarily sought death for loyalty's sake in the civil war [28]. The earliest known English print of the band, a year before any English dictionary entered 白虎.

1896, F. Brinkley, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary, p. 163. Byakko, びやっこ, 白虎, n., then the label Zoöl. in the book's square brackets, then White tiger; and below it Byakko, びやっこ, 白狐, n., the same label, White fox [7]. The first English dictionary to enter 白虎. It files the word under zoology, as an animal; the god of the west is not in the entry.

1901 and 1903, Basil Hall Chamberlain and W. B. Mason, A Handbook for Travellers in Japan. At Wakamatsu: On the hill called Iimori-san, about 1 ri to the E. of the town, lie the graves of the Byakko-tai, or "White Tiger Band,"—eighteen young men who committed harakiri when, a fire breaking out in the vicinity of the castle, they thought the castle itself had been captured (1901, p. 505) [29]. The edition of 1903 prints the same sentence with nineteen, after a new one: Even lads of fourteen and fifteen years followed their fathers into the field (p. 503) [30].

2012, Royall Tyler, The Tale of the Heike, book 5. The 平家 line: "The lay of the land, Your Majesty, / offers at your left the Blue Dragon, / the White Tiger at your right, / the Red Bird before you, / and behind you the Dark Warrior", with a note calling the four ancient Chinese directional deities seen painted on the walls of some kofun tumulus tombs [31].

Today. JMdict: White Tiger (Taoist god said to rule over the western heavens) [8]. The design is sold as White Tiger (byakko), the house's title, which this history renders the same way. A rendering should keep what the dictionaries keep: the tiger is the guardian of the west, and one of four.

A reading

The word has one meaning and two lives. Its meaning is fixed from the first texts to the dictionaries of today: the White Tiger is the west, as the Azure Dragon is the east, and it is never quite itself alone. In the 禮記 it is one banner of four, in the 淮南子 the beast of the west beside its planet and its season, in the 史記 a shape in the stars [9][11][12]. When Japan took it, it took the set: banners of four at the court of 701, four walls of a tomb at Asuka, four features of a site in the 平家 [14][15][3]. Written alone, 白虎 names one quarter of a cosmos, and that is how it has always been written: the word names the guardian of one direction, and the other three are implied.

The second life is the Aizu band's, and it is a name borrowed from the first. The band was called 白虎 because the domain named four units for the four symbols, the youngest for the west, and the print of 1874 already says so [18]. The story then grew in the telling. The Japanese prints of 1874 and 1876 count sixteen who remained; Hearn has seventeen, Chamberlain eighteen and then nineteen, and the modern dictionaries twenty, with one who lived [18][19][28][29][30][20]. I read that as a count filling in as the dead were named and the survivor was heard, not as a legend growing; that is my expectation, and the papers that would test it are out of reach (below). Either way the band is a use of the word and not its sense.

In English the word arrived late and sideways. Byakko meant a white fox to Hepburn in 1867 and 1888, the tiger came into a dictionary in 1896 as an animal, and the band reached English readers a year before a dictionary gave the tiger [5][6][7][28]. The romaji is shared by at least three words, the fox, the tiger and the Zen bull [5][7][25], which is one more reason the characters matter more here than the sound. I read 白虎 as the dictionaries do, the guardian of the west, and I think a reader should know that the word carries the other three with it.

Notes

Sources not seen

川延安直「初期白虎隊自刃図について」, 福島県立博物館紀要 22 (2008), pp. 55–84; 「明治時代前期の白虎隊自刃図について: 渡辺文三郎原画石版画「白虎隊自刃図」を中心に」, 同 24 (2010), pp. 51–62; 「新出の白虎隊自刃図について」, 同 25 (2011), pp. 89–99; held on paper at the National Diet Library, call number Z8-2760 (NDL bibliographic IDs 9477799, 10654406, 11106360). Known here from the catalogue records only, as studies of the earliest pictures of the band's deaths; they would show how the story and its count were told and pictured in the first decades after 1868, the question the reading above leaves as an expectation.

A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.

References

  1. 「白虎」, デジタル大辞泉, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, 日本大百科全書 (桐本東太), 普及版 字通, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/白虎-612871
  2. 「四神」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, 改訂新版 世界大百科事典 (小南一郎), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/四神-73401
  3. 『平家物語』 卷五, printed 1623, scan 6. National Diet Library pid 2567617. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2567617/1/6
  4. 山田孝雄・高木武 校『検定平家物語』, 1919, 卷第五, p. 175, scan 124. National Diet Library pid 926047. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/926047/1/124
  5. J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese and English Dictionary; with an English and Japanese Index, American Presbyterian Mission Press, Shanghai, 1867, p. 29, s.v. BIYAKKO. Internet Archive japaneseenglishd00hepb. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishd00hepb
  6. J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, fourth edition, Z. P. Maruya, Tokyo, 1888, p. 49, s.v. BYAKKO. Internet Archive japaneseenglishe00hepbuoft. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishe00hepbuoft
  7. F. Brinkley, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary, Sanseidō, Tokyo, 1896, p. 163, s.v. Byakko. Internet Archive cu31924082117288. https://archive.org/details/cu31924082117288
  8. 白虎, JMdict, at jisho.org. https://jisho.org/search/白虎
  9. 『禮記』 曲禮上, at Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/禮記/曲禮上
  10. James Legge, translator, The Lî Kî, Part I, Sacred Books of the East 27, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1885, Khü Lî I, p. 91. Internet Archive sacredbooksofchi0027unse. https://archive.org/details/sacredbooksofchi0027unse
  11. 『淮南子』 天文訓, at Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/淮南子/天文訓
  12. 『史記』 卷二十七 天官書, with the 正義 commentary, at Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/史記/卷027
  13. 『三輔黃圖』 卷之三, at Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/三輔黃圖/卷之三
  14. 『續日本紀』 卷第二, 大寳元年正月乙亥朔, at Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/續日本紀/卷第二
  15. 「高松塚古墳」, 日本大百科全書 (猪熊兼勝), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/高松塚古墳-92748
  16. 「キトラ古墳」, ブリタニカ国際大百科事典 小項目事典, 日本大百科全書, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/きとら古墳-3148934
  17. 吉田万智・荻山琴美「魅力の詰まったキトラ古墳の四神たち －白虎－」, 奈文研ニュース 75, 2019, p. 4. http://hdl.handle.net/11177/7215
  18. 柳田友広『大統歌訓蒙』 卷之四, 1874, scans 78 and 79. National Diet Library pid 769909. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/769909/1/78
  19. 関機 編『近世日本外史』, 1876, scan 24. National Diet Library pid 772742. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/772742/1/24
  20. 「白虎隊」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, デジタル大辞泉, 改訂新版 世界大百科事典 (井上勝生), ブリタニカ国際大百科事典 小項目事典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/白虎隊-121002
  21. 「飯沼貞吉」, デジタル版 日本人名大辞典+Plus, 20世紀日本人名事典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/飯沼貞吉-1052054
  22. 川田真弘「白虎隊記念碑と下位春吉 ―日伊文化交流の一側面―」, 大手前大学論集 17, 2016, pp. 261–262. https://otemae.repo.nii.ac.jp/records/1526
  23. 長崎県教育会南高来郡部会 編『島原人物誌』, 1909, p. 122, scan 65. National Diet Library pid 778017. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/778017/1/65
  24. 白虎, full-text search of the CBETA edition of the Buddhist canon. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/search?q=白虎&rows=500
  25. Victor Sōgen Hori, Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases for Kōan Practice, University of Hawai'i Press, Honolulu, 2003, p. 174, no. 4.645.
  26. 「白狐」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/白狐-536228
  27. Ernest Mason Satow and A. G. S. Hawes, A Handbook for Travellers in Central & Northern Japan, Kelly & Co., Yokohama, 1881, Route 45, p. 407. Internet Archive ahandbookfortra00hawegoog. https://archive.org/details/ahandbookfortra00hawegoog
  28. Lafcadio Hearn, "Out of the East": Reveries and Studies in New Japan, Houghton, Mifflin, Boston, 1895, "Jiujutsu", p. 184. Internet Archive outofeastreverie00hearuoft. https://archive.org/details/outofeastreverie00hearuoft
  29. Basil Hall Chamberlain and W. B. Mason, A Handbook for Travellers in Japan, John Murray, London, 1901, p. 505. Internet Archive handbookfortrav00cham. https://archive.org/details/handbookfortrav00cham
  30. Basil Hall Chamberlain and W. B. Mason, A Handbook for Travellers in Japan, John Murray, London, 1903, p. 503. Internet Archive handbookfortravejohn. https://archive.org/details/handbookfortravejohn
  31. Royall Tyler, translator, The Tale of the Heike, Viking, New York, 2012, book 5, chapter 1, "The Capital Moved to Fukuhara", and note 148.

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Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5, Takase Studios LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

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