Fine Japanese Calligraphy

The Art of Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase

0
Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, PayPal accepted
Home › Library › Philology › Fallen Angel

堕落天使 daraku tenshi Fallen Angel

This is a philological study of the Japanese word 堕落天使 (daraku tenshi), fallen angel. It spans the record from Arai Hakuseki's first Japanese description of Lucifer in 1725 to the four characters' return as film and game titles today, and examines how a translators' phrase of the 1920s stands beside the shorter word Japanese actually kept, 堕天使, first found in wartime in a retelling of Journey to the West.

堕落天使 · daraku tenshi · Fallen Angel — an angel cast down; the translators' Japanese of the 1920s for Milton's Lucifer, the Chinese term, and a film title; the Japanese word itself is the short 堕天使

Abstract

堕落天使, daraku tenshi, is a translators' compound of the 1920s, built for Milton's and Hauptmann's fallen angels from a Buddhist word for falling, 堕落, and a word for the emperor's envoy, 天使, that the Meiji Bible turned into angel. No Japanese dictionary heads the four characters; the word Japanese kept is the shorter 堕天使, first found in 1942 in a retelling of Journey to the West, in the mouth of a river monster who had been a general in the Jade Emperor's court. The four characters are also the standard Chinese term and the title of a Hong Kong film, and today in Japanese they live on as titles.

Overview

The sense. Dark and romantic; Lucifer's word. In this compound the word means the fall from heaven; depravity is where the fall ended. The short word datenshi is the one the dictionaries hold: in Christianity, the devil; an angel cast down to the lower world, above all their chief, Lucifer [1]. No Japanese dictionary heads the four characters on this design. Chinese does: 墮落天使 is the standard Chinese term, the other name of 墮天使 [2].

The words. Daraku is falling. The dictionaries mark the plain sense, to fall, as the original: Dōgen used it in the thirteenth century of eyebrows and beard falling out, and the Buddhists used it of falling from the Way into an evil path [3]. The moral sense, depravity, corruption, degradation, is the youngest, dated to 1891, and it is the dictionary's entry for the word standing alone [3]. Tenshi is heaven's envoy, and for two thousand years it meant the emperor's messenger; a travel diary of 1223 uses it of the messenger from hell who comes for a soul [4]. It came to mean angel only with Fukuzawa in 1866 and the Meiji Bible, which wrote the two characters and read them ten no tsukai, heaven's messenger, as the 1904 printing shows over the sixth angel of Revelation [5].

The text in English. Hepburn in 1867 had daraku as to fall, to fall away, to apostatize, with the Buddhist to fall into hell, and no tenshi at all; the tenshi that is the son of heaven, the emperor, is a headword by 1888. His angel in 1872 was tennin, ten no tsukai; by 1888 tenshi had joined them, with tenshi-chō for archangel [6]. Brinkley in 1896 gives daraku as falling into the region of evil spirits; apostasy, and for angel offers the messenger of the kami and the heavenly maiden but not tenshi [7]. So the word for angel entered the dictionaries between 1872 and 1888, with the Meiji Bible.

The historical record

Not in scripture, in either language. The thing is in scripture and the phrase is not, in either language. English Wikipedia notes that the literal term fallen angel appears in no scripture [8], and the Japanese Bible agrees: at Revelation 12 the Meiji translation has the dragon called the devil and Satan cast down to earth and his messengers with him [5], and at Jude 6 the 1917 revision has the angels who kept not their station [9].

1725. Arai Hakuseki. The first Japanese to describe Lucifer was Arai Hakuseki in 1725, an angelus called Lucifer, who took pride in his own wisdom [10].

1896, a dictionary, and 1904, an annotated New Testament. The idea in Japanese words arrives with the Meiji dictionaries: a dictionary of 1896 defines the devil, in its Christian sense, as an angel that has fallen and turned evil [11], and an annotated New Testament of 1904 glosses the angel of the abyss as a fallen angel who kills men himself [5].

The 1910s to 1924. The phrase takes shape in the 1910s, the angels who have fallen, in a Faust summary of 1912 [12] and in commentaries on Jude [13][14], and in 1924 Saitō's great English dictionary set the equation this catalogue descends from: under fall, The fallen angels, glossed as the angels who have fallen (the devils) [15].

The 1920s: 1923, 1925, 1926. The four characters as one word are the translators' of the 1920s, and all three witnesses read here were read at the page: a Hauptmann novel of 1923, where a young priest fears the universe is full of fallen angels of every kind and rank, followers of the rebel Lucifer whom God cast down [16]; a Latin primer of 1925 explaining that Lucifer took a third of the angels and, cast down from heaven, became a fallen angel, that is, a devil [17]; and a Milton retelling of 1926, where Satan will not bow before the fallen angels driven out of heaven [18]. An Adventist tract the same year printed the word with its reading over it [19], and a children's encyclopedia carried it in its entry on Milton [20]. Five books in the library of prewar Japan use the four characters (four in the old form 墮落天使, one, the Adventist tract, in the new); it was a translator's phrase, not a common word [21].

1942, and 1944. After the war. The word Japanese kept came in wartime, and from an unexpected quarter. The national dictionary's first citation for the short form is 1942, Nakajima Atsushi's story of the river monster Gojō, once the Jade Emperor's Curtain-Raising General, who mutters I am a fallen angel [22]; the second, in 1944, is another retelling of Journey to the West, where the Monkey King, refused rain by the Emperor of Heaven, comes down to the slums just like a fallen angel, on a page where the heavenly court's envoys and Gabriel, that is, the Guardian Heavenly King share the stage [23]. In both, the Chinese emperor's envoy and the Christian angel meet in one word. After the war the dictionaries head the short form [1].

Today. Saitō's 1924 equation carries forward into the modern dictionaries: Kenkyūsha and Saitō a fallen angel [24], the online dictionary datenshi, fallen angel, especially Lucifer [1], and for the four characters themselves a bilingual gloss fallen angel and nothing more [24]. The English word's own history runs from Isaiah's morning star through Milton, whose rebels are the fallen angels of every later reader; that is the register a buyer brings to this design, and datenshi is the register a Japanese reader brings, the manga and goth word for the beautiful rebel. The four characters came back as titles: Wong Kar-wai's 1995 film, Fallen Angels in English and 天使の涙 in its Japanese release, a 1998 arcade game, and a run of songs [25]. Of the hundred and twenty-five Japanese Wikipedia articles that carry them, the first twenty are all titles [25].

A reading

These four characters are the long form of a word Japanese says short. The four characters are real Japanese: translators of the 1920s used them for Milton's and Hauptmann's Lucifer, a tract printed them with the reading over them, and Saitō set the fallen angels beside them. But the word Japanese kept is three characters, and it was born not in a Bible but in a retelling of Journey to the West, in the mouth of a river monster who had been a general in the Jade Emperor's court. That is fitting, because tenshi was the Chinese emperor's envoy for two thousand years before it was the Christian angel, and daraku was a Buddhist fall before it was a Victorian one. The four characters are also the Chinese term and the title of a Hong Kong film; a Japanese reader sees them as Chinese or as a title and understands them at once. So the four characters say fallen angel exactly, to two languages, and a buyer who wants the concept has it. A buyer who wants the everyday Japanese word has 堕天使. And daraku here is the fall from heaven, the character's original sense, not depravity, which is what the fall led to.

References

  1. 「堕天使」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/堕天使
  2. 「墮天使」, at 中文維基百科 (Chinese Wikipedia). https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/墮天使
  3. 「堕落」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典・字通, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/堕落
  4. 「天使」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/天使
  5. 明治元訳 新約聖書, 1904 printing, scan 482, p. 897. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/825539/1/482
  6. Hepburn, A Japanese and English Dictionary (1867), A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary (1872; fourth edition, 1888). Internet Archive japaneseenglishe00hepbuoft. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishe00hepbuoft
  7. Brinkley, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary, Sanseido, Tokyo, 1896.
  8. "Fallen angel", English Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_angel
  9. 大正改訳 新約聖書, 1927 printing, Jude 6. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1053815
  10. 「ルチフェル」, 精選版日本国語大辞典 (citing 新井白石, 西洋紀聞, c. 1725), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/ルチフェル
  11. 大和田建樹, 日本大辞典, 博文館, 1896, scan 765, pp. 1382–1383. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/863448/1/765
  12. 町井正路, ファウスト, 1912, scan 15, p. 12. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/874945/1/15
  13. ラルネデ, 猶太書講解, 1909, scan 296. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/825645/1/296
  14. 藤井武, 永遠の希望, 1920, scan 95. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/980684/1/95
  15. 齊藤秀三郎, 熟語本位英和中辭典, 1924, scan 199, pp. 382–383. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1681529/1/199
  16. ハウプトマン, ゾアナの異端者, 中島清訳, 金星堂, 1923, scan 39, pp. 66–67. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/979307/1/39
  17. 前田越嶺, 羅甸語初歩独修, 尚文堂, 1925, scan 271, p. 516. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/943301/1/271
  18. 中山昌樹, ミルトン失楽園物語, 婦人之友社, 1926, scan 36, pp. 50–51. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1019846/1/36
  19. イー・ジー・ホワイト, 創世時代と父祖の生活, 末世之福音社, 1926, scan 148. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/971023/1/148
  20. 児童百科大辞典, 1933, scan 91. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1720366/1/91
  21. A local mirror of the National Diet Library's digitized prewar books, searched on fourteen forms of the word; the counts are held in the research record.
  22. 中島敦, 悟浄出世, 1942, at Aozora Bunko. https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000119/files/2521_14527.html
  23. 田中英光, 我が西遊記, 桜井書店, 1944, scan 143, pp. 278–279. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1135568/1/143
  24. 研究社 新英和・斎藤和英大辞典・JMdict, at Weblio 英和・和英辞典. https://ejje.weblio.jp/content/堕落天使
  25. Japanese Wikipedia, full-text search, 堕落天使. https://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=%22堕落天使%22&ns0=1&fulltext=1

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1, Takase Studios LLC)

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

Checked · Claude Sonnet (Anthropic), 2026-09-14, citations — every item tested at its address; most resolve; one reading resolves but differs — another book found to carry the same characters, missed in the record's own count; one claim does not resolve — the record's 1867 Hepburn quote is actually the 1886 edition's; the rest not openable