Fine Japanese Calligraphy

The Art of Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase

Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, PayPal accepted
Home › Library › Philology › Five sayings attributed to Japan, but not Japanese

Five sayings attributed to Japan, but not Japanese

We often come across sayings that are attributed to Japan but in fact are not. Here we look at five common ones and trace where they actually come from.

The short answer

No Japanese source we read gives any of these five as a Japanese saying of its own. Here is what we found for each.

What we searched, and what a search like this can and cannot show, is in § How this was read. We did not measure how much Japanese print after 2000 the search can see, so a Japanese saying born since then could be missed. The wrong train (first found in 2019, and called Japanese from 2024) and the warrior (2016) are that recent.

If you get on the wrong train

The earliest known record that calls it Japanese is on X (formerly Twitter), in August 2024. On 9 August 2024 a post on X gives it in these words, with no source and no country: If you get on the wrong train, get off at the nearest station, the longer it takes you to get off, the more expensive the return trip will be. The same day another post gives it as My grandpa once told me, adds He wasn't talking about trains, and signs it ~Seren; the grandfather's frame was repeated in the days after [1]. On 17 August 2024 the account Essential Mastery (@EssentialMastry) posted it as an image that reads There is a Japanese legend that says, "If you get on the wrong train, get off at the nearest station, the longer it takes you to get off, the more expensive the return trip will be." Read that again. The image is signed at its foot ESSENTIAL MASTERY | TWITTER. That is the earliest known record that calls it Japanese. The post itself carries none of these words, only the picture, so a search of posts by their words does not reach it, and an earlier image cannot be ruled out [1]. The next day its words were going about on X as text, There is a Japanese legend that says, and within hours as There is a Japanese proverb that says…, in a version that adds immediately you realize it and the next nearest station [1]. The same image, with the same signature, was posted to the Reddit forum r/motivation on 5 October 2024 [2]. Four days later, on 9 October 2024, a consultant's post on LinkedIn opens I recently stumbled across an intriguing Japanese proverb and gives the saying with the next station and the longer you stay, the more expensive the return trip will be [3]. The earliest known print, in the Google Books index, is a book of November 2024, The Intelligent Investor's Art of Selling, whose search passage reads … wrong train and immediately realize it, get off at the next nearest station. The longer it takes you to get off, the more expensive the return trip will be, and ends the line Japanese Proverb [4]. A book of 2026 repeats it with the same label, and the wording drifts as a retold line does: the nearest station, the next station, the next nearest station, the first stop; the longer it takes you to get off, the longer you stay on [4].

The advice is older than these words, and older than the label. On X it is first found whole in Arabic, on 7 February 2019, in a post tagged from what I read (#مما_قرأت): إذا اكتشفت انك ركبت القطار الخطأ، أنزل فورا في أول محطة... كلما بقيت في نفس القطار زادت تكلفة العودة (if you find you have boarded the wrong train, get off at once at the first station … the longer you stay on the same train, the more it costs to go back). In English it is found on 7 April 2019: If you get on the wrong train, try to get off at the first station because the longer the distance the more expensive the return. Shorter Arabic posts, without the cost, go back to 2012, and one of 2014 reads the first thing you do is get off at the first station. None of these calls it Japanese or names a source. Two other Arabic posts give a bare get off the wrong train to someone: one of 2014 to the writer Salah al-Rashed (صلاح الراشد), and one of 2018 to an Indian sage [1].

The figure of a wrong train is older in English than the saying. A book of 1968 on the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer quotes him in English: if you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the opposite direction [5]. It makes a different point, that effort spent inside a wrong course is wasted, but it shows a wrong train standing for a wrong course of life in English print well before the nearest station form. On X the two meet in an Arabic post of 13 May 2012: if you are on the wrong train, walking against the direction of the train will not help you; you must get off at the nearest station and correct your course [1].

Japanese. No Japanese source found gives it as a Japanese saying. In the Japanese print searched, a wrong train is nearly always a real one, and the Japanese texts of the saying found translate the English: a post on X and a blogger's of 2025, which doubts it. The forms and their counts follow. In the NDL Digital full text, if you get on the wrong train (間違った電車に乗ったら) occurs once, in a 1996 book on children's play, where children are deciding which train to ride and one says if you get on the wrong train, you'll end up somewhere else. The shorter got on the wrong train (間違った電車に乗っ) is said of real trains in its twenty oldest hits that show a passage, from 1973 to 1990, save two: an architecture magazine of 1984 uses it figuratively, in a passage on the events that print and television bring us, and a story of 1981, reprinted in 1985, has a girl on a train say it's as if we'd got on the wrong train (間違った電車に乗ったみたいじゃない). Its other Japanese forms, 違う電車に乗ったら and 間違った列車に乗ったら (if you board a different train, the wrong train), are used only of real trains in every hit that shows a passage, and 乗り間違えたら (if you take the wrong one) mostly of real trains, buses, planes and a mountain ridge in those of its twenty oldest hits that show a passage, and in two figuratively: a ship as a political choice in 1980, and a betting report in 1998. These three searches also catch apparently boarded the wrong one (乗ったらしい, 乗り間違えたらしい), whose Japanese begins with the same characters as the if forms, and many of their hits are that. Get off at the nearest station (最寄りの駅で降り) is said of real stations in its twenty oldest hits, and get off at the next station (次の駅で降りろ), in its twenty oldest (1951 to 1971), is mostly an order shouted in a quarrel on a train [6]. The writer of a Japanese blog post of 2025 on sayings sold abroad as Japanese says of this one, I have hardly ever heard of a proverb with a train in it, and asks whether it is really Japanese at all [7]. On X, searched in Japanese up to the day of the image, the one Japanese post found that gives it as words to live by is of 17 August 2024, hours before the image, and it translates the English post it quotes, the grandfather's version of 13 August: 祖父は私に言いました。「電車を間違えたら、最寄り駅で降りなさい。降りるのが遅くなるほど、帰りの切符が高くなる。」 (My grandfather told me: "If you take the wrong train, get off at the nearest station. The later you get off, the dearer the ticket home.") [1]. So no Japanese source was found giving it as a Japanese saying. Its earliest whole records found are posts on X of 2019, in Arabic and then English, and how much Japanese print after 2000 the search sees was not measured, so this absence weighs less than it does for the older sayings (§ How this was read).

The Japanese say you have three faces

The oldest form of the three found is a European's description of the Japanese, which reports it as said. João Rodrigues (1561–1633), the Portuguese Jesuit who interpreted for Hideyoshi and Ieyasu and who, after his expulsion from Japan in 1612, settled in Macao, where he died [8], wrote in his history of the Church in Japan: They are so crafty in their hearts that nobody can understand them. Whence it is said that they have three hearts: a false one in their mouths for all the world to see, another within their breasts only for their friends, and the third in the depths of their hearts, reserved for themselves alone and never manifested to anybody. That is Michael Cooper's English of 1965, whose note gives the source as the História, volume 1, pages 173–174 [8][9]. Rodrigues goes on to say where it is used, in diplomacy and war, and tells of a man entertained with every sign of love and joy, and then beheaded [9]. The História was translated whole into Japanese in 1967, and there the sentence reads 従って日本人は三つの心を持っているといわれ (so the Japanese are said to have three hearts), followed by the three: 一つは口先のもので … 他の一つは、ただ友人にだけ示す胸の中の心であり、残る一つは心の奥底にあって、何人にも通じない自分自身のためだけのものである (one is of the lips … the other is the heart in the breast shown only to friends, and the last lies in the depths of the heart, for oneself alone, reaching no one) [10]. Like Cooper's English, it does not say who says so. The translators annotate the beheading, which they connect with dealings between the Arima and Shimazu houses about 1583, and give the saying no note. Where Rodrigues reports a saying of the Japanese elsewhere in the same volume, the translation calls it a proverb (諺), and several are given in their Japanese words, among them 「その君を知らずは、その臣を見よ」 (if you do not know the lord, look at his retainers) [10]. The three hearts are given neither way. Rodrigues's Portuguese original could not be found online; the searches are listed under § Sources not seen.

Cooper's note adds that Alessandro Valignano, the Jesuit who inspected the Japan mission, says much the same in his Sumario of 1583, and gives They learn from childhood never to reveal their hearts [8]. In the Japanese translation of Valignano (1973), he says it in his own voice: among the Japanese it is thought honorable and wise to open one's heart to no one and let no one read it, and they are raised to it from childhood (日本人のもとでは、誰にも胸中を打ち明けず読みとられぬようにすることは、名誉なこと賢明なことと見なされている。彼等は子供の時からそのように奨励され…) [11]. His Spanish, read in the search passages of the 1954 edition, says that they pride themselves that nobody understands their heart (Se precian mucho de que nadie les entienda el corazon) [12]. Neither passage has the three, and neither gives it as a saying.

James Clavell's Shōgun (1975) puts the three in the mouth of a Portuguese pilot, Vasco Rodrigues (a character of the novel, not the Jesuit), speaking to the English hero: Never forget Japmen're six-faced and have three hearts. It's a saying they have, that a man has a false heart in his mouth for all the world to see, another in his breast to show his very special friends and his family, and the real one, the true one, the secret one, which is never known to anyone except himself alone, hidden only God knows where (pp. 170–171) [13]. Gina Macdonald's critical companion to Clavell (1996) sets the passage beside João Rodrigues's statement and calls it a paraphrase of it [14]. A Japanese book of 1984 titled Don Tassinari, living in Japan (日本に生きるドン・タシナリ) has the same three in Japanese: a certain priest said that the Japanese have three hearts. You could also say there are three faces: a face for showing people, a face shown only to friends, and one more face shown to no one. This remark too, I think, is an impression gained from long years of dealing with Japanese people (ある神父は、日本人の心は三つあるといったのです。それは三つの顔があるといってもいいのですが、人に見せるための顔、友達だけに見せる顔、もう一つは誰にも見せない顔があるというんです。この言葉も、ながい間、日本人と交際して、体験からえた感想だと思い…) [15]. Other Japanese books quote the remark from the 1967 translation, as a description of the Japanese: a book on the Japanese mind of 1982 (『日本人の深層意識』), another book of 1984, books of 1988 and 1996, the magazine 世界 in 1991, and a paper of 1997 which judges that a model of Japanese dealings as three circles of relationship (drei Beziehungskreise) probably derives from this passage [16]. Those whose passages name a source name Rodrigues, and none gives it as a Japanese saying.

The English saying, with faces, is first found on 15 March 2015, in an archive of Reddit posts, as the title of an image credited Unknown: The Japanese say you have three faces... [17]; the image has since been removed and no copy of it was found. On 26 October 2015 a blogger quotes the saying whole as seen on some social media outlet, in the form the short answer gives, and reports that, searching for where it first appears in Japan, the short answer is that … it doesn't [18]. The earliest known book that carries it, in the Google Books index, is of 2016, as far as its search passage runs: The Japanese say you have three faces. The first face, you show to the world. The second face, you show to your close friends, and your family. The third face, you never show anyone. It is the truest … [19]. Later books carry it too, one as an epigraph signed Japanese proverb in 2019 [19]. Nothing read shows where the 2015 post took it from. The Japanese blog that translated it that November says in its closing note that Japan has no such saying and that it seems to be a line from Shōgun (ジェームズ・クラベルの『将軍 Shogun』に出てきた言葉のようですが), and adds that Western psychology has like ideas [20]. That is the blogger's guess, not a source: Shōgun and the 2015 saying are alike in their words, but nothing read shows that one was taken from the other.

Japanese. In the Japanese print searched, people do say that a person has three faces, but not as a proverb, and not as this saying. No Japanese source found gives it as a Japanese saying. A Japanese blog translated the English for its readers on 6 November 2015 as a sentence introduced on an overseas site as a saying from Japan, and one commenter remarked, without a source, that the three faces had been a term from psychology or thereabouts, about people rather than the Japanese, and asked who had maliciously put the Japanese on it [20]. In the hits read, Japanese does say, of people in general, that a person has three faces, but not as a proverb and not with these three: a children's novel of 1948 has every person, whoever they are, has three faces: a nice face, a nasty face and a face that pretends not to know (イイ顔とイヤナ顔とシラン顔), and an education magazine of 1968 says that children today are said to have three faces, one for friends, one for parents, one for those above them [6]. Those two are among the twenty oldest NDL Digital hits for has three faces (三つの顔を持っている), where the rest is said mostly of things, from the three-faced Buddhist guardian Asura to a railway line, and of a few people. A person has three faces (人は三つの顔を持つ) occurs in four hits: a business book of 1999 where the three are the faces of home, society and work, two of 1993 that carry it as a chapter heading about working people, and a comic of 1996 that is a false match: its words are the criminal has three faces (犯人は…), and the search took the last character of 犯人, criminal, for 人, a person; the face shown to no one (誰にも見せない顔) is common in fiction, and in essays too, in its twenty oldest hits (1973 to 1998); and the Japanese heart is three (日本人の心は三つ) occurs twice, in the 1984 book quoted above and in a book of 1992 where the three are the currents of Shinto, Buddhism and Confucianism [6]. The writer of the 2025 blog, looking for the saying in Japanese, found nearest a line of the television drama 高校教師 (High School Teacher, 1993), read aloud from a book a character is reading, which Japanese Wikipedia gives as a person has three faces: one is the self you know, the second is the self others know, and one more is the true self (人間には3つの顔がある。1つは自分の知る自分。2つ目は他人が知る自分。もう一つは本当の自分) [7]; the drama itself was not seen. No source read gives it as a Japanese proverb. Its oldest form found is a European's description of the Japanese, written before 1633, which names no one who said it; Japanese books found quote his passage from 1982, and since 2015 English has given it as something the Japanese say about everyone.

Vision without action is a daydream

The saying belongs to a family of English sayings about vision and work. A vision without a task makes a visionary is in the American journal The Survey in 1910 [21], and in 1929 a church paper quotes Dr. Poole, of London: A vision without a task is a dream; a task without a vision is drudgery [22]. Kiwanis Magazine prints Vision without a task is but a dream; A task without a vision is drudgery; But a task with a vision is … in 1936 [23]. From 1986 that form is said to come from a church in Sussex, England, dated 1730; no church is named in the texts found, and a book of 2008 reports that no record of any memorial or plaque bearing these words could be found in church records for Sussex [24]. Vision without action is merely a dream. Action without vision just passes the time is attributed to Joel A. Barker in an Ontario public-health report of 1992 [25], and is the form of his The Power of Vision (known here only from a search engine's summary of an item the Internet Archive dates 1993) [26]. The form Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare is in Philip Kotler's Marketing Management, eighth edition, 1994, where the search passage runs … without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare. Japanese proverb The first …, which reads like a chapter epigraph [27]. In the Internet Archive's full text it is the earliest hit that carries the label, once two misdated items are set aside: the Archive's records date them 1894 and 1913, but their title pages show a 2005 yearbook and a 2013 textbook [28]. Books of 1995 and 1996 repeat it with the label, and a medical journal of 1999 gives it instead as Derived from The Analects of Confucius [29].

Japanese. In the Japanese found, the saying is a translation of the English, and no Japanese text of it was found earlier than the English label. Its earliest Japanese rendering found is on a Japanese church's website in December 2006, which prints the English first and then a Japanese translation of it ending in (Japanese proverb): 行動のともなわないビジョンは、ただの白日夢。ビジョンのない行動は、ただの悪夢。（日本の諺） [30]. The NDL Digital full text has no hit at all for action without vision is a nightmare (ビジョンなき行動は悪夢), vision without action is a daydream (行動なきビジョンは白昼夢) or a vision not accompanied by action (行動のともなわないビジョン) [6]. Two books of 2024 and 2025 match the shorter vision without action (行動なきビジョン); they are two printings of one Japanese translation of the American writer Orison Swett Marden, and the search shows no passage from them [31].

Japanese has sentences of a like shape, each under the name of whoever wrote or said it, and they belong here because they are the nearest thing Japanese has to the saying. A Buddhist writer, Kurahashi Kyokusei 倉橋旭静, wrote in 1934 that action without an ideal is reckless action, and an ideal without practice is a delusion (理想なき行動は妄動であり實行なき理想は妄想である) [32]. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry's published vision for the 1990s, of 1990, says that since ancient times the Book of Proverbs has said that a nation without vision perishes (古来、ヴィジョンなき国は滅ぶと箴言に言われている), then that action without vision tends to be wasted effort, while it is also true that vision without action is a mere fantasy (ヴィジョンなき行動は、徒労になりやすい。また一方、行動なきヴィジョンが夢幻に過ぎないことも真理である) [33]. Honda's own company history says that the booklet Honda Philosophy, issued on 1 January 1992, ends its preface, written by Kawamoto Nobuhiko 川本信彦, who re-edited the company's creed (社是) that year, with words the founder is said to have spoken (創業者が語ったと言われている): action without a philosophy (理念, a guiding principle) is an instrument of harm, and a philosophy without action is worthless (理念なき行動は凶器であり、行動なき理念は無価値である) [34]; a business book of 1996 quotes it under the founder's name, Honda Sōichirō [35]. The 1990 sentence comes nearest: it has both halves, vision without action and action without vision, and it is four years older than Kotler's textbook of 1994, the earliest English found that calls the saying Japanese. But its halves end in wasted effort and fantasy, not nightmare and daydream, and it is set down as a truth (真理), not as a saying. None is the English saying, and none is offered as a proverb. On this record it is not a Japanese proverb. It is an English saying, labeled Japanese in English and then in a Japanese translation of the English (the 2006 church page, whose 日本の諺 follows the English it prints first), with Japanese sentences of a like shape under their writers' names.

Better a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war

It is first found in English books of 2016, on self-defense, martial training and health. The earliest by Google Books' dates is Jim Cobb's Prepper's Armed Defense, of August 2016, whose search passage begins at the saying's end: … gardener in a war." In other words, it is preferable to know how to defend yourself and never need to do so [36]. Chris Matakas's The Tao of Jiu Jitsu, of the same year, gives it as the old Zen saying, It's better to be a warrior in the garden than a gardener at war [37]; Stefan Verstappen's A Masters Guide to The Way of the Warrior, of November 2016, signs it Chinese Proverb [38]; Daniel and Tana Amen's The Brain Warrior's Way, in an ebook of November 2016 and in print in 2017, tells it as a master's reply [39]; and Fernan Vargas's Things You Should Know In Case I Am Not Here to Tell You, of December 2016, signs it Unknown [38]. Books of 2017 carry it too, among them a book of daily maxims for martial artists [40] and a book on the Daoist path, which calls it a Daoist saying [41], and books of 2018 call it a Chinese proverb and a Zen proverb [42]. In the Internet Archive's books, the earliest that calls it Japanese is of 2020: I Need to Change My Plants gives a variant, better to be a warrior tending to his garden than a gardener in a war, credited to an Unknown Japanese Samurai saying [43]. Other texts give it to Sun Tzu (a novel in a batch of e-books the Internet Archive dates 2019), to Bruce Lee (a book of 2023) and to Miyamoto Musashi (a document of 2022), without citing a passage [43]. The word garden occurs once in Lionel Giles's English translation of Sun Tzu's Art of War, in a book title in the translator's introduction, so the saying is not in that translation [44]. Nor was it found in Musashi: the English translations of his writings on our shelf, Bennett's of all of them included, have no gardener in them [45], and his twenty-one precepts of 1645, the 独行道, read whole in Japanese, have no garden (庭, 園) [46].

Japanese. No Japanese text of it was found; the Japanese print searches found only other words that happen to share some of its characters. In the NDL Digital full text, the twenty oldest hits for warrior of the garden (庭の戦士), 1918 to 1953, all fall inside longer words or phrases: sixteen are warrior of the home (家庭の戦士, where 庭 is the second half of 家庭, home), a wartime name for women on the home front, and four are the place of learning (学びの庭) and the court of judgment (裁きの庭, in translations of Wagner); so this form says nothing about print after 1953. A gardener on the battlefield or in war (戦場の庭師, 戦争の庭師), a warrior in the garden (庭にいる戦士) and rather than a gardener (庭師であるより) return nothing [6]. One Japanese web search, read through the search engine's summary, gave no source for it; no Japanese page was opened. So no Japanese source was found giving it as a Japanese saying. It is first found in English only in 2016, and how much Japanese print after 2000 the search sees was not measured, so this absence weighs less than it does for the older sayings (§ How this was read). In the English books found, it was called Zen and Chinese before it was called Japanese.

Cold tea and cold rice

The saying is Chinese. William Scarborough's Collection of Chinese Proverbs, printed in Shanghai in 1875, gives it in Chinese, 冷茶冷飯吃得、冷言冷語受不得, with the English Cold tea and cold rice are bearable, but cold words and cold speeches are unendurable, as number 425, in the section Masters and Servants, among the sayings of servants about their food and pay: No man will serve for starvation, and I'll come though you beat me, and though you curse me, but not if I am to lose any pay [47]. In that company it reads as a servant's saying: the food can be poor, so long as the words are kind.

Japanese books print it in its Chinese words. The earliest known, in the NDL full text, is a writer's handbook of 1878, where it comes right after the servant's saying that comes just before it in Scarborough's list [48]. It is in collections of Japanese, Chinese and Western sayings of 1885, with punctuation, and of 1892, with kana endings (okurigana) for reading the Chinese as Japanese [6]; in an 1887 collection of golden words, with an English rendering beside it, Cold tea and cold rice are berable, but cold words and. cold speech is unendurable (p. 111, as printed) [49]; and in a Mandarin phrase book of 1902, among the same servants' sayings as Scarborough's and nearly in his order [50]. In the passages seen, none of them calls it Japanese. Postwar Japanese books and magazines give it in Japanese, 冷たい茶と冷たい飯はまだ我慢できるが、冷たいことばと冷たい話とは耐えられない, and in the twenty oldest NDL Digital hits for that form (1965 to 1987), those whose passage names a source mostly name China: a Chinese proverb, an old Chinese proverb, the wise words of the Chinese [6][51][52]. One handbook of 1978 prints it right after the name of Chekhov, but that name may be the signature of the quotation before it rather than a claim that Chekhov said this one [6].

No Chinese text older than Scarborough's was found with the whole pairing: it is not in the book of maxims 增廣賢文 as Wikisource gives it, in Wikisource's Chinese texts at large, or in the Buddhist canon [53]. Only its second half, 冷言冷語, cold words and cold speech, is found much earlier: the Buddhist canon has it in the recorded sayings of the Song Zen master Xutang 虛堂, compiled by 1208 [53]. So even the part that is older than Scarborough is Chinese. The whole pairing is in a Sichuan opera of the mid-1950s, 評雪辨蹤 (Identifying footprints in the snow), in A. W. E. Dolby's English of 1978: Cold tea and cold rice (k)n't bother me. — But cold words and insinuations do bother one. They're very hurtful [54].

The earliest known English book that calls it Japanese is W. Gurney Benham's book of quotations, in its edition of 1924, published in London and, by its preface, completely revised and entirely re-set, with some ten thousand quotations and proverbs added: Cold tea and cold rice may be endured, but not cold looks and words.—(Japanese.), in its alphabet of proverbs [55]. The line is not in Benham's first edition of 1907, nor in the edition of 1914, though both mark other proverbs as Japanese [55]. Its wording, with looks where Scarborough has speeches, is not Scarborough's English, and Benham's source is not known. The American edition of 1926 carries the line at p. 748 [55], and Burton Stevenson's Home Book of Proverbs (1948) repeats it as a Japanese proverb: "Cold tea and cold rice may be endured, but not cold looks and words" [56]. Stevenson gives it as a note under Cold weather and crafty knaves come out of the north (Howell, 1659), and Benham's column follows Cold tea with the same proverb (Cold weather and knaves come out of the north); the placement suggests Stevenson took the line from Benham, and if so the two count as one witness for the label, not two. Later English books found carry the label too, in another wording, Rather cold tea and cold rice than cold words and cold looks (an almanac for 1985, books of 1993 and 1994) [56].

Japanese. Japanese books have printed it since 1878, and the postwar ones that name a source mostly call it Chinese; no Japanese witness found calls it Japanese, including the twenty oldest postwar hits of the Japanese form. On this record it is not a Japanese proverb. It is a Chinese one, in Chinese print by 1875 and on the Chinese stage in the 1950s, and Japanese books have printed it in Chinese since 1878.

Japanese sayings with a Japanese record

For contrast, each of these has a record in Japanese print, read at the source, and its own history in this library: 猿も木から落ちる (even monkeys fall out of trees), 七転八起 (fall down seven times, get up eight), 石の上にも三年 (three years, even on a stone), 塵も積もれば山となる (even dust, piled up, becomes a mountain), 能ある鷹は爪を隠す (the hawk with skill hides its talons), 住めば都 (live there, and it is the capital), 笑う門には福来る (fortune comes to the gate that laughs), 雨降って地固まる (after rain, the ground sets firm), 知らぬが仏 (not knowing is Buddha) and 言わぬが花 (not saying is the flower).

Each is also a scroll in our collection of Japanese proverbs.

A reading

The five do not fail in the same way. Cold tea is a Chinese proverb with the wrong country on it, and the earliest known English book that gives it the wrong country is a book of quotations of 1924, whose editions of 1907 and 1914 do not carry the line. Three faces begins as a missionary's description of the Japanese, written before 1633, which Japanese books found quote from 1982. A novel of 1975 puts it in a character's mouth as a saying they have, and a critic reads that as a paraphrase of the missionary. From 2015 it goes about in English as something the Japanese say about everyone; no source read traces that line to either, though a Japanese blogger of 2015 guesses Shōgun. For wrong train, vision and warrior no Japanese text of the saying older than the English was found, and their earliest whole records are English, save the wrong train's, which are in Arabic and then English; each is found with the label, and in the books found the garden saying was called Zen and Chinese before it was called a samurai's. What the five share is the label. No source read here shows a Japanese tradition behind any of them; the Japanese pages that carry three of them (2006, 2015, 2025) translate the English, the later two to doubt that Japan has any such saying. Rodrigues's it is said names no one who said it. In the passages found where he reports a Japanese saying, his Japanese translators call it a proverb (諺), and they do not call the three hearts one; his Portuguese was not read. For vision, the Japanese sentences of a like shape, from a ministry's report or the words attributed to Honda's founder, stand under the names of those who wrote them or are said to have spoken them, not as sayings.

How this was read

Two words are used here in a narrow sense: a witness is any text that records a saying, and the label is a text's calling a saying Japanese. Each saying was searched in October 2026 with the tools listed below. A search can show where a saying is, but not prove where it is not, so every first, earliest, oldest and not found in this article means first, earliest, oldest or not found in those tools, and claims nothing more.

Sources not seen

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

References

  1. X (formerly Twitter), posts found with the X search tool of xAI's Grok (x_search, Responses API, grok-4.7), 15 October 2026, in English, Arabic, Japanese and other languages; each post's date read from its own number, which records when it was posted, and its words through X's public embed service (oEmbed); the image cards opened. The runs and the checks are kept with this article. Oldest first: @ousamasy, 13 May 2012, https://x.com/ousamasy/status/201700727637295105 · @AmaadTraining, 26 February 2014, https://x.com/AmaadTraining/status/438633387482697728 · @90MAK_, 7 August 2014, https://x.com/90MAK_/status/497506082080583681 · @ShaimaAldereai, 20 November 2018, https://x.com/ShaimaAldereai/status/1065019883983908865 · @hasna_elalami12, 7 February 2019, https://x.com/hasna_elalami12/status/1093535724991926278 · @Rehabmuhamed93, 7 April 2019, https://x.com/Rehabmuhamed93/status/1115036883006914561 · @JacklineMulwa1, 9 August 2024, https://x.com/JacklineMulwa1/status/1821968636900471001 · @MakindeYetund12, 9 August 2024, https://x.com/MakindeYetund12/status/1821973857848455193 · @Melo_Malebo, 13 August 2024, https://x.com/Melo_Malebo/status/1823406309024157856 · @40winks_ghost, 17 August 2024, quoting the post of 13 August, https://x.com/40winks_ghost/status/1824613953864908985 · @EssentialMastry (Essential Mastery), 17 August 2024, an image, https://x.com/EssentialMastry/status/1824876401172136206 · image https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GVNDZg4WkAAs677.jpg (the same image again on 10 September 2024, https://x.com/EssentialMastry/status/1833550666784034965) · @kamaupol, 18 August 2024, https://x.com/kamaupol/status/1825090256959320098 · @Spirit_man12, 18 August 2024, https://x.com/Spirit_man12/status/1825130517882110327
  2. r/motivation, "True", 5 October 2024, an image signed Essential Mastery | Twitter, image read (Arctic Shift archive, post 1fwtin3). https://www.reddit.com/r/motivation/comments/1fwtin3/ · image https://i.redd.it/uhrzll3hmysd1.jpeg
  3. Gill Walker, "If you get on the wrong train, get off at the next station", LinkedIn, 9 October 2024. https://jp.linkedin.com/pulse/you-get-wrong-train-off-next-station-gill-walker-2y9lc
  4. Balaji Kasal, The Intelligent Investor's Art of Selling, 2 November 2024, p. 14 (Google Books snippet); also The Awakened Pet Groomer, 2025, and Predictable Ops, 2026, p. 176. https://books.google.com/books?id=esAuEQAAQBAJ
  5. René Marlé, Bonhoeffer: The Man and His Work, 1968 (Google Books snippet). https://books.google.com/books?id=eLgtAAAAMAAJ
  6. NDL Digital Collections, full-text search, all years, oldest first, run 14 October 2026, on every Japanese form searched for this article, named in it or not (the twenty oldest hits of each form read where there were more); the results, form by form, are kept with this article. Example: https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=間違った電車に乗ったら&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC
  7. 「日本の諺？」, Meehan Japan blog, 21 August 2025. https://meehanjapan.com/2025/08/21/blog270/ · It quotes Japanese Wikipedia, 「高校教師 (1993年のテレビドラマ)」, § 第3話, re-read 14 October 2026. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/高校教師_(1993年のテレビドラマ)
  8. Michael Cooper (ed.), They Came to Japan: An Anthology of European Reports on Japan, 1543–1640, University of California Press, 1965, § Their Three Hearts, and its source note: História, I, pp. 173–174. Valignano says much the same in his Sumario, and its note on Rodrigues: Following his expulsion from Japan in 1612, he settled in Macao where he eventually died (Internet Archive full-text search). https://archive.org/details/theycametojapan0000coop
  9. East Meets West: Mutual Images, a secondary-school teaching unit (Stanford University and University of Washington), 1980, Reading III, "Their Three Hearts," quoting Cooper. https://archive.org/details/micro_IA41155103_0299
  10. ジョアン・ロドリーゲス『日本教会史 上』(大航海時代叢書 IX), 岩波書店, 1967, NDL pid 2975773, scan 155 (full-text snippets; the 諺 passages at scans 116, 190, 237 and 274). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2975773
  11. ヴァリニャーノ『日本巡察記』松田毅一 他訳, 東洋文庫 229, 平凡社, 1973, NDL pid 12282683 (full-text snippet, index 156); the same passage in the 桃源社 edition of 1965, NDL pid 3013968. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12282683
  12. Alejandro Valignano, Sumario de las cosas de Japón (1583), ed. José Luis Álvarez-Taladriz, Sophia University, 1954 (Internet Archive full-text search). https://archive.org/details/sumariodelascosa0001alej
  13. James Clavell, Shōgun: A Novel of Japan, Atheneum, 1975, pp. 170–171 (Internet Archive full-text search; the pilot Vasco Rodrigues is introduced at p. 116 and calls Blackthorne Ingeles throughout). https://archive.org/details/shogunnovelofjap01clav
  14. Gina Macdonald, James Clavell: A Critical Companion, Greenwood Press, 1996 (Internet Archive full-text search: he paraphrases Joao Rodrigues's statement that the Japanese are "so crafty in their hearts …"). https://archive.org/details/jamesclavellcrit00macd
  15. 阿部徹雄『日本に生きるドン・タシナリ』1984, NDL pid 12279036 (full-text snippet). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12279036
  16. NDL Digital full-text snippets quoting the 1967 translation: 林知己夫・米沢弘『日本人の深層意識』1982, pid 12105392; 平田伴直『竹やぶ集』1984, pid 12412263; 飯田鼎『わがヨーロッパ社会史の旅』1988, pid 13131114; 『世界』1991年7月号, pid 3367113; 米沢弘『日本人の信仰の原風景』1996, pid 14098756; 宮内敬太郎「日独言語相互行為における自己隠喩とイメジ」『立教大学研究報告』1997年2月, pid 1786567. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12105392
  17. r/QuotesPorn, "The Japanese say you have three faces..." ~Unknown, 15 March 2015 (Arctic Shift archive; the imgur image btHfl7m since removed). https://www.reddit.com/r/QuotesPorn/comments/2z5ml6/
  18. "Three Faces", Blue Heron Blast, 26 October 2015. https://www.blueheronblast.com/2015/10/three-faces.html
  19. Adam Weishaupt, Contra Mundum, Magus Books, 2016 (Google Books snippet), https://books.google.com/books?id=4FDqEAAAQBAJ ; Eric Standop and Elisa Petrini, Read the Face, St. Martin's Essentials, 2019, p. 87 (Google Books snippet). https://books.google.com/books?id=UNKJDwAAQBAJ
  20. 「海外「日本には”人は3つの顔を持つ”という言葉があるらしい」」, すらるど, 6 November 2015. https://sow.blog.jp/archives/1044426365.html
  21. The Survey, vol. 24, no. 25, 17 September 1910 (full-text search). https://archive.org/details/survey-1897_1910-09-17_24_25
  22. The Herald of Gospel Liberty, vol. 121, no. 19, 9 May 1929, p. 16 (full-text search). https://archive.org/details/sim_herald-of-gospel-liberty_1929-05-09_121_19
  23. Kiwanis Magazine, vol. 21, no. 4, April 1936 (full-text search; the scan's machine-read text has but a A dream). https://archive.org/details/sim_kiwanis_1936-04_21_4
  24. One Earth, vol. 7, no. 1, December 1986–January 1987 (full-text search: 1730. From a church in Sussex, England), https://archive.org/details/one-earth_december-1986-january-1987_7_1 ; Favourite Heroes and Holy People, A&C Black, 2008, p. 49 (Google Books snippet). https://books.google.com/books?id=qlZa_rtWRMAC
  25. Public Health & Epidemiology Report Ontario, vol. 3, Ministry of Health, Toronto, 1992 (full-text search). https://archive.org/details/31761116821851
  26. The Power of Vision with Joel Barker, ChartHouse International Learning Corporation, 1993 (full-text search). https://archive.org/details/powerofvisionwit0000vari
  27. Philip Kotler, Marketing Management: Analysis, Planning, Implementation, and Control, 8th ed., Prentice Hall, 1994, chapter epigraph (full-text search). https://archive.org/details/marketingmanagem08kotl
  28. The Lucky Bag, United States Naval Academy, 2005 volume (the Archive's date, 1894, is the series'), https://archive.org/details/luckybag20051unit ; Texas Politics, 12th ed., Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 2013 (the Archive's date reads 1913), https://archive.org/details/ietexaspolitics10000newe (each read in its full text).
  29. Richard N. Miller, Multinational Direct Marketing, McGraw-Hill, 1995 (—JAPANESE PROVERB), https://archive.org/details/multinationaldir0000mill ; Harvey Robbins, Why Change Doesn't Work, Peterson's, 1996, p. 175 (Japanese proverb), https://archive.org/details/whychangedoesntw00robb ; Annals of Internal Medicine, vol. 130, no. 8, 20 April 1999, https://archive.org/details/sim_annals-of-internal-medicine_1999-04-20_130_8 (each by full-text search).
  30. 日本アッセンブリーズ・オブ・ゴッド教団, ショートメッセージ Vol. 38, 「クリスマスは神のビジョン」, 23 December 2006 (Wayback Machine capture 25 December 2007). https://web.archive.org/web/20071225035206/http://www.ag-j.org/messa.jsp?vol=38
  31. オリソン・マーデン『最高の人生を約束する自分の磨き方』弓場隆 訳, ディスカヴァー・トゥエンティワン, 2024, NDL pid 14563937, and its re-edition 『人生を最大限に生きる』, 2025, NDL pid 14564193 (item search only; no passage shown). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/14563937
  32. 倉橋旭静『無常偈を通して見たる高祖の人生観』1934, NDL pid 1057086 (full-text snippet). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1057086
  33. 通商産業省『90年代の通産政策ビジョン : 地球時代の人間的価値の創造へ』1990, NDL pid 13101470 (full-text snippet); the same paragraph in 『通産省公報』 6 July 1990. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/13101470
  34. Honda, 『Honda 75年史』, chapter 1, section 3, 「ホンダフィロソフィーを制定し、「社是」を変更する」, read 14 October 2026. https://global.honda/jp/guide/history-digest/75years-history/chapter1/section3/page2.html
  35. 『ホンダは目覚めたか』1996, NDL pid 13953015 (full-text snippet); the sentence is quoted under the founder's name in many business books of 1998–2000 in the same index. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/13953015
  36. Jim Cobb, Prepper's Armed Defense, Ulysses Press, 2 August 2016 by Google Books' date, p. 5 (Google Books snippet). https://books.google.com/books?id=7BurDAAAQBAJ
  37. Chris Matakas, The Tao of Jiu Jitsu, CreateSpace, 2016 (full-text search; the book's own copyright line, 2016). https://archive.org/details/taoofjiujitsu0000chri
  38. Stefan Verstappen, A Masters Guide to The Way of the Warrior, Lulu, 28 November 2016 by Google Books' date, p. 36 (Google Books snippet), https://books.google.com/books?id=l0nPDQAAQBAJ ; Fernan Vargas, Things You Should Know In Case I Am Not Here to Tell You, vol. 1, Lulu, 29 December 2016 by Google Books' date, p. 36 (Google Books snippet). https://books.google.com/books?id=PtFVDwAAQBAJ
  39. Daniel G. Amen and Tana Amen, The Brain Warrior's Way, Berkley, 2017, p. 374 (full-text search), https://archive.org/details/brainwarriorsway0000amen_c6x3 ; the ebook, Penguin, 22 November 2016 by Google Books' date, p. 11 (Google Books snippet). https://books.google.com/books?id=_ibbCwAAQBAJ
  40. Bohdi Sanders, The Warrior Ethos, Kaizen Quest Publishing, 2017, p. 434 (full-text search). https://archive.org/details/warriorethos0000bohd
  41. Wai-ii Yeung, Way Out: A Daoist Path to a Fearless Life, International Daoist Society, 2017 (full-text search). https://archive.org/details/wayoutdaoistpath0000yeun
  42. Scott Richard James, Prepared Neighborhoods, Hold Fast, 2018 (Chinese proverb); Joseph Malik, The New Magic, Oxblood Books, 2018 (Zen proverb) (full-text search). https://archive.org/details/preparedneighbor0000jame · https://archive.org/details/newmagic0000mali
  43. Rick Vuyst, I Need to Change My Plants, 2020 (full-text search), https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781618081971 . The other attributions, each by the Internet Archive's full-text search: Sun Tzu, a novel in the e-book batch f_2009000 (its files dated 5 March 2019), https://archive.org/details/f_2009000 ; Bruce Lee, Bill K. Wong, Better to Win, 2023, https://archive.org/details/bettertowinhardb0000wong ; Miyamoto Musashi, Global Greening Deserts Trillion Trees Initiative …, dated 22 February 2022 in its record, https://archive.org/details/global-greening-deserts-trillion-trees-initiative-climate-emergency-peace-buildi
  44. Sun Tzu, The Art of War, tr. Lionel Giles, 1910, Project Gutenberg eBook 132 (the word garden occurs once, in the translator's introduction, in a book title). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/132
  45. Miyamoto Musashi, A Book of Five Rings, tr. Victor Harris, Overlook, 1974; The Book of Five Rings, tr. Thomas Cleary, Shambhala, 1993; The Complete Musashi, tr. Alexander Bennett, Tuttle, 2018 (the Gorin-no-sho, Heihō kakitsuke, the thirty-five articles, Gohō-no-tachimichi and Dokkōdō) (each searched whole in its text).
  46. 宮本武蔵「独行道」, the text of the 熊本県立美術館 autograph, read whole. http://sybrma.sakura.ne.jp/363musashi.dokukoudou.html
  47. William Scarborough, A Collection of Chinese Proverbs, American Presbyterian Mission Press, Shanghai, 1875, p. 69, no. 425. https://archive.org/details/collectionofchin00scar/page/n114
  48. 『文人必携懐中雅字便』1878, NDL pid 891725 (NDL Lab full text). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/891725
  49. 『通俗一語千金集 : 英文插訳』1887, p. 111, no. 13, NDL pid 757780, scan 61. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/757780/1/61
  50. 『亜細亜言語集 支那官話部』1902, NDL pid 869193 (full-text snippet). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/869193
  51. 矢崎源九郎『世界のことわざ : 民族の知恵』1965, NDL pid 2936698 (full-text snippet); also 『人生名言集』1965, NDL pid 2936695. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2936698
  52. 『中国賢人の教え : 世渡りの哲人たちの生き方・考え方』1996, NDL pid 14273219 (full-text snippet): 中国のことわざに「冷茶冷飯好吃、冷言冷話難受」. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/14273219
  53. Wikisource (Chinese), full-text search for 冷茶冷飯 and 冷飯吃得 (no hits) and for 冷言冷語, and 「增廣昔時賢文」 read whole, https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/增廣昔時賢文 ; CBETA full-text search for 冷茶冷飯 (no hits) and 冷言冷語, the earliest 『虛堂和尚語錄』 (T2000, compiled 1208), T47n2000_p0993b. https://cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/zh/T2000
  54. A. W. E. Dolby, Eight Chinese Plays from the Thirteenth Century to the Present, Columbia University Press, 1978, "Identifying footprints in the snow (Ping-xue bian-zong), Chuanju drama: version (anon.) of the mid-1950s" (full-text search). https://archive.org/details/eightchineseplay00omch
  55. W. Gurney Benham, Benham's Book of Quotations, Proverbs and Household Words, Ward Lock, London, 1924 (MCMXXIV), and its preface, https://archive.org/details/benhamsbookofquo0000wgur ; Putnam's Complete Book of Quotations, Proverbs and Household Words, G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1926, p. 748, https://archive.org/details/putnamscompleteb00benh ; the 1907 first edition (Cassell, London, and Lippincott, Philadelphia), https://archive.org/details/cassellsbookofqu0000benh · https://archive.org/details/cu31924027664907 , and the 1914 edition (Cassell), https://archive.org/details/bookofquotations000382mbp (each read whole in its text).
  56. Burton Stevenson, The Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases, Macmillan, 1948, under Cold weather and crafty knaves come out of the north (Howell, 1659) (full-text search, and the text read at the entry), https://archive.org/details/homebookofprover0000burt ; later books: The Daily Planet Almanac, 1985, Avon, 1984, https://archive.org/details/dailyplanetalman0000unse ; March Egerton, Adventures in Cheap Eating: Hawaii, Tsunami Press, 1993, https://archive.org/details/adventuresinchea0000eger ; Since Eve Ate Apples, Tsunami Press, 1994, https://archive.org/details/sinceeveateapple0000unse (each by full-text search).

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, edited it and approved it for publication, 2026-10-15.

Not yet reviewed.

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Five sayings attributed to Japan, but not Japanese," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/five-sayings-called-japanese.