不言実行 fugen jikkō Action Before Words
This is a philological study of the Japanese word 不言実行 (fugen jikkō), action before words. It spans the record from a Meiji cabinet's watchword of 1901 through its mockery as a buzzword to its adoption as a conscript's virtue by 1913, and examines why a word every twentieth-century book treated as ancient wisdom is, on the print record, forty-one years old by the time a poet called it so.
Abstract
不言実行, fugen jikkō, action before words, is a Japanese-made word born as a cabinet's watchword about 1901, on the model of the Analects' he acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his actions. It was mocked as a buzzword by the politician Ōkuma Shigenobu and taught to conscripts as a virtue by 1913; by 1943 a poet could call it ancient. Its pun, 有言実行, say it and do it, first appears in print in 1916.
Overview
The sense. To do what should be done, in silence, without complaint or argument: the two words are Chinese, the four-character word is Japanese, and it is young.
The words. 不言 is not saying: 老子's 不言之教, the teaching that uses no words, and the 史記's peach and plum trees that say nothing and still wear a path to their feet. 実行 is real doing, a word the dictionary first cites from an 1830s satire of the Confucians of Edo who wag empty tongues and have no real conduct in their persons [1].
The text in English. The word's first foreign twin in print is French, not English. A 1909 Japanese dictionary of foreign idioms glosses faire sans dire as 言はずして行ふ, 不言実行, to act without talking, and on the same page gives deeds, not words and the Italian deeds are male, words female without matching either to it.
The historical record
1840, China: the same four characters, meaning the opposite. The only pre-modern book in the National Diet Library's full-text index that contains the string is Chinese, an 1840 collection by the Qing official Li Yanzhang. His sentence complains that scholars for the most part do not speak of practical conduct and do not read the whole classics. There 不言 is the verb and 實行 its object; the words are a fragment of a sentence, not a phrase. Nothing older in that index carries the word, in either language [2].
1901–1903. A cabinet's watchword, and its critics. The first Katsura cabinet took office in 1901. When Hara Takashi attacked it in the Diet in 1903 he said that at the founding of the present cabinet they announced 不言実行, to act without speaking; look at the record and they have spoken without acting. The oldest print of the word, a year earlier, is already an attack: the founding address of an oratory society says that the kind of 不言実行 practiced by the present cabinet, working in silence, "slow in speech and quick in action," is a thing not to be done in today's constitutional politics, which rests on public opinion. The quoted phrase is the Analects, and it is attached to the word in its first year. Three more books of 1903 say the same, one a manual of rhetoric warning that silence, few words and 不言実行 alone will not get through in today's world [3].
1904–1909. The buzzword and the sect. Ōkuma Shigenobu, the most talkative politician of the age, sneered at the buzzword 不言実行: a man who talks may not be a doer, but there is no doer who does not talk; what they call 不言実行 is nothing but the excuse of a man with no opinions and no confidence. By 1909 a book of portraits of government men calls it a religion: 不言実行 is the mark of the Katsura cabinet, and Baron Hirata is the head temple of the 不言実行 sect; the world calls Marquis Katsura its founder, but it was the baron who converted him. The same year a Confucian scholar, annotating the Analects in Chinese, wrote that those who now preach 不言実行 only make the people doubt; where is the trust in that? [4]
1906–1915. The virtue. Tokutomi Sohō took the word up in 1906 with a caveat, what we should strive for is 不言実行, though 不言実行 does not mean absolute silence. In 1913 a manual for the spiritual education of soldiers gave conscripts a lesson on it, numbered thirty-one: what you have resolved in your heart you carry out without saying so; what you are ordered you do exactly, in silence; its drill of questions and answers two leaves on gives the reasons, said aloud it sounds like boasting, and a soldier carries out orders at once and reasons are forbidden, and between them the lesson quotes 老子, he who knows does not speak. The same year the essayist Ōmachi Keigetsu put the man who aims at great things is a man of 不言実行 into a calligraphy copybook, and from 1915 the county gazetteers praise their local worthies for the virtue of 不言実行 [5].
1916. The pun. 有言実行, say it and do it, appears as the third term of a joke about three prime ministers: Katsura made 不言実行 his principle, Yamamoto neither spoke nor acted, and Ōkuma raised the ideal of 有言実行. By 1926 a lecturer could say that constitutional politics is politics of responsibility, which is to say 有言実行, and by 1938 the two were a pair: 不言実行 is to be honored, 有言実行 is to be done [6].
1935–1943. The word forgets its birth. The Library's curve rises from eleven books in 1900–04 to 466 in 1935–39, most of them in politics, the military, education, biography and ethics. In 1943 a poet could write that we have been taught 不言実行 since ancient times, of a word forty-one years old in print [7].
The sense across time. The dictionaries record one sense, the virtue: to do without announcing. The books record two, and they are the two sides of one argument that began the year the word did. For the barracks, the copybook and the commentators on the Analects, the word is the Master's own teaching: act first, and let your words follow; the gentleman is ashamed when his words outrun his deeds; I would prefer not to speak: does Heaven speak? The four seasons run their course. For the orators, for Hara and for Ōkuma, a government that will not speak is a government that need not answer, and 不言実行 is the silent man's excuse. A 1940 commentary reconciles the two in one line, and it is the best gloss the word has: 不言実行 prizes not the silence but the doing [8].
What is not a source. Not a Chinese idiom: the 1840 Chinese sentence uses the four characters to mean do not speak of practice. Not ancient: no Japanese book before 1902 carries it, and the first dictionary to list it, a 1906 kanji dictionary, gives it as a usage example under 実行 [9]. Not the Analects verbatim: the Analects supply the idea in four passages and the word 不言 in none of them. Not a samurai maxim: it was born in a cabinet and raised in a conscript's barracks.
Today. Two books of 1909–12 reach for the word to render Carlyle [10]. The English glosses: the 1942 Kenkyūsha already has action before words; in deed but not in words, with he is a man of deeds but few words; the modern ones, as Weblio carries them, are working in silence (斎藤和英大辞典, 1928), action before (rather than) words; work before talk (研究社 新和英中辞典, whose example sentence is still political: What is now most needed in Japan is politicians who act rather than talk), deeds, not words (英語ことわざ教訓辞典) and actions speak louder than words (Tatoeba) [11].
A reading
A Meiji word with a Confucian spine. Action Before Words is the English it has carried in Kenkyūsha since at least 1942, and where it comes from is the Master's answer to a talkative disciple, act first, then let your words follow. The birth in a cabinet is the story, and it is a good one for a word about resolve: it was mocked as a buzzword by the best talker of the age and outlived the mockery because soldiers, teachers and calligraphers found it true. The best one-line reading is the 1940 one: not the silence, but the doing. The modern 実 and the pre-war 實 are one word.
References
- 「不言」・「実行」・「不言実行」・「有言実行」, 精選版日本国語大辞典・デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/不言実行
- 李彦章, 榕園全集 (榕園文鈔 卷一), 1840, scan 32. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2598944/1/32
- 東洋雄弁会演説集, 1902, scan 4; 原敬, 第十七議会の顛末, 1903, scan 16; 小室重弘, 実験雄弁学, 1903, scan 8. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/900479/1/4 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/784263/1/16 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/861824/1/8
- 鳥谷部春汀, 明治人物月旦, in 春汀全集, 1909, scan 58; 山本実彦, 政府部内人物評, 1909, scan 14; 山田喜之助, 論語, 1909, scan 47. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/778039/1/58 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/778198/1/14 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/754311/1/47
- 徳富蘇峰, 日曜講壇, 1906, scan 92; 実際的軍人精神教育要領, 1913, scan 69 (and scans 70–71); 大町桂月, 修養三体習字帖, 1913, scan 60; 鈴鹿郡郷土誌, 1915, scan 77. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/898344/1/92 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/941757/1/69 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/917848/1/60 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/950885/1/77
- 大正政界之裏面, 1916, scan 57; a political lecture, 1926, scan 239; a teacher-training text, 1938, scan 42. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/936068/1/57 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/918651/1/239 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1457336/1/42
- National Diet Library Digital Collections, next-generation full-text search on 不言実行, counted by five-year period; 野口米次郎, 伝統について, 1943, scan 22. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/ · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1871662/1/22
- 原重治, 興亜の理念論語新説, 1940, scan 25 (on 為政 2.13). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1055830/1/25
- 漢和大辞林, 1906, scan 190. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/862748/1/190
- 文芸百科全書, 早稲田文学社, 1909, scan 941 (on Carlyle's father); 北沢種一, 1912, scan 91 (on Carlyle). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/871775/1/941 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/938321/1/91
- 神田乃武・南日恒太郎, 英和双解熟語大辞典, 1909, scan 857; Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, Takenobu, Harvard University Press, 1942; James Legge (trans.), The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, Trübner, 1861, 為政 2.13; 「不言実行」, 斎藤和英大辞典・研究社新和英中辞典・英語ことわざ教訓辞典・Tatoeba, at Weblio 英和・和英辞典. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/990169/1/857 · https://ejje.weblio.jp/content/不言実行