保護と奉仕 hogo to hōshi To Serve and Protect
Abstract
保護と奉仕, protection and service, renders to protect and to serve, the motto of the Los Angeles Police Department, the winning entry in a contest the department's magazine conducted in February 1955, and beside the city seal on its patrol cars after a City Council ordinance of 1963; the English words were already police words, in both orders. The Japanese pair is in the National Diet Library's full-text index from 1922: in a crafts magazine's call for a national protection and service, in the duties a hereditary nobility handed down and, service first, for a class idea of the Middle Ages; in the 1930s historians used it for the two halves of the feudal bond, the lord's protection and the vassal's service: in Japan, where 中田薫 gave the age's own words as 御恩 and 奉公, and in France. In 1953 a Japanese police journal spoke of the people receiving the police's 保護と奉仕, nearly two years before the Los Angeles contest. Japanese texts of 1974 and 1991 write the pair service first, 奉仕と保護, on a car's door and as a motto that had been.
Overview
The sense. Two nouns joined by と, protection and service, in the motto's own order: protect first, serve second.
The words. 保護 hogo is to shield something from danger, threat or harm (外からの危険・脅威・破壊などからかばい守ること), and in police Japanese also to take someone into protective custody, as a lost child is [1]; in older use it was often read hōgo. 奉仕 hōshi is, in its first sense, to serve a god or a buddha, an emperor, a lord or a teacher with reverence (神仏・天子・主君・師などにつつしんでつかえること), cited from 936; its second, selfless work for the nation, society or others, is cited from a dictionary of 1922 [2]. と to joins them.
The text in English. To protect and to serve is the Los Angeles order, and the Japanese keeps it. Both orders were in American police prose before the contest: a California police journal of 1930 speaks of the citizens whom the police are pledged and paid to serve and protect [3], and a Milwaukee police text quoted in 1940 tells officers that their function in the community is to protect and to serve [4].
The historical record
1922 to 1939. The nation, the nobility and the feudal bond. The National Diet Library's full-text index, searched oldest first, first returns the pair in this order in two items of 1922, which it cannot order within the year. A design-and-crafts magazine of April 1922, in a passage whose excerpt goes on to woodcraft, writes 事業でなく、國民的な保護と奉仕とを要する時なのだ, it is a time that calls not for a business but for a national protection and service [5]. 室伏高信's 『霊の王国』, dated by its record to 1922 with no month, writes on inheritance: 世襲貴族は權利とともに義務を、保護と奉仕とを、代々に傳へたのである, the hereditary nobility handed down, with its rights, its duties, protection and service, from generation to generation [6]. A translation of Lafargue on the evolution of property (1929) puts the feudal relation in the same words: 領民は領主に奉仕する代りに、また領主から保護を受けた, the people served the lord and in return received his protection [7]. In 1932 中田薫, lecturing on the history of Japanese public law, wrote of the warriors that 彼等ノ主従関係ハ保護ト奉仕トノ相互的義務カラ成リ、當時ノ語ヲ以テスレバ御恩ト奉公トノ相対的関係デアル, their bond of lord and retainer consisted of mutual duties of protection and service; in the language of the time, the reciprocal relation of 御恩 and 奉公, the lord's favor and the retainer's service [8]. The historians who followed wrote the same pair for the feudal bond: 牧健二 in 1935 [9], of Japan; 広瀬哲士 in 1938, of feudalism in France, 弱者と强者との間に結ばれた保護と奉仕との主從の契約, a contract of lord and man, of protection and service, struck between the weak and the strong [10]; 中村吉治 in 1939 [11], of Japan. The reverse order, 奉仕と保護, names a class idea practised in medieval secular political life, 奉仕と保護の階級的思想, in a history of Western social movements of the same year 1922 [12].
1934. A Christmas duty. A book of anecdotes of Japanese Christendom, 『天使の手記』, opens on a village church's Christmas: 農村の或る小さな教會の祝賀會へ、私は保護と奉仕の任務を帶びて出張したのである, I went out to the Christmas celebration of a small country church, charged with the duty of protection and service [13]. The duties, told from the foot of the page onto the next, were done largely through others: keeping the thumbtacks dropped on the floor from anyone's feet, having the draft turned from the children sitting under the windows, getting a band of small boys who had come to make trouble to go elsewhere, and having a young man set upright the candle in the lavatory lantern before it caught fire. The 1934 copy is a second printing, its preface signed only by the editor; the NDL's record for the enlarged printing of 1935 names 松野菊太郎.
1930, 1940 and 1955. To protect and to serve. In December 1930 a San Francisco police journal, on the gangs of Chicago and New York, asked for the loyal support of the citizens whom they are pledged and paid to serve and protect [3]. In the pulp magazine Ace G-Man Stories of January–February 1940, a column of tips from the F.B.I. quotes material used by the Milwaukee Police Department: Remembering this and aware of your function in the community—to protect and to serve—you will readily understand the importance of COURTESY [4]. The Los Angeles Police Department's own page tells its motto's story: a contest in the department's BEAT magazine in February 1955 for a police-academy motto, won by Officer Joseph S. Dorobek with To Protect and to Serve; adoption by the academy, then wider acceptance in the department; and on 4 November 1963 the City Council's ordinance, after which, by the magazine's December 1963 account the page reprints, the motto stood beside the city seal on the patrol cars [14].
1953 onward. The Japanese police. In April 1953 the journal 『警察研究』 wrote of 警察の保護と奉仕を受け、警察の経費を負担する人民大衆, the people, who receive the police's protection and service and bear its cost, as the source of a new idea of the police [15]. Later police Japanese also writes the pair service first: in 1974 the Tokyo Metropolitan Police's staff magazine 『自警』 described a yellow car with 「奉仕と保護」 on its front door, in a passage whose excerpt names no city [16], and the 1991 translation of a book by David Bayley speaks of 「奉仕と保護」 as what had been a motto (…のモットーであった), in an excerpt that begins mid-sentence and goes on to the Houston Police Department [17]. Neither excerpt says it renders the Los Angeles motto. The Japanese Wikipedia gives the Los Angeles motto as 保護と奉仕 [18].
What is not a source. The 1934 page is the pair in ordinary use, not the motto. The feudal pair is the historians' term: 中田 gives the age's own words as 御恩 and 奉公, and no source read here shows the pair in the warrior age. No source read names a coiner of the Japanese pair.
A reading
In the oldest pages the index returns, the pair is what a hereditary nobility handed down with its rights, and what a crafts magazine said its time called for; the same year the reverse order named a class idea of the Middle Ages, and by the 1930s the historians were using the pair for the two sides of a bargain: the lord protects, the man serves, and each owes the other. The motto gives both halves to one party, the police, and the Japanese of 1953 had already done the same. The scroll keeps the Los Angeles order and the one subject, and 奉仕 keeps the older reverence of serving something above oneself, which the English serve can carry or not.
Japanese Scrolls by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase
Sources not seen
- 『霊の王国』's source: the book has a chapter on Rathenau, and whether the 1922 passage renders him has not been read.
- 現代之図案工芸 1922, 牧 1935, 中村 1939, Lafargue 1929, 石川 1922, 『警察研究』 1953, 『自警』 1974 and the 1991 Bayley translation past their excerpts, and Bayley's English original.
- The 1955 and 1963 issues of BEAT magazine.
A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.
References
- 保護, デジタル大辞泉 and 精選版 日本国語大辞典. https://kotobank.jp/word/保護-629689
- 奉仕, デジタル大辞泉 and 精選版 日本国語大辞典. https://kotobank.jp/word/奉仕-627585
- Police and Peace Officers' Journal of the State of California, December 1930, p. 31, "Uncle Sam and the Cops". https://archive.org/details/policepeaceoffic19301931sanf/page/n76
- Ace G-Man Stories 6(3), January–February 1940, p. 71, "Tips from the F.B.I.". https://archive.org/details/AceGManStoriesV06n0319400102ATLPMUrf/page/n72
- 現代之図案工芸 8(4), 現代の図案工芸社, April 1922, scan 10, excerpt only. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1527888/1/10
- 室伏高信, 霊の王国, 改造社, 1922, p. 205, scan 109. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/968634/1/109
- ラファルグ, 財産進化論, 改造文庫, 改造社, 1929, scan 5, excerpt only. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1175481/1/5
- 中田薫 (lectures), 日本公法法制史, 啓明社, 1932, pp. 178–179, scan 98. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1886436/1/98
- 牧健二, 日本封建制度成立史, 弘文堂書房, 1935, scan 171, excerpt only. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1269360/1/171
- 広瀬哲士, 概観フランス史, 白水社, 1938, p. 40, scan 25. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1227904/1/25
- 中村吉治, 日本封建制再編成史, 三笠書房, 1939, scan 105, excerpt only. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1687136/1/105
- 石川三四郎, 西洋社会運動史, 大鐙閣, 1922, scan 33, excerpt only. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/968619/1/33
- 天使の手記：日本基督教界の落穂拾ひ, second printing, 報恩会, 1934, p. 1, scan 7 (p. 2, scan 8). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1035744/1/7 · the enlarged printing, 松野菊太郎, 天使の手記：信仰生活の千姿万態, 補3版, 教文館出版部, 1935, the NDL's record. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1242282
- Los Angeles Police Department, "LAPD Motto". https://www.lapdonline.org/lapd-motto/
- 警察研究, 良書普及会, April 1953, scan 14, excerpt only. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2245307/1/14
- 自警, 警視庁警務部教養課 ed., 自警会, February 1974, scan 76, excerpt only. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2706831/1/76
- デイビッド・H・ベイリー, 新・ニッポンの警察, サイマル出版会, 1991, scan 155, excerpt only. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12674303/1/155
- ロサンゼルス市警察, Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ロサンゼルス市警察