百戦錬磨 hyakusen renma Tempered by a Hundred Battles
Its earliest known prose use praises a general tempered by a hundred battles who still stopped to listen.
Abstract
百戦錬磨 hyakusen renma is defined in デジタル大辞泉 as たびたびの戦いで鍛えられていること。また、経験が豊かで処理能力にすぐれていること, being tempered by repeated battles; also, being rich in experience and excellent at handling things, and is written both 錬磨 and 練磨 [1][2]. Its first instance in the 精選版 日本国語大辞典 is a 1941 essay [1], but the National Diet Library's full-text search, read oldest first, has it earlier: in a manuscript of 西村茂樹's 『文草』 dated 1842–47 by the library, nearly a century before 1941, in a poem on a cannon demonstration; and in an essay by 齋藤竹堂, who died in 1852, in an 1877 anthology [3][4][5][6]. 竹堂's essay says that the general Minamoto no Yoshiie's generalship 得於天性。而成於百戰練磨之餘, came from his nature and was perfected after a hundred battles' tempering, and then asks why such a man humbled himself to learn from a scholar who, he says, had never once held a weapon [5]. His answer is that it was not self-belittling but self-respect (非自輕也。即自重也): Yoshiie took the scholar's check with 虛心聽人, listening with an empty heart, and 竹堂 ends by asking whether what Masafusa taught was strategy alone, 豈獨兵畧哉, which is why I read the phrase as praise for experience that has not closed its owner's ears [5].
Overview
The sense. デジタル大辞泉 defines 百戦錬磨 as being tempered by repeated battles; also, being rich in experience and excellent at handling things, with the example 百戦錬磨のつわもの, a seasoned warrior; the 精選版 日本国語大辞典 as たびたび戦ったり、経験を積んだりして、錬りみがき、鍛えあげられること, being refined and tempered by fighting often or by gathering experience [1]. JMdict gives veteran; battle-worn; schooled by adversity in many battles; hard-bitten; rich in experience; very experienced [2]. It is used as a noun and before の: 百戦錬磨のつわもの [1][2].
The words. 百戦 is 100回の戦い。また、数多くの戦い, a hundred battles; also, many battles, in デジタル大辞泉 [7]. 練磨 or 錬磨 is 技芸・学問などを鍛えみがくこと, tempering and polishing one's art or learning, with 百戦― as its example, and 日国 enters it written both ways [8]. The two characters for ren are different crafts. The 普及版 字通 gives 錬 from the Shuowen as 金を治むるなり, working metal: heating it to drive out impurities and refine it [9]. It gives 練 as ねりぎぬ, glossed silk: heating thread to make it supple, and from that, practice and training. Of the pair it says 糸に加えることを練、金属に加えるを錬という, done to thread it is 練, done to metal it is 錬 (the page prints the two characters as images; the image for metal is the one the same line glosses （錬） earlier, in its list of words sounded lian), and it gives 錬 as 練と通用する, used interchangeably with 練 [9][10]. 磨 is こすってみがく, to rub and polish, and 学問や技芸を向上させようと励む, to strive to better one's learning or art, with 練磨 as the example [11].
The reading. ひゃくせん‐れんま in デジタル大辞泉 and 日国, ひゃくせんれんま in JMdict; hyakusen renma [1][2].
The phrase in English. Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary (1974) gives, under 百戦, 練磨の士, a veteran; an old-timer; an old campaigner [12]. JMdict's first gloss is veteran [2].
The historical record
1842–47. A poem on a cannon. 西村茂樹 (1828–1902) was a Meiji educator and moral thinker in the 旺文社日本史事典; the 日本大百科全書 and the 改訂新版 世界大百科事典 have him born to a samurai family of the Sakura domain and studying Western learning under 佐久間象山, and the 改訂新版 世界大百科事典 has him serving 佐野藩, the Sakura domain's branch domain; the ブリタニカ国際大百科事典 小項目事典 makes him the son of a 佐野藩士, and 佐野藩年寄役 in 1854 [4]. The National Diet Library holds his 『文草』 as a manuscript dated 天保13–弘化4 (1842–1847) [3]. In it, read at the page, is a poem titled 佐野郊觀演礮歌 贈大冢同菴先生, a song on watching an artillery demonstration outside Sano, presented to Master Ōtsuka Dōan (the character after 佐野 read at the page as 郊, outskirts: the dot and crossed strokes of 交 beside 阝) [3]. The National Diet Library's name authority has a 大塚同庵, 1795–1855, 蘭学者, a scholar of Dutch learning; this history does not say he is the man the title names [13]. It opens on a cannon three feet long drawn out on a carriage, and gives its thunder, its smoke and its fall. Then it turns to where the gun came from: 巨礮出自泰西洋、我邦傳之未慣歷, the great cannon comes from the Western ocean; our country has received it and is not yet practiced in it. The next line names 佛蘭 and a 大帝, a great emperor, and then reads 百戦錬磨, the hand writing the short form of 戦 [3]. The character after 佛蘭 and the grammar of the next few characters are not read here, so this history does not say who the emperor is or what the phrase is said of. The hand writes 錬, with the metal radical [3]. The poem goes on to praise one it calls 道人 for studying Western learning to its finest points and knowing early that this weapon led the world's arms, and it ends on him, on the next page: 勿道小藩難展力, do not say a small domain leaves no room for strength, and the spirit that fills his breast, finding no outlet, 發爲礮声震山澤, bursts out as a cannon's roar that shakes mountain and marsh [3]. The poem does not use the phrase again, does not return to the emperor, and does not say that this 道人 is the man the title names [3].
Before 1852, in an 1877 anthology. 齋藤竹堂 on Minamoto no Yoshiie. 齋藤竹堂 (1815–1852) was a Confucian scholar of the late Edo period, 舎長 at the Shōheikō, whose given name was 馨 [6]. 石川鴻斎's 日本外史纂論, published in June 1877, prints his comments, noting his name as 名馨 字子德 [5]. On Minamoto no Yoshiie (源義家), 竹堂 tells how Yoshiie spoke to Fujiwara no Yorimichi of the war in the north. Ōe no Masafusa, a scholar, overheard and said 惜未知兵畧耳, a pity he does not yet know strategy, and Yoshiie, told of it, went to study the military books with him [5]. 竹堂 then writes [5]:
吾嘗怪之。以為義家之用兵。得於天性。而成於百戰練磨之餘。當時將士無敢議者。而彼匡房者何人哉。家世業文。未嘗一操兵。
I used to wonder at this, thinking: Yoshiie's generalship came from his nature and was perfected after a hundred battles' tempering; no officer of his day dared question it. And who was Masafusa? His family's calling was letters; he had never once held a weapon. His answer, a page on: Yoshiie, unbeaten for years and looked on as a god, had perhaps (或有) let his edge show too plainly, with a self-satisfied air, while he talked with Yorimichi; those who are satisfied with themselves heed no one and end in ruin, so Masafusa checked him 將以成就之, to bring him to completion [5]. His retainers were angry; Yoshiie was not, and received Masafusa with courtesy: 虛心聽人, listening to another with an empty heart [5]. 竹堂 goes on: dissatisfied with himself (自歉), Yoshiie 臨事而懼。慮勝而進, met events with caution and advanced only when he had weighed victory, and 匡房所謂兵畧不在書。而在此也, what Masafusa called strategy lay not in the books but in this [5]. In the Later Three Years' War he saw the birds outside his camp in disorder, found the ambush, and said 是兵書所謂飛鳥亂行有伏也。吾不學殆矣, this is what the military books mean by "where birds break their line, there is an ambush"; had I not studied, I would have been in danger [5]. 竹堂 then turns once more: the court did not reward his labor and went so far as to dismiss the war as a private fight (至斥以私鬪), and Yoshiie, 終始一節, the same from first to last, would not resent it in the least (不肯少怨). He ends: 然則匡房之所教。豈獨兵畧哉, then was what Masafusa taught strategy alone? [5]. The phrase does not come again. The print writes 練, with the thread radical [5].
1941. 日国's first instance. 日国 quotes 佐藤垢石's 随筆たぬき汁 (1941), in a piece titled 議会見物, watching the Diet: この人間の態度と答辯が、最も要領を得てゐると思った。百戦練磨の功がある, I thought this man's manner and answers the most to the point. There is the merit of a hundred battles' tempering in it [1]. The 四字熟語を知る辞典 adds 平林たい子 (1948) and 尾崎一雄 (1951), who calls 丹羽 a writer, 作家, one could call 百戦錬磨 [1].
A reading
百戦錬磨 names what long practice does to someone: tempers them, as fire tempers metal or heat softens silk [9][10]. Today it is praise for the seasoned [1][2]. The earliest prose I read that uses it, 竹堂's essay, gives that praise to Yoshiie and then turns it into a question [5]. Yoshiie was a man perfected after a hundred battles; why should he learn strategy from a scholar who, in 竹堂's words, had never held a weapon? 竹堂's answer is that years unbeaten had made Yoshiie think nothing was left to fear (其心因以為無復足畏者), and that his mark was that he still listened; he ends by asking whether what Masafusa taught was strategy alone. So I read the phrase as praise for experience that has not closed its owner's ears. Hung where people train, it names what the training is for, and the essay adds what the trained must keep. Signed, 典.
Notes
錬 and 練. Both are written, and the dictionaries enter both [1][2][8]. Of the witnesses read here, 西村's manuscript writes 錬 [3], and the 1877 print of 竹堂's essay [5], 日国's 1941 quotation [1] and Kenkyusha [12] write 練. The scroll's text is written 百戦錬磨, the form デジタル大辞泉 and 日国 head [1].
The earliest known. The earliest known here means the earliest texts in the National Diet Library's full-text search for 百戦練磨 and 百戦錬磨, all access levels, sorted by date of issue, oldest first [3][5]. The manuscript sorts first. The 1877 anthology that prints 竹堂's essay sorts among the first items, but not first among them; the essay's own text is dated by its author's death, not by the sort [5][6]. The search folds 戰 into 戦 but not 錬 into 練. Items without a date may sort elsewhere, and works not in the library's full text are not reached. The poem and the essay cannot be ordered against each other: the manuscript is dated only to 1842–47, and the essay only to before 竹堂's death in 1852 [3][6]. Neither, read to its end, glosses the phrase or marks it as a quotation, so neither says whether it was already current when it was written or new [3][5].
No Chinese source quoted. No source read here gives the four characters a source in the Chinese classics. For 百戦 alone, 字通 quotes the 孫子 (謀攻), 彼を知り己を知らば、百戰して殆(あや)ふからず, know the other and know yourself, and in a hundred battles you are not in peril, and 日国 cites the 晉書's life of 索綝, which this history did not read [7].
Japanese Scrolls by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase
References
- 「百戦錬磨」, デジタル大辞泉, 精選版 日本国語大辞典 and 四字熟語を知る辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%99%BE%E6%88%A6%E9%8C%AC%E7%A3%A8-612717
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- 西村茂樹, 『文草』, manuscript, 天保13–弘化4 (1842–1847) in the library's record, scans 65–66, at the National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2538042/1/66
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- 「練磨」, デジタル大辞泉 and 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%B7%B4%E7%A3%A8-662319
- 「錬」, デジタル大辞泉 and 普及版 字通, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/%E9%8C%AC-661996
- 「練」, デジタル大辞泉, 精選版 日本国語大辞典 and 普及版 字通, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%B7%B4-661992
- 「磨」, デジタル大辞泉 and 普及版 字通, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/%E7%A3%A8-632681
- Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, fourth edition, ed. Masuda, Kenkyusha, 1974, p. 497 (hyakusen), read on the house's shelf.
- 「大塚, 同庵, 1795-1855」, Web NDL Authorities, National Diet Library. https://id.ndl.go.jp/auth/ndlna/001098822