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言わぬが花 iwanu ga hana Not Saying Is A Flower

言わぬが花 (iwanu ga hana), not saying is the flower, is a Japanese proverb that some things are best left unsaid. It is in print by 1729, and a kabuki song of 1766 calls on it as a saying the audience knows. This study follows it from a Heian proverb of unspoken love, and finds no Japanese source for a longer maxim it is said to shorten.

Japanese Scroll of Not Saying Is A Flower (iwanu ga hana) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Not Saying Is A Flower言わぬが花iwanu ga hana

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Abstract

言わぬが花, not saying is the flower, is a Japanese proverb in print by 1729, in a Kyoto book of comic verse, and in 1766 in a nagauta, a song of the Edo kabuki, which calls on it as a saying the audience knows: あけていわぬが花じやぞへ. It is built on a Heian proverb of unspoken love, 言わぬは言うにまさる. A widely repeated claim holds the proverb is short for Not to speak is the flower of wisdom; no Japanese source carries that longer sentence, and the claim traces to one American paperback's own parenthetical literal, not to any text.

Overview

The sense. One sense from the comic verse of 1729 to the dictionary of today: the unsaid keeps a grace the said loses. The Edo verse, song and stage use it as a wink, and often as a pun; Tsubouchi Shōyō 坪内逍遙 turns it on the art of the novel; Fujii Otoo 藤井乙男 reads it as taste; the 1915 dictionary adds advantage; the English dictionaries of 1909 to 1911 find its most Japanese use in 言はぬが花の年頃, a certain age, the age a woman does not state. What it is not is prudence. Silence is golden, its English equation since 1904, is about the safety of not speaking; this proverb is about the beauty of it.

The words. 言わぬ, iwanu, is not saying, with the classical negative ぬ kept in the proverb. が is the old nominative in a nominal sentence: not-saying is …. 花, hana, is the flower, and in this idiom the best of a thing, the graceful choice; the ことわざを知る辞典 notes the mold 「○○が花」, which limits an action and says nothing beats it, as in 知らぬが仏, not knowing is Buddha. It is not the flower of wisdom: no Japanese source completes the phrase, and the English book that says the proverb is short for a longer maxim invented the longer maxim, below. The dictionaries' constant is taste, not prudence. Fujii in 1910: 默止して言はざるが、却て勝れり、あらはに言ひては味なしなどいふ場合に用ふ, to keep silent is the better; used where saying it plainly would kill the flavor [1]. デジタル大辞泉: 口に出して言わないほうが味わいもあり、差し障りもなくてよい, unsaid it keeps its savor, and causes no trouble [2]. Wiktionary's gloss is 粋 or 奥ゆかしい, chic or reserved [3].

The proverb in English. Hepburn's dictionary of 1872 has nothing. The first European rendering is German and literal: P. Ehmann's collection of 1897 gives Nichtreden ist die Blume, used above all where it is best to keep silent about a thing and draw the cloak of charity over it [4]. Sakuma Nobuyasu 佐久間信恭's 和英中辞林 of 1904 gives Yuwanu ga hana. Silence is golden, the first English equation [5]. Inoue Jūkichi 井上十吉 in 1909 and 1911 glosses そこはいはぬが花だ as On that point silence is golden [6][7]. Saitō Hidesaburō 斎藤秀三郎 in 1915 prefers Better leave it unsaid, The least said the soonest mended and The less said the better, keeping Speech is silver(n), but silence is golden for the ancestor [8]. Okada Rokuo's collection, in its edition of 1958, gives What is not said is flowers [9]. Daniel Crump Buchanan renders it Better leave it unsaid in 1965 [10]; Michael and Senko Maynard give Not saying is the flower in 1993, glossed Some things are better left unsaid; silence is golden [11]; Guy Zona's Not to speak is the flower of wisdom follows in 1996 [12]; Edward Trimnell gives Not saying is a flower in 2004 [13].

The historical record

Heian. The ancestor, in the Tale of Genji and the poets. いはぬをもいふにまさると知りながらおしこめたるは苦しかりけり, knowing that not saying surpasses saying, still to hold it in is painful, in the 末摘花 chapter; the same figure in the 横笛 chapter, in the 大和物語 and in the 古今六帖, always of love unspoken. By 1638 the line 云はぬは云ふにまさる is a proverb in 毛吹草, the earliest proverb collection of the Edo period; the flower is not there yet [1][14].

1729. 銀要, a Kyoto book of comic verse. 銀要 (ginkaname), a collection of 前句付, the capping verse of the Kyoto verse-contest houses, compiled by 松井賢盈 and printed in 1729, carries, as its edition of 1990 prints it, the line いとまやるからは謂をいはぬが花, since I am sending you away, not saying why is the flower [15]. It is the oldest witness found: a servant's or a wife's dismissal, and the proverb already a maxim a verse can end on.

1766. 戀の出雲路, a nagauta. A song of courtship at the shrine of Izumo, whose god makes marriages, first performed in 1766 and printed the next year in the enlarged 常盤友, the Edo collection of nagauta texts first printed in May 1766. Its lover is the suitor of old Michinoku who set a painted wand, a 錦木, at a woman's gate, and set another each time she did not take it in, up to a thousand [16]: まだ錦木共みちのくに。つもる千束の中垣や。あけていわぬが花じやぞへ, the wands still piling a thousand deep at the fence — open it, and not saying is the flower; the next line turns to a winter flower beginning to open, ひらきそめにし一陽の冬の花 [17]. The song does not explain the phrase; it uses it as a saying the audience knows.

1816 to 1867. Comic books and kabuki. Kokontei Sanchō 古今亭三鳥 in 1816: いはぬか花のかに匂ふ, the scent of the flower unsaid; a 合巻 of 1824: いはぬがはなのちんざしき; Kawatake Shinshichi 河竹新七 in 1864: いわぬが花だ, better not said, plainly; a 合巻 of 1865: いわぬが花のかうしさき (格子先), the flower unsaid at the lattice. Most of these run the 花 on into the next phrase, a pun on the proverb; some say it straight [18]. Two stage manuscripts carry it without a date of their own: a copy made in 1870 of 八陣守護城, a puppet play first staged in 1807, at a flower-arrangement scene, もう何事もいわぬか花のおもてなし, no more; not saying is the flower of this hospitality, and an undated nineteenth-century manuscript of 實事譚血染紅葉, いわぬが花の春の道中, not saying is the flower of a spring journey [18][19].

1886. Shōyō, 当世書生気質. The novelist, on whether to spell out his characters' relations: 關係善きも惡きもあからさまに作者が自儘の考案もて。いえぬが花か讀む人が自得も花歟, or is it the flower for the author not to say, and the flower too for the reader to work it out? The print writes いえぬ, the Tokyo colloquial for いわぬ, with the reading はな beside each 花; the modern dictionary quotes it normalized [2].

1893 to 1933. The dictionaries. 古今俚諺類聚 (1893) and 俚諺類集 (1906) list it beside its ancestor; 皇国俚諺叢 (1901) sets a line of the 史記 beside it as near in sense; Fujii 1910 files it with the gloss above and no source, and enters the counter-proverb next to it, 言わぬが損, not saying is a loss; 大日本国語辞典 (1915) and 言泉 (1922) read it as both charm and advantage, 趣味また利益; 俚諺大辞典 (1933) as to keep silent is the better. None cites a source [1].

The dictionaries today. The ことわざを知る辞典: ことばで言わないほうが、かえってよい。はっきり言ってしまうと、身も蓋もない, better not to put it in words; said outright, there is nothing left, with Shōyō's sentence as its example; kotobank carries no 精選版日本国語大辞典 entry for this headword [2].

What is not a source. A longer maxim: that the proverb is short for Not to speak is the flower of wisdom. No Japanese source has that sentence, and the National Diet Library's pre-1945 books, searched under every spelling of 言わぬが花の, carry only the stage puns [18]. The sentence is Daniel Crump Buchanan's parenthetical literal of 1965, with wisdom his own addition to a line that has 花 and no 智; he does not say the proverb is short for anything. A 1996 English collection prints his parenthesis as a proverb in its own right. Nor is 井原西鶴. Modern translations of his 好色盛衰記 of 1688 put いわぬが花 in a teahouse keeper's mouth, but 西鶴 wrote 兎角口なしの花, a gardenia, the flower with no mouth: the same thought as a pun, not the proverb [20]. The Chinese parallel the 1901 collection offers, 桃李不言、下自成蹊, the peach and plum say nothing, and a path forms beneath them, is a pairing, not an origin [10].

The proverb in English

1918. 武信由太郎, 武信和英大辞典, page 426. Under hana 花, sense ①, among the proverbs: 言はぬが花: It would be better to leave it unsaid, beside 花より團子 and 花一時人一盛 [21].

1958. Okada Rokuo, Japanese Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, Japan Travel Bureau, second edition, page 72. Iwanu ga hana. What is not said is flowers. Many things are better left unsaid. The less said about it, the better. "Silence is golden." He sets it beside Bashō's verse become a proverb, Mono ieba kuchibiru samushi aki no kaze, and his English index gives it under Least said, soonest mended [9].

1965. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, page 74. Iwanu ga hana: "Better leave it unsaid." (Lit., "Not to speak is the flower of wisdom.") The person who knows when not to speak has true self-discipline. English parallel: Silence is golden. His rendering is Saitō's, his parallel the 1904 equation [10].

1993. Michael L. Maynard and Senko K. Maynard, 101 Japanese Idioms, Passport Books, pages 10 and 11, idiom 5. "Not saying is the flower." (Some things are better left unsaid; silence is golden.) The authors call their literal renderings deliberate, the way to the image the phrase is made of [11].

1996. Guy Zona, Even Withered Trees Give Prosperity to the Mountain, Simon and Schuster, page 30. Not to speak is the flower of wisdom [12].

2004. Edward Trimnell, Tigers, Devils, and Fools, Beechmont Crest, page 62. Not saying is a flower. Some things are better left unsaid. [13]

The proverb is not in David Galef's collections of 1987 and 2000.

Today. JMdict: some things are better left unsaid; silence is golden, the Maynards' gloss of 1993 word for word. What a rendering must keep is the flower and the grace, not the caution, and some things are better left unsaid is the nearer of the two English proverbs [22].

A reading

The proverb is an Edo saying of comic verse, song and stage, in print by 1729, made from a Heian proverb of unspoken love and the mold 「○○が花」, read by every Japanese dictionary as a matter of taste rather than caution, and given its English equation in 1904. My own reading: this is the proverb of the unsaid as grace, not of silence as safety; silence is golden is its prudent cousin.

References

  1. 藤井乙男『諺語大辞典』, 有朋堂, 1910, 【言ハヌガ花】, National Diet Library pid 862766, scan 69. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/862766/1/69
  2. 「言わぬが花」, デジタル大辞泉・ことわざを知る辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/言わぬが花-430611
  3. 「言わぬが花」, Wiktionary, at Weblio. https://www.weblio.jp/content/言わぬが花
  4. P. Ehmann, Die Sprichwörter und bildlichen Ausdrücke der japanischen Sprache, Supplement der Mittheilungen der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens, Tokyo, 1897, p. 105, no. 1006. https://archive.org/details/mitteilungender13unkngoog/page/n133
  5. 佐久間『和英中辞林』, 1904, National Diet Library pid 870208, scan 597. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/870208/1/597
  6. 井上十吉『和英辞典』, 1909, National Diet Library pid 1869465, scan 203. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1869465/1/203
  7. 井上十吉『新訳和英辞典』, 1911, National Diet Library pid 870153, scan 204. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/870153/1/204
  8. 斎藤秀三郎『熟語本位英和中辞典』, Saito's Idiomological English-Japanese Dictionary, 正則英語学校出版部, Tokyo, 1915, p. 97 s.v. better, pp. 698, 700 and 705 s.v. least, leave and less, p. 1213 s.v. silvern, p. 1247 s.v. soon; the Harvard copy at HathiTrust, hvd.32044086539269 · the 1918 printing, the same entries on the same pages, National Diet Library pid 1681530, scans 57 and 357. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1681530/1/57
  9. Okada Rokuo, Japanese Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, Japan Travel Bureau, Tokyo, second edition 1958 (first edition 1955), p. 72, and the index of English equivalents, s.v. Least said, soonest mended.
  10. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1965, p. 74.
  11. Michael L. Maynard and Senko K. Maynard, 101 Japanese Idioms: Understanding Japanese Language and Culture Through Popular Phrases, Passport Books, Lincolnwood, Illinois, 1993, pp. 10–11, no. 5. https://archive.org/details/101-japanese-idioms
  12. Guy Zona, Even Withered Trees Give Prosperity to the Mountain: And Other Proverbs of Japan, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1996, p. 30.
  13. Edward E. Trimnell, Tigers, Devils, and Fools: A Guide to Japanese Proverbs, Beechmont Crest Publishing, 2004, p. 62.
  14. 松江重頼『毛吹草』, 1638/1645, as reprinted in 藤井乙男『諺の研究』, 1929, scan 130, whose p. 240 (scan 127) names it the earliest collection of proverbs of the Edo period and 世話尽 the next. National Diet Library pid 1452761. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1452761/1/130
  15. 松井賢盈 編『銀要』 (誹諧繍 銀要), 享保14 (1729), 国書データベース work 889587, the 国文学研究資料館 copy. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/200016628 · the text in 鈴木勝忠 校訂『雑俳集成』, 京都享保雑俳集 (銀要, 享保一四年), 1990, National Diet Library pid 12456940, read in the full-text search's snippet.
  16. 「錦木」, デジタル大辞泉 sense 2, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/錦木-17337
  17. 「戀の出雲路」, 長唄, first performed 明和3 (1766), 国書データベース work 948345. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/work/948345 · 『唱歌新声 常盤友』, 明和3 (1766), colophon 明和三歳丙戌夏五月十有五日, 江戸 吉文字屋治郎兵衛 and 和泉屋庄次郎 (the 東京藝術大学 copy, canvas 113), 国書データベース work 1010431. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/100377883 · the 大阪大学 忍頂寺文庫 copy, catalogued 明和3, which binds the added songs before the 1766 colophon: 戀の出雲路 on canvas 121 and the line on canvas 122, leaf 百十三. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/100080760 · the typeset in 高野辰之 校『徳川文芸類聚』 巻10, 国書刊行会, 1915, 常磐友前集, whose 例言 dates the first printing to May 1766 and the twenty-nine added songs to the next year, National Diet Library pid 945815, scans 5 and 173. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/945815/1/173
  18. National Diet Library Digital Collections, next-generation full-text search on every spelling of いわぬが花, twenty-five spellings on both facets, returning the stage manuscripts and comic books of about 1800 to 1867. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/api/book/search?searchfield=contentonly
  19. 『八陣守護城』, a manuscript the library catalogues as a copy (写) of 明治3, 1870, National Diet Library pid 2537883, scan 4. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2537883/1/4 · 『實事譚血染紅葉』, a manuscript the library catalogues as undated nineteenth century (18--), National Diet Library pid 2560214, scan 17. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2560214/1/17 · 「八陣守護城」, 世界大百科事典 and 日本大百科全書, at kotobank (first staged 1807). https://kotobank.jp/word/八陣守護城-1195700
  20. 井原西鶴『好色盛衰記』, 1688, in the typeset 『西鶴全集』, 1927, National Diet Library pid 1702714, read in the full-text search's snippet (兎角口なしの花と、亭主は奇人の顏つきをかし) · the modern translation in 『西鶴全集 : 現代語訳』, 1976, pid 12456025, read in the same way (とかく梔子でいわぬが花でございましょう).
  21. 武信由太郎 編『武信和英大辞典』, 研究社, 1918, p. 426, s.v. hana. National Diet Library pid 925665, scan 222. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/925665/1/222
  22. JMdict, 「言わぬが花」, at Weblio 英和・和英辞典. https://ejje.weblio.jp/content/言わぬが花

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 · grok-4.6 (xAI), 2026-09-05, citations · gpt-6-astra (OpenAI), 2026-09-05, citations

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 言わぬが花 (iwanu ga hana)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/iwanu-ga-hana.