Fine Japanese Calligraphy

The Art of Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase

0
Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, PayPal accepted
Home › Library › Philology › Earthquakes, Thunderbolts, Fires, Fathers

地震雷火事親父 jishin kaminari kaji oyaji Earthquakes, Thunderbolts, Fires, Fathers

This is a philological study of the Japanese proverb 地震雷火事親父 (jishin kaminari kaji oyaji). It spans three centuries, from a farewell verse of 1728 to the dictionaries of today, and examines the order of the four fearsome things, the father who lands last as the joke, and the story of a great wind that has no witness.

Japanese Scroll of Earthquakes, Thunderbolts, Fires, Fathers (jishin kaminari kaji oyaji) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Earthquakes, Thunderbolts, Fires, Fathers (jishin kaminari kaji oyaji)

Earthquakes, Thunderbolts, Fires, Fathers (jishin kaminari kaji oyaji) on a traditional Japanese Scroll by Master Eri Takase.

View Scroll ›

Abstract

地震雷火事親父, earthquakes, thunder, fires, fathers, is Edo popular speech: a list of the fearsome things of this world, in descending order, with the father as the joke at the end. Behind it stand a run of three sudden things, in a samurai maxim retold from 1800 and in a farewell verse of 1728 with no father in it; the four together are in print by 1814 and a children's chant by 1831, and by 1855 a parody deity. The Japanese dictionaries from 1891 to today read the order downward from the earthquake; Buchanan's ascending order of severity is his reading alone, and the story that 親父 is a corruption of 大山嵐, a great wind, has no witness. In English the list is in print from 1897 as earthquakes, thunderbolts, fires, and fathers, the four words the house title keeps.

Overview

The sense. The sense is a list, and the list has not changed since 1814 [1]. What has changed is the last word's weight. In the Edo books the father is the comic surprise after three disasters; by 1900 a satirist can reverse the order for a laugh [2]; by 1911 a statesman can say all four are tamed [3]; by 1933 a novelist adds war as a fifth [4]. The Japanese dictionaries, from 1891 to today, read the order downward from the earthquake [5][4]. The reading that makes the father the most fearsome of the four is an English one, below.

The words. Four nouns with nothing between them. 地震, jishin, earthquake; 雷, kaminari, thunder, the clap and the bolt together; 火事, kaji, a fire that burns buildings; 親父, oyaji, one's father said familiarly, and by extension any older man in charge, the master of a house or a shop. The Edo prints write the readings ぢしん and くわじ beside the characters, the older spellings [1][6]. 藤井乙男's essay on proverbs of 1906 files the line among the sayings that drop every explaining word and pile up bare nouns, 名詞のみを疊み重ぬること, and among those arranged by size, weight and strength, 大小輕重强弱等の次第によりて配列すること, beside 一富士二鷹三茄子 [7]. The ことわざを知る辞典 hears why it sticks: 雷 and 火事 share an initial ka, 火事 and 親父 rhyme on -ji, and the father, who is no disaster, lands last as the surprise [4]. The order is the point the English gets wrong, below: the Japanese dictionaries read the list from the most fearsome down [4].

The proverb in English. No English for the proverb is in the bilingual dictionaries before the war: Hepburn (1872) has nothing [8]; 斎藤 (1918) uses the words only, under fear [9]; the 1946 Standard has the word for earthquake and no proverb [10]. A Japanese-Chinese dictionary of 1925 glosses it in ordinals, 第一地動、第二雷神、第三失火、第四父親, which keeps the Japanese order [11]. The English proverb is older than any dictionary that carries it: it is in print from 1897, in the volumes Brinkley edited for an American publisher, as earthquakes, thunderbolts, fires, and fathers [12], and a travel book of 1901 and a survey of 1913 repeat it [13][14]. Okada in 1958 gives earthquake, thunder, fire, and father [15]; Buchanan in 1965 reads the order upward [16]; Galef in 1987 gives Earthquakes, thunderbolts, fires, fathers, Brinkley's words of 1897 [17]; Trimnell in 2004 says nothing about the order [18]. The proverb is not in Galef's second book (2000) or in Zona (1996) [19][20].

The historical record

1728. 清水如水's farewell verse, as recorded in the 江戸名所図会 (printed 1834 to 1836). On the third day of the new year an old man of Asakusa wrote 公事喧嘩地震雷火事晦日飢饉煩なき国へゆく, to a land without lawsuits, brawls, earthquakes, thunder, fires, month-ends, famine or sickness I go, and died two days later after shaving, bathing and praying [21]. Five Edo records carry the verse with small differences [22][23][24][25][26]. It is the oldest run of 地震雷火事 known: a list of the sudden and unavoidable things of this world, not yet a proverb, and with no father in it.

1800. 故花菴備忘録, a secretary's notebook, a saying given to the shogun 秀忠. 士には常々三の心得あるへし第一気違ひ喧嘩第二に地震雷鳴第三に火事, a samurai should always keep three things in mind: first a madman's brawl, second earthquake and thunder, third fire, because they come without warning [27]. The same three as a maxim, retold in a boys' reader of 1908 [28]. No witness earlier than 1800 is known for it.

1814. 春廿三夜待, a comic book by 岡山鳥 with pictures by 国貞. The four together, and already a list anyone knows: 此外地震雷火事親父おふくろなどの来らぬときのまじない哥, besides these, charm-verses for when earthquakes, thunder, fires, father and mother do not come, with the readings ぢしん, かみなり, くわじ, おやぢ beside the characters [1]. The earliest print known with all four.

1820. うしろめん益身鏡, a comic book by 晋米斎玉粒. The thunder god complains that he has been ぢしんかみなりなどゝおやぢのれつにいれて, put in the same row as earthquakes and fathers [29]. The proverb known well enough to be joked about from inside.

1822. あと見よ蘓和歌, a book of teaching verses by 藤本常丸. こはきもの地震雷火事親父あとみよそわか油断主人も, fearsome things: earthquake, thunder, fire, father; look behind you; a careless master too [6].

1831. 尾張童遊集, a record of Nagoya children's games and chants by 小寺玉晁. The four as a children's chant; the ことわざを知る辞典 names this the oldest source [4].

1855. A broadsheet after the 安政 earthquake. A parody deity, 落涙山非常明王, whose image 地震雷火事親父を倶足し奉る本尊なり, is furnished with earthquake, thunder, fire and father, each described as a manifestation that punishes greed and idleness [30]. The proverb made into a god.

1891 to 1928. The proverb dictionaries. 金諺一万集 (1891), 古今俚諺類聚 (1893), 俗諺辞林 (1901), 俚諺辞典 (1906) and 金言名句辞典 (1928) all carry it, glossed 怖しき者 or 懼るべきものを集めたるなり, the fearsome things gathered [5][31][32][33][34]. 藤井乙男's 諺語大辞典 of 1910 has the entry with two words and no source: 【地震雷火事親父】恐るべきもの [35].

1900. 斎藤緑雨, わすれ貝. The joke turned inside out: 諺に曰く地震雷火事親父と、是れたゞ危險の度を示したるに過ぎず。苦痛の量よりすれば、親父火事雷地震也, the proverb says earthquake, thunder, fire, father, but that only ranks the danger; by the quantity of pain, it runs father, fire, thunder, earthquake [2].

1911. 勝海舟, as reported in 和魂の跡. The old statesman retires the proverb: the world has tamed all four, the father a relic of the Tenpō years, thunder made to run errands by telegraph and telephone, fire by the brigades [3].

1933. 太宰治, 思ひ出. 地震雷火事親爺、それ以上に怖い戦争が起ったなら, earthquake, thunder, fire, father, and a war more frightening than any of them. This is the 精選版日本国語大辞典's first citation, two hundred years after the 1728 verse and a century and more after the comic books [4].

The dictionaries today. デジタル大辞泉: 世間でたいへん恐ろしいとされているものを、その順に並べていう言葉, the things the world holds most fearsome, named in that order. The ことわざを知る辞典: おおむね恐ろしい順に並んでいる, arranged roughly from the most fearsome down, and it records, and doubts, a minority reading of 親父 as the village headman [4].

What is not a source. A story circulates that 親父 was once おおやまじ, a great wind, corrupted from 大山嵐 into the father. It has no witness of any kind. The National Diet Library's digital collection has no such word in its pre-1868 books by a full-text search; its modern books use 大山颪 only in a folk song and as a place name [36]; none of the proverb dictionaries from 1891 to 1928 cited above mentions it; and a prefectural library asked about it in 2005 reported the reference works silent and the claim only in a 2005 book reprinting an autumn-2004 newspaper column, which quotes a weather official as there is also a theory that [37]. It is a modern guess. The 秀忠 maxim is a legend with no witness before 1800.

The proverb in English

1897. Japan: Described and Illustrated by the Japanese, edited by Frank Brinkley, volume 1, page 7. On the perils the Japanese live among: They laughingly catalogue the four most formidable factors of everyday existence as "earthquakes, thunderbolts, fires, and fathers" (jishin, kaminari, kwaji, oyaji), the classification itself evincing the spirit in which it is made [12]. The earliest English rendering this history cites, and the one the later English keeps: thunderbolts for 雷, and the father last.

1901. George Waldo Browne, Japan: The Place and the People, chapter IV, page 34. Four distinct sources of danger continually menace the safety of the Japanese, which they denominate, jishin, earthquakes, kaminari, thunderbolts, kwaji, fires, oyaji, fathers [13]. Reprinted in 1904 and in 1907.

1913. E. Bruce Mitford, Japan's Inheritance, page 273. "The four great factors of everyday life," says a Japanese saw, "are earthquakes, thunderbolts, fires, and fathers" [14]. Brinkley's sentence of 1897, sixteen years on, now credited to a saw.

1958. Rokuo Okada, Japanese Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, Japan Travel Bureau, page 77. Jishin, kaminari, kaji, oyaji. Earthquake, thunder, fire, and father. These were the things dreaded by the Japanese of old, as arranged in order of intensity. Typhoons and floods are, of course, among other acts of God which devastate this island country almost every year. In feudal Japan the father, the head of the house, was proverbially dreaded [15]. The earliest English proverb book this history cites; his order of intensity names no direction, and his father as head of the house is the sentence Buchanan follows.

1965. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, page 96, under the heading Parents. Jishin, kaminari, kaji, oyaji: "Earthquake, thunder, fire, father." These four things named in ascending order of severity were proverbially feared by the Japanese. Prior to World War II and especially during the feudal period, the father as head of the house had almost complete control of the family and all in it [16]. His ascending order is his reading alone: the Japanese dictionaries read the order the other way, Okada's order of intensity before him names no direction, and he files the proverb under parents, which is where his reading comes from.

1987. David Galef, Even Monkeys Fall from Trees, number 48. Earthquakes, thunderbolts, fires, fathers, and in his list of English equivalents Fear those greater than yourself [17]. The four words are Brinkley's of 1897.

2004. Edward Trimnell, Tigers, Devils, and Fools, page 66. Earthquakes, thunder, fires, and fathers all deserve your fear. (The last one might depend on the particular nature of your childhood.) These proverbs remind us that it is wise to fear some things. By fearing what is more powerful than you, you may save yourself from injury [18]. He says nothing about the order.

Today. JMdict: things to fear: earthquakes, thunder, fires and, most of all, fathers, which follows Buchanan's direction [38]. The house title, Earthquakes, Thunderbolts, Fires, Fathers, is Galef's four words to the letter, and they were Brinkley's in 1897; it is the bare list, and it is the best of these, because it does what the Japanese does and lets the last word land on its own. What a rendering must keep is the order, downward, and the joke.

A reading

The order runs from the most fearsome down, and the father is the joke at the end, rhymed to 火事, not the peak of severity; that is the one thing on which the Japanese dictionaries contradict Buchanan's reading. The four are Edo popular speech, in print by 1814 and a children's chant by 1831; behind them stands a run of three sudden things, in a samurai maxim and in a 1728 farewell verse whose author died two days after writing it; and the 1855 earthquake turned the proverb into a god. The typhoon story is a modern guess. My own reading: the proverb is a joke that stayed true, and the 1728 verse is what it was before it was funny.

References

  1. 岡山鳥 作, 国貞 画『春廿三夜待』, 1814, National Diet Library pid 8942983, scan 26. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/8942983/1/26
  2. 斎藤緑雨『わすれ貝』, 1900, National Diet Library pid 889322, scan 184. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/889322/1/184
  3. 秋山悟庵『和魂の跡』, 1911, National Diet Library pid 758725, scan 148. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/758725/1/148
  4. 「地震雷火事親父」, デジタル大辞泉 · 精選版 日本国語大辞典 · ことわざを知る辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/地震雷火事親父-519561
  5. 『金諺一万集』, 1891, National Diet Library pid 755160, scan 188. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/755160/1/188
  6. 藤本常丸 編『あと見よ蘓和歌』, 1822, National Diet Library pid 2533915, scan 9. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2533915/1/9
  7. 藤井乙男『俗諺論』, 1906, National Diet Library pid 902816, scan 31. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/902816/1/31
  8. Hepburn, dictionary of 1872, National Diet Library pid 993689. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/993689
  9. 斎藤秀三郎, 1918, National Diet Library pid 1681530, scan 205. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1681530/1/205
  10. 『スタンダード和英』, 1946, National Diet Library pid 1126792, scans 171, 269 and 445. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1126792/1/171
  11. 服部操『日華大字典』, 1925, National Diet Library pid 1017351, scan 636. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1017351/1/636
  12. Japan: Described and Illustrated by the Japanese, written by eminent Japanese authorities and scholars, edited by Captain F. Brinkley, vol. 1, J. B. Millet, Boston, 1897, p. 7. https://archive.org/details/GVRJapanV01
  13. George Waldo Browne, Japan: The Place and the People, Dana Estes, Boston, 1901, chapter IV, p. 34. https://archive.org/details/japanplacepeople00browuoft/page/n60
  14. E. Bruce Mitford, Japan's Inheritance: The Country, Its People, and Their Destiny, T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1913, p. 273 (the New York printing of 1914 at archive.org, leaf 347). https://archive.org/details/japansinheritanc00mitf/page/n347
  15. Rokuo Okada, Japanese Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, Japan Travel Bureau, Tokyo, 1958, p. 77 (the shelved copy).
  16. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, 1965, p. 96.
  17. David Galef, Even Monkeys Fall from Trees, Tuttle, 1987, no. 48.
  18. Edward Trimnell, Tigers, Devils, and Fools, Beechmont Crest, 2004, p. 66.
  19. David Galef, Even a Stone Buddha Can Talk, Tuttle, 2000.
  20. Guy Zona, Even Withered Trees Give Prosperity to the Mountain, Simon and Schuster, 1996.
  21. 『江戸名所図会』, 1834–36, National Diet Library pid 2559041, scan 5. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2559041/1/5
  22. 『武蔵志料』, National Diet Library pid 2563412, scan 44. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2563412/1/44
  23. 『鶯宿雑記』, National Diet Library pid 10303782, scan 102. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/10303782/1/102
  24. 『香袋』, 1868, National Diet Library pid 2533600, scan 58. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2533600/1/58
  25. 『墓所一覽遺編』, National Diet Library pid 2540267, scan 3. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2540267/1/3
  26. 『管見雑録』, National Diet Library pid 2539701, scan 155. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2539701/1/155
  27. 三木維清『故花菴備忘録』, 1800, National Diet Library pid 11446267, scan 34. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/11446267/1/34
  28. 『少年鑑』, 1908, National Diet Library pid 757038, scan 210. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/757038/1/210
  29. 晋米斎玉粒 作, 美丸 画『うしろめん益身鏡』, 1820, National Diet Library pid 10300976, scan 12. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/10300976/1/12
  30. 「落涙山非常明王くらの開扉の口上」, in 『江戸大地震之絵図』, 1855, National Diet Library pid 1302055, scan 1. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1302055/1/1
  31. 『古今俚諺類聚』, 1893, National Diet Library pid 767886, scan 12. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/767886/1/12
  32. 『俗諺辞林』, 1901, National Diet Library pid 863228, scan 47. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/863228/1/47
  33. 『俚諺辞典』, 1906, National Diet Library pid 900343, scan 166. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/900343/1/166
  34. 『金言名句辞典』, 1928, National Diet Library pid 1109999, scan 109. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1109999/1/109
  35. 藤井乙男『諺語大辞典』, 1910, 【地震雷火事親父】, National Diet Library pid 862766, scan 330. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/862766/1/330
  36. National Diet Library Digital Collections, next-generation full-text search on 大山嵐 (30 modern books, every one 大山颪 in a folk song or a place name). https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/
  37. 香川県立図書館, reference answer of 24 June 2005, at the National Diet Library's Collaborative Reference Database. https://crd.ndl.go.jp/reference/entry/index.php?page=ref_view&id=1000022726
  38. JMdict, 「地震雷火事親父」, at Weblio 英和・和英辞典. https://ejje.weblio.jp/content/地震雷火事親父

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