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柔能制剛 jū yoku gō o seisu The Soft Overcomes the Hard

柔能制剛, read 柔能く剛を制す (jū yoku gō o seisu), a line the Chinese military book 三略 quotes from a lost book of war and then qualifies, followed from an emperor's refusal of war in 51 CE to the puppet stage, the name of jūjutsu, and judo's founder, who said it explains only part of judo.

Japanese Scroll of The Soft Overcomes the Hard (jū yoku gō wo seisu) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
The Soft Overcomes the Hard (jū yoku gō wo seisu)

柔能制剛 (jū yoku gō wo seisu): the soft and supple overcome the hard and strong. A hand-brushed hanging scroll by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase on traditional Japanese paper.

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Abstract

柔能制剛, read in Japanese 柔能く剛を制す, jū yoku gō o seisu, is in today's dictionaries a saying that the supple turns aside the sharp point of the hard and strong and wins in the end, and, by extension, that the soft and weak prevail over the hard and strong. The four characters are a quotation inside the 三略, the Three Strategies, a Chinese military book under the name of Huang Shigong 黄石公, which takes them from a lost book of military sayings and warns in the same section that a state that is purely soft and purely weak is pared away; the oldest dated use read for this history is the emperor Guangwu 光武帝's refusal of a war in 51 CE, and the thought is older still, in the 老子. In Japan the line was printed with Japanese reading marks by 1604, opened acts of the puppet stage in 1721 and 1748, was given as the meaning of the name 柔術, jūjutsu, in 1755, and became judo's theory in 1905, until Kanō Jigorō 嘉納治五郎, the founder of judo, wrote in 1923 and 1928 that it explains only one part of judo and that the name 柔術 was presumably taken from it. In English it began as the soft can overcome the hard in 1872 and the soft may overcome the hard in 1875, in a translation of the 忠臣蔵.

Overview

The sense. The デジタル大辞泉 gives 《「三略」上略から》しなやかなものは、かたくて強いものの鋭い矛先を巧みにそらして、結局は勝利を得る。転じて、柔弱なものが、かえって剛強なものに勝つ, from the 三略, the first section: the supple deftly turns aside the sharp point of the hard and strong, and wins in the end; by extension, the soft and weak, contrary to expectation, prevail over the hard and strong, with 柳に雪折れ無し, the willow is not broken by the snow, as a related saying [1]. The 日本国語大辞典 gives the same sense from 「三略‐上略」の「柔能制レ剛、弱能制レ強」 [1]. The ことわざを知る辞典 says: 中国の兵書「三略―上略」にあることば。「柔術」「柔道」の語はこのことばの影響を受けたものといわれます, the words are in the 三略, a Chinese military book, in its first section; the words 柔術 and 柔道 are said to have been influenced by them, and gives as its English equivalent A soft answer turneth away wrath [1]. The 故事成語を知る辞典 gives the supple deftly lets the force of the hard flow past it and wins in the end [2]. JMdict gives two English proverbs and no rendering of the line: soft and fair goes far; willows are weak, yet they bind other wood [3].

The words. The four characters are the line as the 三略 writes it; Japanese reads it as a sentence, 柔能く剛を制す, じゅうよくごうをせいす, jū yoku gō o seisu, and also writes 柔よく剛を制す [1][2][3]. A typeset 忠臣蔵 of 1884 prints the reading in kana beside the characters as じうよくがうをせいし [4]. In the デジタル大辞泉, 柔 is soft, supple and weak and gentle, and is also the name of a martial art, yawara, as in 柔術 and 柔道 [5]; 剛 is strong and hard and strong of spirit or will [6]. 能 is read よく, can, and 制 is read せい, to control, the reading the 1604 print marks as 能ク … 制シ [7]. The line goes on 弱能制強, the weak can control the strong, and the 三略 explains the pair at once: 柔者，德也。剛者，賊也, the soft is virtue; the hard is a destroyer [8].

The text in English. The bilingual dictionaries give The weak control the strong (1909) [9] and Softness overcomes hardness. / Soft words win hard hearts, with turn away wrath as the alternative (1974) [10], and Halpern's kanji dictionary of 2013 gives Softness overcomes hardness/Soft words win hard hearts [11]. The translations give The soft can overcome the hard (Doolittle, 1872) [12], That the soft may overcome the hard, the weak may overcome the strong (Dickins, 1875) [13], The soft can control the hard, the weak can control the strong (Sawyer, 1993) [14] and The soft can overcome the hard, the weak can overcome the strong (Cleary, 2012) [15]. The judo books give the soft and pliable overcomes the hard and powerful [16] and softness regulates hardness [17].

The historical record

The 三略 and its 軍讖. The 三略 is a Chinese book of war in three sections, 上略, 中略 and 下略, said to have been given to Zhang Liang 張良 (died 168 BCE), the strategist who helped found the Han dynasty [18], by Huang Shigong 黄石公, an old recluse of the end of the Qin [19]. The dictionaries agree that the attribution is not to be believed and disagree on the date: the デジタル大辞泉 gives the book as written after the Later Han began [20], the 世界大百科事典 as a pseudepigraph that seems to be of the end of the Later Han [20], and the マイペディア as written between the Later Han and the Sui [21]. Ralph Sawyer, after setting out five views, follows the scholar Hsu Pao-lin in dating it to the end of the Former Han, with a likely composition date somewhere around A.D. 0, and reports that it was first titled The Records of Huang Shih-kung 黃石公記 and took its present name in the Sui [14]. The first section opens on the commander's need to win the hearts of men and goes on [8]:

《軍讖》曰：「柔能制剛，弱能制強。」柔者，德也。剛者，賊也。弱者，人之所助。強者，怨之所攻。柔有所設，剛有所施；弱有所用，強有所加。兼此四者，而制其宜。

The 軍讖 says: "The soft can control the hard; the weak can control the strong." The soft is virtue; the hard is a destroyer. The weak is what people help; the strong is what resentment attacks. The soft has its place to be set up, the hard its place to be applied; the weak has its use, the strong its place to be brought to bear. Combine these four, and control each as is fitting. Two paragraphs later the 三略 quotes the 軍讖 again [8]:

《軍讖》曰：「能柔能剛，其國彌光；能弱能強，其國彌彰。純柔純弱，其國必削；純剛純強，其國必亡。」

The 軍讖 says: "If it can be soft and can be hard, the state grows ever brighter; if it can be weak and can be strong, the state grows ever more illustrious. Purely soft and purely weak, the state is certain to be pared away; purely hard and purely strong, the state is certain to perish." Sawyer reads the two together: rather than accepting the power of softness or weakness alone, he equally advocates the employment of the hard and strong-each as appropriate to the moment and conditions [14]. The 軍讖 itself is lost; the texts read for this history know it only through the 三略 and through the emperor's edict below.

51 CE. The emperor Guangwu: a reason not to go to war. The 後漢書, the history of the Later Han compiled by Fan Ye 范曄 of the Liu Song [22], tells in the biography of the general Zang Gong 臧宮 how, in the twenty-seventh year of Jianwu, Zang Gong and Ma Wu 馬武 petitioned to destroy the Xiongnu, who were weakened by famine and plague, so that the merit of ten thousand generations, carved on stone, may not fail to be established in your sage reign [23]. The emperor was Liu Xiu 劉秀, Guangwu (6 BCE to 57 CE), who restored the Han and took the reign name Jianwu in 25, so that the twenty-seventh year is 51 [24]. His answer [23]:

詔報曰：『《黃石公記》曰，「柔能制剛，弱能制強」。柔者德也，剛者賊也，弱者仁之助也，強者怨之歸也。

The edict answered: "The Records of Huang Shigong say: 'The soft can control the hard; the weak can control the strong.' The soft is virtue, the hard is a destroyer; the weak is the helper of benevolence, the strong is where resentment gathers." The edict goes on to the people's distress at home and ends 茍非其時，不如息人, if it is not the time, better to give the people rest, and the history adds 自是諸將莫敢復言兵事者, from then on none of the generals dared speak of war again [23]. In the same chapter Fan Ye's own judgment says that 光武審《黃石》, Guangwu had studied the Huang Shi, and closed the Jade Gate and declined the hostages of the western states [23]. Li Xian 李賢 (655–684), the Tang crown prince who wrote the commentary on the 後漢書 [25], identifies the 黃石公記 as the book the old man gave Zhang Liang at the bridge at Xiapi; a Japanese print of the 資治通鑑 of 1882 carries the edict with his note, 賢曰黃石公記卽張良於下邳圯所見老父出一編書者, and the reading marks 柔ハ能ク剛ヲ制シ弱ハ能ク强ヲ制ス [26][27]. The Tang statesman Li Deyu 李德裕 (787–849) [28] retells the edict in a decree of his own: 光武報云：「柔能制剛，弱能制強 … 雖滅大寇，不如息人。」 [29]. And the 遼史, completed in 1345 [30], ends a chapter on generals with the same use: 雖然，兵者凶器，可戢而不可玩；爭者末節，可遏而不可召。此黃石公所謂柔能制剛，弱能制強也, and yet weapons are instruments of ill omen, to be put away and not played with; strife is a trifle, to be checked and not invited. This is what Huang Shigong meant by "the soft can control the hard, the weak can control the strong" [31]. In the oldest dated use read for this history and in these later ones, the line counsels restraint.

Which came first. The 四庫全書総目提要, the catalogue of the imperial library completed in 1782 [32], judges the 三略 a later book under an old name, and then notes that the emperor's edict quotes the line as Huang Shigong's [33]:

其為漢詔援據此書，或為此書剽竊漢詔，雖均無可考。疑以傳疑，亦姑過而存之焉。

Whether the Han edict drew on this book, or this book plundered the Han edict, neither can be established. We pass on a doubt as a doubt, and let the book stand for now. Among the Chinese texts read for this history, every citation of the line before the Sui runs through the edict or through the 三略 itself (see the Notes).

Older in thought: the 老子. The 老子, the book ascribed to Laozi [34], says in its chapter 36 柔弱勝剛強, the soft and weak prevail over the hard and strong, and in chapter 78 [35]:

天下莫柔弱於水，而攻堅強者，莫之能勝，其無以易之。弱之勝強，柔之勝剛，天下莫不知莫能行。

Nothing under heaven is softer and weaker than water, yet for attacking the hard and strong nothing can surpass it; nothing can take its place. That the weak prevails over the strong and the soft over the hard, everyone under heaven knows, and no one can practice. The Qing scholar 翟灝, in his 通俗編, a dictionary of common sayings, enters the line under the 三略 and adds 〔按〕老子已云柔之勝剛，弱之勝強 … 軍讖豈出老子前歟, note: the 老子 already says that the soft prevails over the hard and the weak over the strong … can the 軍讖 be older than the 老子? [36]. The Ming scholar Hu Yinglin 胡應麟 (1551–1602) [37] wrote that sayings in the 三略 such as 柔能制剛 seem to have insight into the 道德 (the 老子), but that it cannot be the book the old man on the bridge gave Zhang Liang: 三略稱黄石公中如柔能制剛動而輙隨等語似有見於道德者以即圯上老人授子房書則不可 [38].

The four characters in a classic's commentary. In the 周易正義, the commentary on the Book of Changes compiled by Kong Yingda 孔穎達 (574–648) at the Tang emperor's command [39], the fifth line of the hexagram 大畜, 豶豕之牙，吉, the tusk of a gelded boar: good fortune, is explained in the words 柔能制剛，禁暴抑盛，所以「吉」也, the soft can control the hard, restraining violence and checking excess; that is why it is "good fortune", after Wang Bi 王弼 (226–249) [40], who had written 柔能制健 [41]. The yielding fifth line tames the hard second line.

Japan, 835 and 1604. The book and its reading. The 日本国語大辞典 gives the pairing 六韜三略 in Japan by about 835, in Kūkai's 性霊集 [21]; the dictionaries tell two stories of how the 三略 reached Japan, one crediting the envoy to the Tang 上毛野真備 [20], the other Ōe no Koretoki 大江維時 in 934 [21]. A printed 黄石公三略 of 1604 in the National Diet Library opens its first section with the line and Japanese reading marks, 柔ハ能ク剛ヲ制シ弱ハ能ク強ヲ制ス [7]:

軍讖曰柔能制剛弱能制強柔者德也剛者賊也弱者人之所助強者怨之所攻

Beside 怨 the print sets a two-line note, 講作怨 / 直作人: the 講義 commentary reads 怨, resentment, the 直解 commentary reads 人, people [7]. The Chinese copies read for this history divide the same way: the text at Wikisource has 怨之所攻 [8], and the 四庫全書 copy and a Japanese print of 1885, 『六韜三略 明治通解』, have 人之所攻 [42]. The 1885 print glosses the line 柔は柔和にして強きを含めるものなり, the soft is gentle and holds strength within it, and of the warning two paragraphs on, 柔も柔に過ぎず剛も剛に過ぎず適宜これを用ふる時は國彌輝き家益榮える, when the soft is not too soft, nor the hard too hard, and each is used as fits, the state shines and the house flourishes [42].

1721. On the stage: a fire built twig by twig. Chikamatsu Monzaemon 近松門左衛門's puppet play 信州川中島合戦, first performed at the Takemotoza in Osaka in 1721 [43], is the 日本国語大辞典's earliest example of the saying in Japanese [1]. In the second act the mother of Yamamoto Kansuke 山本勘介, the strategist of the 甲陽軍鑑 [44], tests Takeda Shingen 武田信玄 on how he would use his soldiers. He pushes aside a burnt-out log and feeds the fire twig by twig until the kettle boils, and says his soldiers will be used just so; and she claps her hands [45]:

老母横手を礑と打ち、天晴大將候よ、柔能く剛を制し、弱能く强を制す、黄石公が三畧を得給ひし、賴母し〳〵。

The old mother clapped her hands. "A splendid general! The soft can master the hard, the weak can master the strong: you have taken in Huang Shigong's 三略. How reassuring!" The play is quoted here from a typeset reprint of 1910. C. Andrew Gerstle's translation of 2001 renders the line by putting small, separate pieces together, the soft can be made to overcome the firm; the weak can conquer the strong [46]: the small and the many made strong together.

1748. The opening of the night attack. The 仮名手本忠臣蔵, the puppet play of the forty-seven rōnin by Takeda Izumo 竹田出雲, Namiki Senryū 並木千柳 and Miyoshi Shōraku 三好松洛, first performed at the Takemotoza in 1748 [47], opens its eleventh and last act, the night attack, on the line. A typeset print of 1884 gives it [4]:

柔能剛を制し。弱能强を制するとは。張良に石公が傳へし秘法なり。鹽冶判官高定の家臣。大星由良之助是を守つて。既に一味の勇士四十餘騎。

"The soft can master the hard, the weak can master the strong": this was the secret art Huang Shigong passed to Zhang Liang. Ōboshi Yuranosuke, retainer of Enya Hangan Takasada, kept to it, and now forty-odd brave men of the league … Ōboshi Yuranosuke is the play's leader of the rōnin, modeled on Ōishi Kuranosuke [48]. In the National Diet Library's copy of the play that carries the colophon of the first performance, 寛延元年辰八月十四日, the act heading 第十一 and its first line stand on the same leaf, written in the cursive of the chanters' text; the characters 柔, 剛, 張 and 良 are legible there, and the transcription above is the 1884 print's [49]. In this telling the line is the plan of a few against the many.

1755. The name of jūjutsu. Matsumiya Kanzan 松宮観山 (1686–1780), a scholar of military learning versed also in jūjutsu [50], wrote in his 學論, which the editor of a 1929 reprint dates to 1755 as the library's full text of his preface gives it, of the brawling of a peaceful age, when to kill with a blade is not benevolent [51]:

於是把勢一術。徒手挫賊甚妙。所謂神武不殺者也。國人殊極其秘。號曰柔術。蓋柔能制剛弱能制强之謂也。

Hence the one art of grappling: to break a ruffian with bare hands is most marvelous, and is what is called divine valor that does not kill. The people of our country have taken its secrets furthest, and call it 柔術: this means, no doubt, "the soft can control the hard, the weak can control the strong." The same paragraph tells how the founder of the school 楊心流, after years of training without success, prayed at the shrine of Dazaifu and dreamed of an old man who gave him a willow branch bearing snow, and understood [51]; the encyclopedia tells the founder's story the same way, of a willow in the shrine grounds that lost no branch under heavy snow [52]. This is the oldest dated witness read for this history that gives 柔能制剛 as the meaning of the name 柔術; Matsumiya writes 蓋, no doubt, presumably.

Undated. The jūjutsu schools and the warning. A book of martial texts of 1925 prints, as 北窓雜話's account of the origin of jūjutsu, a passage that holds the 三略's warning; the date of the 北窓雑話 was not read for this history [53]:

柔は能く剛を兼ね、剛は能く柔を兼て柔剛一體たる所を眞實の柔術と名く。柔に剛を含まざれば柔弱に流れ、剛に柔を含まざれば剛强に落て、共に道を成すべからず。

Where the soft can contain the hard and the hard can contain the soft, and soft and hard are one body, that is called true jūjutsu. If the soft holds no hardness it drifts into weakness; if the hard holds no softness it falls into stiffness; and neither makes a way. It goes on to say that most of the schools since the beginning of jūjutsu have been arts of hardness, that the 起倒流 and the 揚心流 suit the meaning of jūjutsu and are said to have been founded on 柔能く剛を制する, and that many of their followers fall into weakness all the same [53]. The same book of 1925 prints a passage it gives as from the 伝書, the transmitted scroll, of 庄林道一 of the 天眞流 [54]; the book's preface, as the library's full text gives it, places him in the line of the 自剛天真流, a school the encyclopedia says arose in Fukuoka in the years 1804–1830 [55]:

柔能制剛、弱能制强と云。是れ柔術の意、因て以て名とす。然るに其道不容易、修行熟練して誠の柔ならざれば、剛强に勝ことを得べからず。誠の柔と云ば、必ず剛中より出づ可し。

It is said: "the soft can control the hard, the weak can control the strong." This is the meaning of jūjutsu, and from it the art takes its name. But the way is not easy: without training and seasoning to a true softness, one cannot prevail over the hard and strong. True softness must come out of the midst of hardness. The character the print sets just before 柔能制剛, at the foot of the preceding column, is 圓, whose sense there is unclear, and the quotation begins after it.

1813. A sword fight and the willow. Santō Kyōden 山東京伝 (1761–1816) [56], in his illustrated novel 双蝶記 of 1813, has a swordsman fend off two men with a short sword [57]:

雪を持る柳の枝の弱氣に見えて強がごとく。柔よく剛を制する手練凡人ならぬ…

Like a willow branch holding snow, that seems weak and is strong, his skill of the soft mastering the hard was no ordinary man's … Of the dated books in the National Diet Library's digital collection, this is the earliest whose full text carries the form 柔よく剛を制す [57].

Before 1843. A swordsman's way. Shirai Tōru 白井亨 (1783–1843), the swordsman who founded the 天真白井流 and wrote a book with the title 兵法未知志留辺 [58], is reported in a sword manual of 1889 to have argued 夫劍法ハ柔ヨク剛ヲ制スルノ道ナル, that swordsmanship is the way of the soft mastering the hard, a point the 1889 writer says Shirai sets out in his 兵法美知志留遍 [59]. The same manual says [60]:

諺ニ柔能ク剛ヲ制スト至柔ノ惣身ヨリ出ル全力ヨク至剛ナル腕力ヲ挫クヲ柔術ト云フ劍法モ亦然ル者ナルヲ悟ルヘシ

The proverb says the soft can master the hard. When the whole strength that comes from a body of utmost softness breaks the arm's strength of utmost hardness, that is called jūjutsu; understand that swordsmanship is the same. Shirai's book was not read for this history.

1870s to 1890s. A proverb. By the Meiji years the line is a stock saying. The National Diet Library's full text gives it in a biographical dictionary of 1885–1886, where a man who shoots a pheasant and finds its feathers unharmed cries the soft can master the hard, it is true! and makes a shield of feathers against bullets [61]; in a phrase book for writers of 1878 that lists 柔能制剛 among phrases for the brush [62]; in a collection of ten thousand proverbs of 1891 [63]; in a jūjutsu manual of 1887 that calls jūjutsu the way of the soft mastering the hard [64]; and in a satire of 1896 by Tsubouchi Shōyō 坪内逍遥 [65], which tells the writer of swaggering fiction to chant a hundred times each morning such proverbs as tears in a demon's eye and the soft masters the hard [66]. A theater review of the years 1878–1886 describes a stage set with a hanging scroll in the alcove reading 柔能制剛 in the hand of a Yagyū, as the same full text gives it [67].

1905. Judo's theory. Kanō Jigorō 嘉納治五郎 (1860–1938), who brought together the schools of jūjutsu into modern judo [68], founded the Kōdōkan in 1882 [69]. In 1905 Arima Sumiomi 有馬純臣's 柔道大意, The Gist of Judo, explains with a man of strength six and a man of strength five how the weaker need not lose, and says [70]:

柔能制剛などゝは即ち之を云ひたるものにして、玄妙の理其中に存し、此理を研究し併せて實地應用の方法を練習するは、柔道の目的とする所なり。

Sayings such as "the soft can control the hard" mean just this; a profound principle lies within it, and to study this principle and practice the ways of applying it is the aim of judo. The scholar Haga Yaichi 芳賀矢一 (1867–1927) [71] wrote of Kanō's art in 1908 that it took 柔能制剛 as its principle and was by nature defensive, as the library's full text gives it [72]; and a national school reader of 1931 taught that 柔術 and 柔道 are both named from the principle of the soft mastering the hard, as the same full text gives it [73].

1923 and 1928. Kanō's correction. In an article, 「柔道に就て」, which a 1930 handbook for youth associations reprints under Kanō's name and dates May 1923 (the heading as the library's full text gives it; the passage below at the page), Kanō wrote [74]:

昔は柔道の原理は柔能く剛を制すると云ふことにあるのであるやうに人々が考へて居たのであるが、今日はそれは柔道の勝負の一部の理窟をいふに止まつてゐて、全體を說明するに足らぬと云ふことが明になつて來た。

In the past people thought the principle of judo lay in the soft mastering the hard; today it has become clear that this states the reasoning of only one part of judo contests, and is not enough to explain the whole. The principle that applies in every case, he goes on, is the most efficient use of the power of body and mind [74]. In 『攻防式国民体育』, a book of his lectures of 1928, he gives the name-story as a guess and its limit as a fact [75]:

これが柔能制剛の理窟である。さういふ場合が幾らもあるので、さういふことをする術卽ち柔術と命名したのであらう。

This is the reasoning of the soft controlling the hard. Because there are many such cases, the art of doing such things was, presumably, named 柔術. When an opponent grips the wrist, he goes on, the hold cannot be broken by that reasoning, but only by setting a stronger force against the weakest point of the grip: それは柔能制剛の理窟にあらずして、力を以て力に反抗する動作である, that is not the reasoning of the soft controlling the hard, but an act of opposing force with force [75]. The encyclopedias tell the same turn: Kanō first grounded judo in the principle of 柔 and, in the Taishō years, finding 〈柔よく剛を制す〉 not enough, took judo to be the way of the most efficient use of the power of body and mind, with 精力善用 and 自他共栄 as its two guides [76]. In English, Kanō's Kodokan Judo (1986) keeps the name-story: It was because so many techniques made use of this principle that the art was named jujutsu [77], and a translation of his writings gives the term as derived from the saying and then the limit, Ju yoku go o seisu is just one theory among many, thus it's not a very encompassing expression [17]. A memoir in English gives his word that the 柔の形, a kata created, it says, around 1887, teaches the essence of the Japanese proverb Ju yoku go o seisuru [16]: the line names a kata, and not the art.

1938 and 1942. The school and the brush. A prefectural judo textbook of 1938, 学校柔道, holds the line three ways at once. It defines it [78]:

相手の力に順應し、利用して勝を制する理合を柔の理といひ、柔の理によつて勝を制することを柔能く剛を制すと言ふのであるが、以上の理論だけでは柔道を完全に說明することが困難である。

The reasoning by which one yields to the opponent's force and uses it to win is called the principle of 柔, and to win by the principle of 柔 is called the soft mastering the hard; but this theory alone can hardly explain judo completely. It gives the line a section of its own in the chapter on practice, as the rule of pulling when pushed and pushing when pulled [79], and it sets 柔能く剛を制す as an examination question beside 守破離, and as a lecture topic for the second year beside 質実剛健 [80]. A dictionary of phrases for calligraphy of 1942, the 揮毫辞典, offers the line under the heading 軍讖曰、柔能制剛、弱能制强。, glosses 讖 as a prophecy, and offers beside it, as lines to brush, the 三略's warning: 能柔能剛、其國彌光。能弱能强、其國彌彰。 and 純柔純弱、其國必削。純剛純强、其國必亡。, with the note 純柔純弱ハ前ノ剛柔宜シキヲ得ルト異ナッテ一方ニ偏スルヲ謂フ, purely soft and purely weak, unlike the right measure of hard and soft before it, means leaning to one side [81].

Other readings, 1913 to 1937. The library's full text shows the line read in the same years as Laozi's (a judo yearbook of 1925) [82]; as the rule by which a school judo book of 1920 proposed to control barbarous peoples in the colonies [83]; and as the way a woman governs a man, in an anthology of 1916 [84] and in a book of precepts for women of 1937 [85]. None of them is in the 三略.

After 1949. The motto and its loss. The Dutch judoka Anton Geesink won the open-weight gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics of 1964 [86]. Books of 1999 and after, read only in the National Diet Library's snippets, tell the line's later life: a journal of 1999 says that with the international contests that followed the Tokyo Olympics the original spirit of the saying was lost [87]; a book on ethics of 2000 says that judo grew livelier with weight classes but lost the savor of the saying [88]; a novelist's collected works of 2000 gives the criticism, from the side of aiki-jūjutsu, that judo made into a sport has lost the art of the soft mastering the hard and fallen into a way of hardness [89]; and a memoir of 2000 calls the saying the words of Kanō Jigorō sensei [90], which is not what Kanō wrote. A conference paper of 2017 by 有山篤利 found that 現代の柔道家は「柔能く剛を制す」動きや技を重視しておらず, today's judoka do not value movements and techniques of the soft mastering the hard [91].

What is not a source. The line is not Kanō's, and Kanō wrote in 1923 and in 1928 that it does not explain the whole of judo [74][75]. It is not first the 老子's words, though the thought is: the 老子 says 柔之勝剛 [35]. It is not a saying of softness alone: the 三略, the jūjutsu texts and the 1942 brush dictionary set the warning beside it [8][53][81]. And a phrase book of 1878 that prints 呂氏春秋 beside 柔能制剛, as the library's full text gives it [62], names a source the texts read for this history do not support.

柔能制剛 in English

1872. Justus Doolittle, Vocabulary and Hand-book of the Chinese Language, vol. II. In a list of four-character sayings: The soft can overcome the hard, between The strong and weak mutually assist each other (剛柔相濟) and To injure others is to injure one's own body [12].

1875. F. V. Dickins, Chiushingura, or The Loyal League, Book the Eleventh, p. 148. The opening of the 忠臣蔵's last act: That the soft may overcome the hard, the weak may overcome the strong, was the secret revealed by Sekiko to the hero Choryo, with a note telling the tale of the sandal at the bridge [13].

1909. Inouye's dictionary, p. 645. Under Jū (柔): The weak control the strong [9].

1913. E. J. Harrison, The Fighting Spirit of Japan. In the pages on kiai: "The soft conquers the hard" is a saying which expresses the idea of the proper use of kiai [92].

1973. Donn F. Draeger, Classical Bujutsu, p. 50. Of the Tokugawa schools of jūjutsu: the axiom ju yoku go o sei suru, "flexibility masters hardness," became their central theme. The Japanese broadened the meaning of this axiom, giving it such connotations as "the soft conquers the hard," "the weak turns aside the strong," and "in yielding there is strength" [93].

1974. Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, p. 629. Softness overcomes hardness. / Soft words win hard hearts, with turn away wrath as the alternative [10]. The soft answer, which the ことわざを知る辞典 also gives as the English equivalent [1], is a second English line beside the judo one.

1993. Ralph D. Sawyer, The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China. The Military Pronouncements states: "The soft can control the hard, the weak can control the strong." The soft is Virtue. The hard is a brigand [14].

2001. C. Andrew Gerstle, Chikamatsu: Five Late Plays, p. 230. The 1721 scene: the soft can be made to overcome the firm; the weak can conquer the strong [46].

2012. Thomas Cleary, Secrets of the Japanese Art of Warfare. In a note to Yamamoto Kansuke's treatise, the 三略 at length, the warning included: If it is only soft or only weak, that country will deteriorate. If it is only hard or only strong, that country will perish [15].

2013. John Stevens, The Way of Judo, chapter 5. Kano was captivated by the phrase "Soft can control the hard" (Ju yoku go o seisuru, 柔能剛制). That quote comes from the second century B.C.E. Chinese military manual Three Strategies of Huang Shi Gong (Upper Strategy). The entire quote is: Soft can control the hard; weak can control strong. Being soft at the right time is a virtue; being hard at the wrong time is a disaster [94]. The characters are out of the 三略's order (柔能剛制 for 柔能制剛); none of the five views of the book's date that Sawyer sets out gives the second century BCE; and the 三略's sentence after the line is 柔者，德也。剛者，賊也, the soft is virtue; the hard is a destroyer, without at the right time or at the wrong time [8][14].

2014 and 2022. Kanō in English. The soft and pliable overcomes the hard and powerful [16]; softness regulates hardness [17].

Today: JMdict glosses the saying with two English proverbs, soft and fair goes far and willows are weak, yet they bind other wood [3]. What the English renderings read for this history mostly lose is the paragraph around the line, the warning that the purely soft is pared away, which Sawyer and Cleary carry and the judo books read here do not.

A reading

The line has an answer for its source and more than one for its use, and the record keeps them side by side. I read it as the soft can master the hard, and I read it inside its own paragraph. 能 is can: a capacity, not a law, and nothing in the 三略 says the soft always wins. 制 is to control, to hold in check, not to destroy; the emperor who first used it, in the record read here, used it to keep his generals from a war. And the 三略 itself, two paragraphs on, says that the state which is only soft is pared away, so that the soft it praises is the soft that knows how to use the hard: combine these four, and control each as is fitting. Japan heard this before judo did. The 1885 commentary says the soft holds strength within it; the jūjutsu texts printed in 1925 say that true softness comes out of the midst of hardness and that the soft without the hard drifts into weakness; the brush dictionary of 1942 offers the warning lines beside the famous one. Matsumiya Kanzan's no doubt of 1755 and Kanō's presumably of 1928 are the honest form of the name-story: the name 柔術 may well come from the line, and the founder of judo said that the line explains one part of judo, not the whole. The line at its best is the willow in the snow that both Kyōden and the 楊心流's founding story reach for: it bends, keeps its root, and springs back.

Notes

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Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5, Takase Studios LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

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