神の加護 kami no kago God Bless You
This is a philological study of the Japanese phrase 神の加護 (kami no kago), God's protection. It spans the record from a Chinese sutra's devas adding protection to a king to the postwar convention that answers the English benediction "God bless you," and examines why every dictionary cited glosses the phrase protection and none glosses it bless.
Abstract
神の加護, kami no kago, is Japanese for God's protection: the power a buddha, a kami or the Christian God adds to a person so that they come through. The word is the sutras' first, attested in Japanese by 999, and the Japanese churches took it for the Christian God by 1901, teaching it to infants by 1912. The house title, God Bless You, names the benediction the phrase answers to, not a translation of it: every dictionary cited here glosses 加護 protection, and none glosses it bless.
Overview
The sense. Standard and written, plain; no dictionary tags it. The spoken form today carries the honorific, 神のご加護, and the bare 神の加護 is the written form and the older one, the form the Meiji books print. God's protection: the power a god adds to a person so that they come through. The 日本国語大辞典 says a buddha or a god adds the power of compassion and helps and protects, and dates it to a court diary of 999. The 大辞泉 says a god or buddha, by its power, protects and helps living beings, and gives as its example the sentence a Japanese speaker says on parting: 天の御加護がありますように, may Heaven's protection be upon you. The character dictionary gives one word: まもる, protect. No dictionary says bless [1].
The words. Kami no kago, four graphs: god, of, add-protection. Kago is written 加護, add and protect, and the dictionaries agree on what it means [1].
The text in English. In English the word has been protection since the first dictionary, and every Japanese-English dictionary open today says divine protection [2]. The English word blessing has a different Japanese home. The Bible in Japanese says bless with 恵む and 祝福 and keep with 守る, and in the 1937 typeset of the Meiji and Taishō translations the word 加護 does not occur once [3]. When the Meiji dictionaries translated God bless you! into Japanese they wrote 神の祝福を祈る [4] or 汝が身に幸あれ, not 加護; the one that reached for 加護 did so for God help you!, 神の加護あらんことを, which is the protecting sense exactly [5].
The historical record
About the seventh century. The Golden Light Sutra, 金光明最勝王経. The word is the sutras': in the Golden Light Sutra the devas add protection to a king and the goddess of eloquence is asked for it [6].
The 820s. Saichō's letters. The Buddhist doublet 加被 is glossed with nearly the same sentence and dated earlier still, to Saichō's letters of the 820s [7].
999 to about 1120. The court diary, a sermon record and the setsuwa tales. Its next citations after the court diary are a sermon record of 1110 on Amida's vow and the Konjaku tales of about 1120, where a traveler survives a thief because the Three Jewels' 加護 was on him [1].
1688 to 1814, the Edo storytellers. The Edo storytellers used 仏神の加護, the buddhas' and gods' protection, for a rescue that was not the hero's own doing, and the 八犬伝 of 1814 has the god of Yushima's 加護 was on him; in the public-domain library the phrase is on the shrines' and temples' side for two centuries [8].
1867. Hepburn, A Japanese and English Dictionary, page 167. Care, providence, protection (of the gods), with the example kami no kago de tasukaru, to be saved by the gods' protection [9].
1888. Hepburn, fourth edition, page 242. The same entry kept [10].
1896. Brinkley, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary, page 527. Divine protection; having aid; providence [11].
1901. An Orthodox catechism, 正教談. The Christian God enters it in the Meiji churches, and he enters it early and without apology. An Orthodox catechism of 1901 says we are made by God, ever receive God's 加護 and God's love, and so should pray to him as our maker, our 加護者 and our lover [12].
1903. A Protestant tract, 基督教乃由来. A Protestant tract of 1903 says Israel reached Canaan wholly by God's 加護 [13].
1912. A Congregationalist teacher's manual, 日曜学校幼稚科教案. A Congregationalist teacher's manual for the infant class heads its first unit the heavenly Father's 加護 and its fifth lesson God's 加護, which completes the family's protection, and gives the children their maxim: 神樣は皆さんを護つて下さいます, God protects you all (the leaf's spelling; 神様は皆さんを護って下さいます today) [14].
1926. A Salvation Army commentary, 民衆の聖書マタイ伝福音書. By 1926 a Salvation Army commentary on Matthew reads the daily-bread petition as praying for God's 御加護 over the problem of making a living [15].
1937. The Bible, 旧新約聖書 引照附. The word does not occur once in the 1937 typeset of the Meiji and Taishō translations [3].
1941. The army's field code, 戦陣訓. The army's field code of 1941 asks the soldier to be worthy of the 加護 of the gods [16].
1942. Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary. Divine protection, and, for 神明の加護に依って, by the protection of God; by God's protection; by the grace of Heaven [17].
Postwar. The benediction convention. The Japanese sentence the English benediction answers to, 神のご加護がありますように, may God's protection be upon you, has no occurrence at all in the public-domain library, which ends in 1949: it is a postwar convention, and today it is the subtitlers' standard Japanese for God bless you, God help you and God protect you [8].
Today. The house gloss God Bless You keeps the occasion and loses the word. It is the right English for what a Japanese speaker says on parting, and the subtitle dictionaries have settled that equivalence [2]. It is not what the four graphs say, which is God's protection. The gloss of 加護 is protection; bless is the idiom the phrase answers to, not a sense of the word. A rendering must keep the protecting: God keep you is nearer than God bless you, and under God's protection is the plain sense.
A reading
The phrase is exact Japanese and a thousand years old, and its English title is a benediction standing in for a noun. A Christian reader is not borrowing a Buddhist word: the Japanese church took it for its God by 1901, and by 1912 was teaching it to infants. What the word is not is blessing. The Bible in Japanese has never needed it, because it names the keeping and not the blessing; God bless you is right as the English for the parting sentence the Japanese say with it, and wrong as a translation of it. The Japanese reader's first reading of the four graphs is under God's protection, and the same four graphs serve a shrine, a temple and a church: which God, the four graphs do not say.
References
- 「加護」, 精選版日本国語大辞典・デジタル大辞泉・字通, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/加護
- 「加護」, 研究社新和英中辞典・斎藤和英大辞典・JMdict・映画海外ドラマ英語字幕翻訳辞書, at Weblio 英和・和英辞典. https://ejje.weblio.jp/content/加護
- 旧新約聖書 引照附, 1937, Numbers 6:24 at scan 132. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1030419/1/132
- Hidesaburo Saito, Idiomological English-Japanese Dictionary, 1915, s.v. bless.
- Kenkyusha's New School Dictionary, English-Japanese, s.v. God.
- 金光明最勝王経 卷八, CBETA T0665 at T16n0665_p0437c22, p0442b23, p0443b12.
- 「加被」, 精選版日本国語大辞典・デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/加被
- National Diet Library Digital Collections, next-generation full-text search on 神の加護 and related honorific forms, counted by decade. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/
- James Curtis Hepburn, A Japanese and English Dictionary, Shanghai, 1867, p. 167, at archive.org (japaneseenglishd00hepb, leaf n184).
- James Curtis Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, fourth edition, Z. P. Maruya, Tokyo, 1888, p. 242. Internet Archive japaneseenglishe00hepbuoft. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishe00hepbuoft
- Francis Brinkley, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary, Tokyo, 1896, p. 527.
- 正教談 詰難弁駁, 正教会事務所, 1901, pp. 110–111, scan 64. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/824709/1/64
- 基督教乃由来, 基督教書類会社, 1903, scan 19. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/824316/1/19
- 海老沢亮, 日曜学校幼稚科教案, 警醒社, 1912, pp. 18–19 and 24–25, scan 14 and scan 36. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/824948/1/14 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/824948/1/36
- 山室軍平, 民衆の聖書マタイ伝福音書, 救世軍出版及供給部, 1926, pp. 36–37, scan 41. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/925880/1/41
- 陸軍省, 戦陣訓, 1941, scan 29. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1266774/1/29
- Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, Tokyo, 1942, pp. 757, 1672.