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家内安全 kanai anzen Peace and Prosperity in the Household

家内安全 (kanai anzen), the household kept safe, is a prayer-formula first known from a Muromachi priest's prayer of about 1400 for a sutra-reading. An Onmyōdō manual ties it to the raising of a new house's pillar, a Kyōgen play puts it in a shrine-priest's mouth at a roadside teahouse, and from the Edo period on it is the standard wish on shrine and temple amulets.

Japanese Scroll of Peace and Prosperity in the Household (kanai anzen) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Peace and Prosperity in the Household (kanai anzen)

Peace and Prosperity in the Household in Japanese, 家内安全 (kanai anzen), a hand-brushed hanging scroll by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase.

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Abstract

家内安全, kanai anzen, the household kept safe, is a prayer-formula six hundred years old, first known from a Muromachi priest's prayer for a sutra-reading, carried into an Onmyōdō house-building rite and a Kyōgen priest's mouth, and the standard wish on shrine and temple amulets from the Edo period on. It is not Chinese; the Chinese wish for the same thing is 合家平安.

Overview

The sense. 家内安全 is a prayer said for a household from outside, against what comes from illness, fire or misfortune, and stands in the shrine's set beside 天下泰平, 息災延命 and 商売繁盛 [1].

The words. 家内 is the inside of a house and, by extension, the people in it; a courtier's diary of 1096 already pairs a matter of state and of the household. The big dictionary's note on the word is the key to the phrase: until the middle of the Meiji period, 家内 and 家 carried the sense that 家庭 later took over, and a trace of the older word survives in fixed phrases like 家内安全 [2]. 安全 is the absence of danger, read ansen in the Middle Ages and anzen since; the 平家物語 already has the safety of the realm [3].

The text in English. Peace and prosperity in the household and family well-being are the standard English for 家内安全.

The historical record

About 1400. 私案抄, the collected prayers of 長弁, a priest of 深大寺 in Musashi. A manuscript prayer-book at the National Diet Library. On the leaf facing the passage below, the preceding prayer is signed with its writer's age, 永徳三年癸亥仲春十八日 金州仏子長弁廿二才, the eighteenth day of the second month of 1383, the Buddhist Chōben of Kanazawa, aged twenty-two — so the collection is the work of a man born in 1362, and the prayer below sits in the first decades of the fifteenth century. The passage is a statement of intent for a reading of the six-hundred-scroll Great Wisdom Sutra: by the voice of this reading, every illness swiftly scattered and the realm brought to a settled government; every calamity at once extinguished and the household kept safe in its flourishing [4]. The realm and the household, 天下 and 家内, are already a pair, five hundred years before they share an amulet.

Fourteenth century (南北朝 period), as the encyclopedia dates it. 簠簋内伝, an Onmyōdō manual attributed to 安倍晴明. The encyclopedia dates the manual to the 南北朝 period; the copies opened are a manuscript of 1611 and a print of 1632. Its chapter on building a house: if the belly-pillar is raised, ten thousand blessings come unsought, the seven demons withdraw unbidden, the descendants flourish and the household is safe; therefore the oral teaching of belly, back, head and foot at the raising of the pillar is the one thing that matters [5]. This is where the phrase and the new house first meet.

Muromachi's end to early Edo. The Kyōgen 禰宜山伏. An Ise shrine-priest rests at a roadside teahouse and, thanked for his tea, answers: I too, every day before the god, offer the prayer for your household's safety [6]. The big dictionary cites this line as the phrase's first; it is the older prayer put in the mouth of the man who sells it, which is what the play is about, since a yamabushi arrives next and the two pray against each other for the teahouse's god.

Edo: the amulet, the hearth, the sermon, the joke. From the seventeenth century the phrase is everywhere the prayer-trade is. The trades encyclopedia of 1690 says under the hearth-makers that the world calls the hearth Kōjin, the guardian god of household safety and wealth [7]. A 1756 nenbutsu tract lists what people ask for: recovery from illness, household safety, and every other this-worldly aim [8]. A 1786 morality tract has a sponsor of shrine dances praying the whole formula, peace in the realm, the five grains ripened, the household safe, calamity averted, life prolonged [9]. A comic book of 1793 parodies a shrine legend: believe in the god and household safety, freedom from calamity, long life and every wish are beyond doubt; doubt him and you get household unsafety, calamity, and a household full of want [10]. Two picture-books wear it as a title, 振鷺亭's Theater-mad Household Safety of 1815 and 十返舎一九's Household Safety Collection of 1829 [11]. The Kamo shrine's officers pray it in 1824 [12], the Sensōji's donor stones are cut for the household safety of our ancestors [13], and the Shingaku sermons promise that minding the family trade brings household safety and long life to your descendants [14]. A pocket dictionary of 1827 lists it as a headword [15], and the senryū household safety: being in love with your wife was current enough for the 俚言集覧 to gloss and three proverb dictionaries to index [16].

Meiji: the formula fixed, the dictionaries slow. 福沢諭吉's 1878 essay on the household has its master always making 家内安全 his motto and frugality and honesty his rule [17]; a norito formulary of 1880 prints a prayer under that heading [18]. A rhyming dictionary of 1893 gives the festive set entire, peace in the realm, the five grains abundant, the four seas calm, the household safe, the state secure, wealth and long life, the sovereign's reign [19]. 森鷗外 records a country doctor's New Year poem of 1875 built on the four characters as an acrostic. Yet the big dictionaries of 1893 and 1915 give the phrase only as an example under other words, the second with the Kyōgen line; the headword came later. The 1941 Shintō encyclopedia lists it among the kinds of amulet a shrine issues and describes the custom of the thousand visits, each praying for his own household's safety and his shop's prosperity [20].

The dictionary today. デジタル大辞泉 and 精選版日本国語大辞典 both carry the phrase, with the sense given in Overview above [1]. From the 1910s the National Diet Library's index finds it in over three hundred books a decade.

The sense across time. 家内安全 has one sense and one register, the prayer's, from the fifteenth century to the amulet on the shelf; what changed is who said it, priest, then hearth-god, then everyone. It is a wish against the world.

What is not a source. The phrase is not Chinese. Chinese Wikisource has 家內安全 nowhere; the Chinese wish is 合家平安, peace to the whole family, on a Tang stele and in the presidential New Year address alike.

The word in English

1900 to 1946. Five dictionaries, one lineage. A student's dictionary of 1900 gives the family is happy and peaceful [21]; a 1906 dictionary turns it into a prayer, (Vouchsafe) that our family may be preserved [22]; a 1918 dictionary has peace and prosperity to the family and the family in peace [23]; a 1941 dictionary keeps both and adds family well-being [24]; a 1946 dictionary settles on to pray for the well-being of one's family [25].

Today. JMdict carries the 1918 dictionary's phrase forward as peace and prosperity in the household; prosperity is not in 安全, and it stayed because the amulet pairs the phrase with 商売繁盛.

A reading

家内安全 is an old prayer: six hundred years old, the words a priest says before the god and an amulet says on the house-shelf, the household kept safe. The new-house occasion is not a modern guess; the Onmyōdō manual ties the phrase to the raising of the pillar, and the hearth-god carries it. The word says safe, and prosperity is the amulet's neighbor.

References

  1. 「家内安全」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典・四字熟語を知る辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/家内安全-465008
  2. 「家内」, 精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/家内-465006
  3. 「安全」, 精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/安全-29237
  4. 長弁, 私案抄, National Diet Library manuscript, scan 7. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2533513/1/7
  5. 三國相傳陰陽輨轄簠簋内傳金烏玉兎集 (簠簋内伝), 1632 print, scan 66; manuscript copy of 1611, scan 57. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2533009/1/66 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2532305/1/57
  6. 禰宜山伏, in 『狂言全集』, 1903, scan 119. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/876515/1/119
  7. 『人倫訓蒙図彙』, 巻六, 1690, scan 17. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2592444/1/17
  8. 『念仏百万遍祈祷弁抄』, 1756, scan 4. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2599682/1/4
  9. 『丙午さとしばなし』, 1786, scan 28. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2539772/1/28
  10. 『尾張御用心』, 黄表紙, 和泉屋市兵衛, 1793, scan 3. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/9892768/1/3
  11. 振鷺亭, 『芝居好家内安全』, 仙鶴堂, 1815, scan 4; 十返舎一九, 『家内安全集』, 永寿堂, 1829, scan 3. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/9893223/1/4 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/10301788/1/3
  12. 『賀茂社記録』, 1824, scan 7. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2540592/1/7
  13. 『浅草寺志』, manuscript, scans 28–31. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2551830/1/28
  14. 『松翁道話』, 1892 print, scan 39. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/758773/1/39
  15. 『大全早引節用集』, 1827, scan 129. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2536906/1/129
  16. 『俚言集覧』, 1900 print, scan 439. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/991570/1/439
  17. 福沢諭吉, 『福沢文集』, 1878, scans 15–17. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/903877/1/15
  18. 『諸祭祝詞文例』, 1880, scan 18. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/815464/1/18
  19. 『冠附いろは字典』, 1893, scan 51. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/876221/1/51
  20. 『神道大辞典』, 1941, scans 168–169. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1913333/1/168
  21. 『学生用和英字典』, 1900, scan 234. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/870126/1/234
  22. 『実用和英新辞典』, 1906, scan 12. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/903029/1/12
  23. 武信, 『武信和英大辞典』, 1918, scans 27 and 426. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/925665/1/27
  24. 『研究社新和英大辞典』, 1941, scan 24 (s.v. 家内安全) and scan 506 (the 家庭円満 sentence). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1126818/1/24 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1126818/1/506
  25. 『スタンダード和英辞典』, 1946, scan 197. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1126792/1/197

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 · Claude Sonnet (Anthropic), 2026-09-15, citations — every claim tested at its address; nearly all resolve; several resolve but differ — the OCR against the manuscript, settled by hand at the leaf for the record, and one book-identifier note wrong on the check's side; one unclear, settled at the leaf; the rest not openable