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敬天愛人 keiten aijin Revere Heaven, Love People

敬天愛人 (keiten aijin), revere Heaven and love people, is a phrase often taken as a motto, and remembered as Saigō Takamori's. The four characters stand in Chinese texts by 1087, and a Jesuit used them in 1623 for Christian charity. This study follows them to Nakamura Masanao's print of 1870 and to Saigō's brush and sayings.

Japanese Scroll of Revere Heaven, Love People (keiten aijin) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Revere Heaven, Love People敬天愛人keiten aijin

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

敬天愛人, read keiten aijin, revere Heaven and love people, is entered in today's dictionaries as a phrase often taken as one's motto, and a dictionary of four-character phrases calls it the motto of Saigō Takamori 西郷隆盛 [1]. The four characters are older than Saigō: they stand together in Chinese texts from 1087 as a virtue of rulers, the Jesuit Giulio Aleni 艾儒略 used them in 1623 for the charity of Christian Europe a few pages after naming the two great commandments, and Wei Yuan 魏源's 海國圖志 said that Jesus summed up the Ten Commandments in these two [2][3][4]. The oldest Japanese print of them found for this history is of 1870, in Nakamura Masanao 中村正直's afterword to his translation of Smiles's Self-Help, where he also says he had read the 海國圖志; Saigō brushed them, a piece of 1875 written at his students' request hung for years in a dōjō, and his sayings, published in 1890, make them the aim of learning [5][6][7][8][9]. My reading, signed below, is that the phrase came to Saigō already carrying a Christian sense, and that he made it a teacher's word: revere Heaven, love others as you love yourself, and begin by mastering yourself.

Overview

The sense. The デジタル大辞泉: けいてん‐あいじん【敬天愛人】 天をうやまい、人を愛すること。座右の銘とされることが多い, to revere Heaven and love people; often taken as a motto kept by one's seat. The 精選版 日本国語大辞典 gives the same sense, 座右の銘として引かれることが多い, often cited as such a motto, and adds 明治元年（一八六八）に中村正直が「敬天愛人説」を著わしている, in 1868 Nakamura Masanao wrote the essay 敬天愛人説; it gives no earliest example. The 四字熟語を知る辞典 reads it as a goal of self-cultivation, 常に修養を怠らず、天をおそれ敬い、人を愛する境地に到達することが大切であるということ, that one should never neglect self-cultivation and should reach the state of fearing and revering Heaven and loving people, and adds 西郷隆盛の座右の銘として知られています, it is known as the motto of Saigō Takamori [1]. JMdict enters 敬天愛人 keiten aijin: revere heaven, love people [10].

The words. 敬 is to revere, 天 Heaven, 愛 to love, 人 people, others, one's fellows. Each half has its own classical source. The 字通 explains 敬天 as 天を畏れ敬する, to fear and revere Heaven, citing the 詩經's ode 板 [11], whose line is 敬天之怒，無敢戲豫, revere the anger of Heaven, and do not dare to play [12]. 愛人 is Confucius's answer in the 論語: 樊遲問「仁」。子曰：「愛人。」, Fan Chi asked about humaneness. The Master said, "Love people" [13]. The Meiji prints read the four characters as two verbs, 天ヲ敬シ人ヲ愛ス, revere Heaven, love people, with the marks beside the characters that tell a Japanese reader the order [6][14].

What follows. The historical record reads the phrase as a Chinese ruler's virtue, its Christian sense in Chinese, its first Japanese prints and a letter that was not what it claimed, Nakamura's essay, Saigō's brush and his sayings, the uses in Japan that followed, the accounts of how the phrase reached Saigō, and the English. A reading is mine.

The historical record

A ruler's virtue in Chinese

The oldest text found for this history that joins the four characters is a memorial by the Song official Lu Dian 陸佃, dated in its note to 1087, praising the regent empress: since she had heard the government with the emperor she had 敬天愛人, revered Heaven and loved the people, and moved always with humility [2]. In 1439, after drought and flood, the Ming emperor told his ministries that the portents came from his own want of virtue and bade them 以敬天愛人為心, make revering Heaven and loving the people your heart [15]. In 1627 the Ming general Yuan Chonghuan 袁崇煥 wrote to the Manchu Khan Hong Taiji that returning the cities he had taken 是在汗之仁明慈恵敬天愛人耳, rests on the Khan's benevolence and on his revering Heaven and loving the people, and the Khan answered 我國敬天愛人久為逺近稔悉, that our state reveres Heaven and loves the people has long been known far and near [16]. All three are read here in the transcriptions of the 四庫全書 at zh.wikisource. In each the phrase is said of a ruler, and 人 is the people he governs. A neighbor of the same shape, 敬天愛民, with 民, the people one rules, is far commoner: zh.wikisource's search finds it on 292 pages, against 20 for 敬天愛人 [17].

The Christian sense, in Chinese

The Jesuit Giulio Aleni described Europe for Chinese readers in his 職方外紀, finished in 1623 as the 四庫全書's notice on the book gives it [18]. A copy made by hand in Japan, which the National Diet Library dates to the Edo period, gives his account at the leaf. Of Europe's faith he writes 歐邏巴國人奉天主正教有遵持兩端其一愛敬天主萬物之上其一愛人如己, the people of Europe follow the true teaching of the Lord of Heaven and keep two things: one, to love and revere the Lord of Heaven above all things; the other, to love others as oneself [19]. A few pages later, after foundling houses, hospitals for every rank, public granaries and missionaries who go out to save souls, he closes 此歐邏巴敬天愛人之大略也, this is the general shape of Europe's revering Heaven and loving people [3]. In Aleni the four characters are the two great commandments in Confucian words.

Wei Yuan (1794–1856) copied Aleni's passage into his geography of the world, the 海國圖志, in its thirty-seventh chapter [20][21]. In the twenty-seventh, in his own essay on Christianity, he paraphrases Matthew 22.37–39 and writes [4]:

此耶穌述十誡大意，歸此敬天愛人二者。然敬天則無不愛人，故二者中，又以敬天為要。

So Jesus summed up the meaning of the Ten Commandments, reducing them to these two, revering Heaven and loving people. Yet one who reveres Heaven cannot fail to love people, so of the two, revering Heaven is the root. The 海國圖志 was printed in fifty chapters in 1842, sixty in 1847 and a hundred in 1852, as the Britannica entry at kotobank gives the editions; the text quoted here is zh.wikisource's, and the 旺文社 dictionary says that in Japan too it was read by the activists of the time, the 志士 [22].

A letter that was not what it claimed

Japanese histories of the 1870s print, under 1854, a letter from the British admiral whose squadron came to Nagasaki in the Crimean War. A history of 1875 reads, at the leaf, 英敬天愛人力可取而義不取豈效鄂壓小弱而自大乎, with marks beside 天 and beside 人 that read it as two verbs: England reveres Heaven and loves people; what force could take, right does not take; why would it copy Russia, crushing the small and weak to make itself great? [14]. Huang Zunxian 黄遵憲 carried the sentence into his Chinese history of Japan [23].

The editors of the 1915 edition of the documents of Japan's foreign relations print the admiral's letter as the Nagasaki magistrate received it, then a kanbun text from four private notebooks, with a note: the magistrate's report speaks of a letter in English and one in katakana and of none in Chinese, and the kanbun is probably an amateur's work, written on the sense of the Japanese translation of the Dutch and passed off as the admiral's own [24]. That kanbun reads 敬天而愛人, reveres Heaven and loves people, with 而, and, between the two [24]. So the four characters are not the admiral's, and the pastiche itself does not join them; the Meiji histories did. It is a good story about the phrase, and not a witness for it.

Nakamura Masanao, 1870

Nakamura Masanao (1832–1891), whose literary name was Keiu 敬宇, spent two years in London, as he says below, and translated Samuel Smiles's Self-Help as the 西國立志編, which he finished in 1870 [25][26]. The title page of the National Diet Library's copy reads 明治庚午初冬新刻, newly cut in the early winter of 1870 [27]. In the afterword at its end he writes that as a boy he heard of England's victories over China, and goes on [5]:

後讀海國圖志、有曰、英俗貪而悍 … 當時謂爲信然、及前年遊於英都、留二載、徐察其政俗、有以知其不然

Later I read the 海國圖志, which says the English are greedy and fierce … At the time I thought it true; but when I went to the English capital and stayed two years, and slowly looked into its government and customs, I came to know it was not so. A few lines on, of the members of Parliament, he writes 必學明行修之人也、有敬天愛人之心者也, they must be men of clear learning and upright conduct, men with a heart that reveres Heaven and loves people, and on the next page, of the men in his book, 原於敬天愛人之誠意, springing from a sincere will to revere Heaven and love people [5][6]. The four characters are in a Japanese print by 1870, in the same afterword in which Nakamura says he had read the 海國圖志.

His essay on the phrase, 敬天愛人說, is dated 明治戊辰, 1868, in its own heading. It is not in the 1880 edition of his writings as the National Diet Library's text of both volumes gives it [28]. It is found in print in 敬宇文, which the library dates to 1889, at the leaf: 敬天愛人說 明治戊辰 仲虺之誥曰欽崇天道永保天命 [29]. The 1903 edition of his writings prints it in two parts; the second opens 天者生我者乃吾父也, Heaven is what gave me life: it is my father [30]. Fujiwara 藤原暹 and Hirano 平野尚也 show that the first part's quotations on revering Heaven and on loving people follow, all but three and in the same order, Kaibara Ekiken 貝原益軒's 初学知要 of 1697 [31].

Saigō's brush

Saigō Takamori (1828–1877) left the government in 1873 and in 1874 founded his private schools, the 私学校, at Kagoshima [32][33]. Kagoshima Prefecture designated one of his brushed pieces of 敬天愛人 a cultural property in 1967. Its sheet says that he liked to write the phrase and that many pieces survive, and of this one [7]:

明治８（1875）年に私学校生らの求めに応じて書かれたもので，その後長く四方学舎の道場に掲げられており

It was written in 1875 at the request of students of the 私学校, and afterwards it hung for a long time in the dōjō of the 四方学舎. The sheet adds that the seal was probably pressed later. The Tokyo National Museum's piece, given in 1939 by Saigō's nephew, is dated by the museum only to the Meiji era [34]. The oldest dated piece found for this history is that of 1875.

Saigō's sayings, 1890

Saigō's sayings were published by his followers from the Tsuruoka domain in the north: the 日本人名大辞典 says that Suge Sanehide 菅実秀, a former retainer of Tsuruoka who had become Saigō's disciple, published them after the Satsuma Rebellion [35]. The government gazette's list of new books, read at the leaf, gives ●南州翁遺訓（一册）, author the late Saigō Takamori, publisher 三矢藤太郎 of Tsuruoka, published 16 January 1890; the gazette prints the title with 州 [8]. The four characters stand in one article. As Inoue 井上琢智 quotes it from the Iwanami edition of 1939, in a printing of 1993 [9]:

道は天地自然の道なるゆゑ、講学の道は敬天愛人を目的とし、身を修するに克己を以て終始せよ。

The Way is the way of Heaven and Earth, as it is of itself; so the way of learning takes revering Heaven and loving people as its aim, and in cultivating oneself, begin and end with mastering oneself. The article ends, in the same quotation, 総じて人は己れに克つを以て成り、自ら愛するを以て敗るゝぞ, on the whole, people succeed by mastering themselves and fail by loving themselves [9]. In the text at Japanese Wikisource the gloss of the four characters stands three articles later [36]; Inoue quotes it too: 天は人も我も同一に愛し給ふゆゑ、我を愛する心を以て人を愛する也, Heaven loves others and me alike, so with the heart that loves myself I love others [9].

After Saigō

A Christian orphanage took the phrase as its rule. The 岡山孤児院, founded in 1887, printed in 1898 among its articles 基督教即ち敬天愛人の道を實行するを以て本院の主義とす, the principle of this institution is to put into practice Christianity, that is, the way of revering Heaven and loving people [37].

A judo book of 1913, by Munakata Itsurō 宗像逸郎, quotes Saigō's article in its chapter on the training of the spirit, under the running head 柔道の精神修養: 一、道は天地自然の道なるゆへ、講學の道は敬天愛人を目的とし、克己を以て終始せよ. On the facing page it says what it takes from him: 唯夫れ素直に道に順ふて、道を行ふばかりである。是れが精神上の柔道である, only to follow the Way plainly and walk it: this is judo of the spirit [38].

In the 1930s, in the National Diet Library's full text, a book of 1936 read Saigō's phrase as revering the emperor rather than Confucian Heaven, and a dictionary of Shinto and the national polity of 1940 set it beside the slogan 敬神愛國, revere the gods and love the country, as the same meaning in other words [39][40]. These are read only in the library's text. They are a reading of their decade, and they say what the 1930s made of Saigō, not what the four characters had meant.

Where Nakamura found it, and how it reached Saigō

The scholarship gives several accounts; none of them is a witness read for this history.

In English

Nitobe Inazō 新渡戸稲造, in Bushido (1900), gave two of Saigō's articles without the four characters, make it the object of thy life to reverence Heaven. Heaven loves me and others with equal love; therefore with the love wherewith thou lovest thyself, love others, and added that some of these sayings remind us of Christian expostulations [44]. Uchimura Kanzō 内村鑑三 wrote in 1908: "Revere Heaven; love people," summed up all his views of life. All wisdom was there and all un-wisdom, in love of self, and declined to say whether Saigō took Heaven to be a Force or a Person [45]. Robert Cornell Armstrong, of Kwansei Gakuin in Kobe, gave the article in 1914 as The aim of learning is to respect heaven and love men. By self-denial we become great in virtue and in deeds [46]. Later English has Revere Heaven, Love Mankind (Ivan Morris, 1975), Revere Heaven; love man (the Britannica, 1979), revere Heaven and love people (Charles Yates, 1995) and revere heaven and love man (Ravina, 2004), as the Internet Archive's full-text index and the books give them [47][48][49][43]. John Stevens's The Art of Budo (2022) prints a horizontal piece signed 南洲, Saigō's literary name, as Revere Heaven, Love Mankind, and reads aijin as love mankind in general and love thy neighbor on a more personal level [50]. Yates adds that Saigō's care for the islanders of his exile came in spite of his famous injunction rather than from a belief in the equal worth of all people [49]. The company Kyocera took the phrase as its motto and renders it Respect the Divine and Love People [51].

A reading

I read 敬天愛人 as a Chinese ruler's virtue that took on a Christian sense in Chinese, reached Japan in that sense, and became in Saigō's sayings a teacher's word.

The first two steps are in the texts. Lu Dian, the Ming edict and the 1627 letters say it of rulers and the people they govern. Aleni joined it to the two great commandments, and Wei Yuan said Jesus reduced the Law to these two. Nakamura printed it in 1870 in the same afterword in which he said he had read Wei Yuan's book. That Nakamura took the four characters from the 海國圖志 is Hiraishi's thesis, and I think the witnesses fit it best; it is a reading, not a witness.

The third step is mine to argue. Saigō's sayings gloss the phrase with with the heart that loves myself I love others, which is the second commandment's own shape, Aleni's 愛人如己, and they set it inside the Confucian frame of mastering oneself. Nitobe heard the Christian echo in 1900 and Uchimura, a Christian, declined to make Saigō one. I think both were right: the words arrived with a Christian sense, and Saigō used them as a teacher of Confucian self-discipline.

The phrase suits a teacher's wall, and that use goes back to Saigō himself: the oldest dated piece found for this history was written at his students' request and hung for a long time in a dōjō.

Notes

Not Nakamura's coinage. The Japanese Wikipedia article, in the revision read for this history, opens by calling the four characters Nakamura's coinage [52]. The Chinese texts above are older by centuries; what is Nakamura's is the oldest Japanese print found and the essay.

Not the admiral's. The sentence England reveres Heaven and loves people in the Meiji histories rests on a kanbun text the 1915 editors judged a pastiche, and that text has 敬天而愛人, not the four characters (A letter that was not what it claimed).

The article numbers. In the text at Japanese Wikisource the phrase is in the twenty-first article and its gloss in the twenty-fourth [36]. The 1913 judo book prints the first without 身を修するに, in cultivating oneself [38].

The 1930s. The readings of 1936 and 1940 are reception, not a sense of the phrase (After Saigō).

Sources not seen

The first print of Saigō's sayings, 1890: the National Diet Library holds no digitized copy, and the images of its 1891 print (pid 781425) are not served. The page would settle the 1890 wording of the articles quoted above.

『大日本古文書 幕末外国関係文書』, 1915, National Diet Library pid 12210096, served only inside Japan: the genuine translation of the admiral's letter and the editors' note at the page [24].

The Japanese printings of the 海國圖志, 1854–1856: they carry no text layer at the National Diet Library, and whether any carried the essay on Christianity in chapter twenty-seven was not established.

野村純代 2007 (a translation of Nakamura's essay with commentary), 井田好治 1983, 小泉仰 1977 and 1991, 増村守 1972, Furukawa 1967 and 平石直昭's paper: in print, and unread here. Morris 1975 and Levenson's Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: lent, not open.

A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.

References

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  22. 「海国図志」, ブリタニカ国際大百科事典 小項目事典 and 旺文社世界史事典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/海国図志-42385
  23. 黄遵憲, 『日本國志』 卷七, at zh.wikisource, the revision read October 2026 (2404067). https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/日本國志/卷七
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  30. 中村正直, 『敬宇文集』 卷三, 吉川弘文館, 1903, folio 十六, scan 17. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/893600/1/17
  31. 藤原暹 and 平野尚也, 「中村敬宇における「敬天愛人」の思想」, Artes Liberales 58, 岩手大学人文社会科学部, 1996, pp. 13–16. https://iwate-u.repo.nii.ac.jp/records/13451
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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.

Not yet reviewed.

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 敬天愛人 (keiten aijin)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/keiten-aijin.