危険を冒す kiken o okasu Take Risks
危険を冒す (kiken o okasu), brave the danger, is the Japanese set expression for running a risk. It is in print by 1870, in 中村正直's Japanese of Smiles's Self-Help. This study follows it through the translated books of the 1870s to the English-Japanese dictionaries.
Abstract
危険を冒す, kiken o okasu, brave the danger, is a set expression with its own dictionary entry, to brave a danger; to take a risk. Its verb has meant pushing on through wind and waves since the 日本書紀 of 720, and 冒険, the Chinese compound for the same act, means to brave a danger in Chinese texts. The phrase itself is in print from 1870, in 中村正直's translations of Smiles and Mill, and through the 1870s in translated books of history, law, economics and war, where it renders the English braved dangers and incur the risk. The English-Japanese dictionaries gave it for adventure from the 1880s and for to run a risk by 1904.
Overview
The sense. Standard Japanese; 危険を冒す is a set expression with its own dictionary entry, and a sentence of decision. It is the Japanese idiom for taking a risk, and its verb 冒す is the one used of setting out through wind and waves and of profaning the sacred, so the phrase has more edge than the English take risks: it is what a person does knowing the cost.
The words. 危険 kiken, danger, cited from the 続日本紀's entry for 737 in the spelling 危嶮 [1]; 冒す okasu: 危険や困難を覚悟のうえで、あえてする, to do a thing knowingly in the face of danger or difficulty, as in 風波を冒して出港する, to put out to sea in the face of wind and waves, then to defile what is sacred, then to take another house's name [2]. The larger dictionary, which enters the verb under all three of its characters, gives the first sense as じゃまになる物事を乗り越える。押し切って行なう, to get over what stands in the way; to push through, and cites it from the 日本書紀 of 720, 風波を冒て, braving the wind and waves [3]. 冒険 bōken, adventure, is the same act as a Chinese compound, and in Chinese texts it means 「（危）険を冒す」 [4]. The bilingual dictionary gives the whole phrase 危険を冒す as an expression, to brave a danger; to take a risk [5].
The text in English. Take risks is where the languages part: English takes a risk as one takes a chance, and Japanese braves it, 冒す, so the Japanese is a shade more serious, and the English plural has no counterpart, since 危険 is neither singular nor plural.
The historical record
1870 and 1872. 中村正直's translations. The phrase's oldest dated pages in the National Diet Library's full-text index are 中村正直's. In 西国立志編, his Japanese of Samuel Smiles's Self-Help, the missionaries from Xavier on 飢寒ヲ忍ビ。危險ヲ冐シ。疫癘ノ中ニ行歩シ [6], where Smiles wrote that they endured privations, braved dangers, walked through pestilence [7]. In 自由之理, his Japanese of Mill's On Liberty, the man about to cross an unsafe bridge is to be left to his own will: ソノ人危險ヲ冐スノ志意ニ任セ [8], where Mill has the motive which may prompt him to incur the risk and not forcibly prevented from exposing himself to it [9]. The phrase renders danger in the one and risk in the other.
The 1870s. The translated books. Through the decade the phrase stands in translated books of every kind: Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws (1875) [10], a German marine-insurance law (1879) [11], Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days (1880) [12], and books of history, economics and war. By 1884 it was an ordinary phrase of translated prose.
1884 and 1889. Two Meiji books. In a translated American etiquette manual of 1884, a gentleman must not offer a lady a horse he has not tried himself: 甞て乘り試みさる馬を婦人に進むるは實に危險を冐すの虞, to offer her a horse never ridden is truly to run a risk [13]. In 1889 the mathematician 藤沢利喜太郎 lists it among the conditions under which life insurance can work: 同樣の危險を冐す人の多人數なること、危險を冐す人の多人數なるに比して實際出來事に遇ふ人の割合に少なきこと, that those who run the same risk be many, and that those who actually meet the event be few in proportion to those who run the risk [14]. A later Waseda lecture on commercial English, published after the school took that name in 1902, glosses the English idiom for its students: Runs great risk. run a risk 熟語である.「危險を冐す」「危險に逢ふ」等の意味である. [15].
The dictionaries. Hepburn's Japanese-English dictionary renders to run a risk as abunai koto wo suru, to do a dangerous thing, in 1872 [16] and still in 1886 [17]; his Adventure has no kiken wo okasu in 1872, and in the edition of 1886 it has bōken, kiken wo okasu koto for the noun and kiken wo okasu for the verb [17]. Satow and Ishibashi's dictionary of the spoken language gives, under risk, to run a ~, kiken wo okasu in 1904 [18]. The pairing with the English run a risk is the dictionaries', and it came after the phrase.
What is not a source. No text stands behind the phrase and no one person made it: it is the kanbun sense of 冒, to push through, put to 危険, danger, by the translators of the early Meiji years for whatever the English or French had, brave dangers, incur a risk, adventure.
Today. The bilingual dictionaries give it for to brave a danger and to take a risk [5]. The edge of 冒す is what a rendering keeps, so that take risks is not softened to try things.
A reading
The phrase a reader will trust least as Japanese has the plainest pedigree: 中村正直, a Confucian scholar of the shogunate's academy who took up English in his twenties [19], reaching for a Chinese verb to put Smiles's missionaries through danger and Mill's man onto his bridge. The Japanese was waiting in 冒, which had meant pushing through the wind and waves for a thousand years; the translators gave it an object, 危険, and the dictionaries a partner in English. That is a good pedigree for a phrase of decision, and 冒す keeps the cost in view.
References
- 「危険」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/危険
- 「冒す」, デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/冒す
- 「犯す」 (おかす【犯・侵・冒】), 精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/犯す
- 「冒険」, 精選版日本国語大辞典 (補助注記)・普及版字通, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/冒険
- 危険を冒す, JMdict (EDRDG), at jisho.org. https://jisho.org/word/危険を冒す
- スマイルス, 『西国立志編 : 原名・自助論』, 中村正直訳, 須原屋茂兵衛, 1870, scan 21. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/755552/1/21
- Samuel Smiles, Self-Help, revised edition (1866), chapter VIII, Energy and Courage, at Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/935
- 弥爾, 『自由之理』, 中村敬太郎 (正直) 訳, 木平謙一郎, 1872, scan 8. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1939671/1/8
- John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (1859), chapter V, Applications, at Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/34901
- 孟徳斯鳩, 『萬法精理』, 何禮之訳, 1875. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1917780
- 『独逸海上保険法』, 加藤斌訳, 1879. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/793267
- シェル・ウエルヌ, 『新説 八十日間世界一周』, 川島忠之助訳, 1880. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/873181
- タマス・イー・ヒル, 『西洋礼式』, 坂部録三訳, 博聞社, 1884, scan 77. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/759140/1/77
- 藤沢利喜太郎, 『生命保険論』, 文海堂, 1889, scan 7. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/800566/1/7
- 今井友次郎講述, 『商業英語』 (早稲田商業講義), 早稲田大学出版部, undated, scan 19. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1082660/1/19
- J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, second edition, 1872, English-Japanese part, s.v. Adventure and Risk. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishe00hepb_0
- J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, the edition of 1886, in its 1888 printing, English-Japanese part, pp. 777 (Adventure) and 913 (Risk). https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishe00hepbuoft
- Ernest Satow and Ishibashi Masakata, An English-Japanese Dictionary of the Spoken Language, third edition, revised by E. M. Hobart-Hampden and H. G. Parlett, 1904, s.v. Risk. https://archive.org/details/englishjapanesed00satouoft
- 「中村正直」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典・改訂新版 世界大百科事典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/中村正直