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松無古今色 matsu ni kokon no iro nashi The Pine Has No Color of Past or Present

松無古今色, the pine has no color of past or present: from a Song abbot's couplet and the Noh's felicitation pine to the tea-room scroll.

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Japanese Scroll of The Pine Has No Color of Past or Present (matsu ni kokon no iro nashi) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
The Pine Has No Color of Past or Present松無古今色matsu ni kokon no iro nashi

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

松無古今色, the pine has no color of past or present, is the second half of a Chinese Chan couplet turned round and rewritten in Japan. Its earliest form in the Chinese canon, as CBETA searches it, is the answer of the abbot Dagui Zuchun 大溈祖瑃, asked for the house style of Weishan, in a lamp history whose preface is dated 1101: 竹有上下節，松無古今青, the bamboo has joints above and below; the pine has no green of past or present, bamboo first and green for color [1]. In Japan Musō Soseki 夢窓疎石 wrote 色 for 青 in 1329, in the earliest Japanese use of the couplet read, and Takuan Sōhō 沢庵宗彭 wrote it too; Shūhō Myōchō 宗峰妙超, asked whether one act of devotion was better or worse than another, said neither and closed with the couplet, and Ryūshū Shūtaku 龍湫周澤, asking that question himself of a governor's offering, answered it with the couplet alone; and the phrase books, in the earliest copies read, of the early Edo period, set the pine first [2][3][4][5][6]; separately, in the same Japanese words, Zeami 世阿弥 made a pine without a color of past and present the image of the felicitation voice, and that pine runs through the New Year, the Edo travel diary and the Meiji longevity verse [7][8][9]. The line on the scroll is the meeting of the two: sameness across time and distinction in place in the Zen couplet, and the pine that is the same green in every age in the felicitation.

Overview

The sense. At kotobank no headword address tried for the line or for either half of the couplet answers (each a 404); its words are ordinary [10][11]. Its witnesses hold several senses, each in its own setting. In the Chinese record it is an abbot's answer about the style of his house [1]. In Musō's use, the earliest in Japan read, it answers why today, when not last year? [2]; in Daitō's and Ryūshū's it answers a question of ranking, Daitō saying neither better nor worse and Ryūshū letting the couplet stand as the answer: the pine is the same in every age, the bamboo's joints stand each in its place [4][5]. A phrase book of 1688 glosses it nothing goes against its own nature; manifest just as it is [12], and Sōiku Shigematsu, in English in 1981, gives it in his passage on equality and difference [13]. In Zeami's treatise and the felicitation Noh 高砂 the pine without a color of past and present is the pine of long life and blessing [7][14], and in that sense the line went to the New Year and to birthdays [8][15]. Modern print read it as each person's lot [16], as integrity and a woman's chastity [17], and as ruler and subject [18]; a New Year greeting of 2022 reads 節 as a turning point [19].

The words. 松, the pine; 無, has not; 古今, past and present, the 日本国語大辞典's sense ① 昔と今。古いか新しいか, then and now; whether old or new; 色, color. The 日本国語大辞典 notes that 古今 has two readings, kokin and kokon, and that kokin serves mostly as the short name of the 古今和歌集 while the ordinary word for then and now has been read kokon [10]. The line is read matsu ni kokon no iro nashi, in the pine there is no color of past or present: the 1645 and 1688 phrase books mark it 松ニ無シ古今ノ色 [6][12], a tea master's record of 1921 prints the ruby まつにここんのいろなし [20], and Uejima Onitsura 上島鬼貫 wrote it in kana in 1688, 松に古今の色なし [8]. Run on into the bamboo half it is … iro naku, take ni jōge no fushi ari [13][21]. 節 in the bamboo half is ふし, fushi, the joint of a bamboo stem [11], as Shigematsu and Hori romanize it [13][21]; the phrase books read mark no reading on it. Its other reading, せつ, carries the sense integrity [11], and among the witnesses read that sense enters the line with a reading of 1911 [17]. The Chinese couplet writes 青, green, for 色 [1]; the pine is written 柗 in a print of 1889 and 枀 in one of 1774, both forms of 松 [22][23].

The text in English. Sōiku Shigematsu's A Zen Forest (1981) gives the couplet as No pine has two colors, / old and new; / The bamboo's knot marks / up and down [13]; Victor Sōgen Hori's Zen Sand (2003) as The pine has no old or new color, / The bamboo has upper and lower joints [21]; and Noriko Morishita's Wisdom of Tea (2020), of a scroll in a tea room, Young or old, the pine is always green [24]. JMdict, at jisho.org, carries no entry for the line [25].

The historical record

1101, the 建中靖國續燈錄 (Jianzhong Jingguo xudeng lu), book 22: an abbot's answer about his house. A Song lamp history, its imperial preface dated 建中靖國元年, 1101 [1], records the Chan master Dagui Zuchun, heir of Dagui Huaixiu 大溈懷秀, who had been moved from Yuelu 岳麓 to the abbacy of Weishan; a monk asks him:

問：如何是溈山家風？師云：竹有上下節，松無古今青。僧曰：未審其中人飲噉何物？師云：飢飡相公玉粒飯，渴點神運倉前茶。

Asked: "What is the house style of Weishan?" The master said: "The bamboo has joints above and below; the pine has no green of past or present." The monk said: "And what do the people in it eat and drink?" The master said: "Hungry, they eat the minister's jade-grain rice; thirsty, they take tea from the divine granary" [1]. The couplet describes the house: everything in its place, everything always the same. The bamboo comes first and the color is 青. The later Song compilation 五燈會元 (Wudeng huiyuan, Compendium of the Five Lamps), compiled by Puji 普濟, gives the same answer as 竹有上下節。松無今古青 [26], and every Chinese text in CBETA's canon that carries the couplet keeps the bamboo first and the 青; none carries 松無古今色 [27].

1329, Musō Soseki 夢窓疎石 (1275–1351), at Engakuji: 色. On entering the abbacy of Engakuji in Kamakura, 元德元年八月二十九日, 1329 [2][28], Musō told the story of Ciming 慈明, who refused a governor's invitation and later called on him expressly, wishing to go after all, saying 始不欲之。今偶欲之耳, at first I did not want it; now I happen to want it. Then he said of himself:

卽今若有人問新瑞峯去年固辭鈞命不住當山。今日何故敢來領席。便向他道。竹有上下節。松無古今色。

If someone now asks why the new abbot of this mountain, who last year firmly declined the order and would not take it, today dares to come and take the seat, I would tell him: the bamboo has joints above and below; the pine has no color of past or present [2][29]. It is the earliest use with 色 for 青 that CBETA, SAT and the National Diet Library's full text return, and the earliest Japanese use of the couplet read. Refusal and acceptance, last year and this, are not a contradiction: the pine is the same through both. The bamboo still comes first.

The winter of 1330–31, by the record's order, Shūhō Myōchō 宗峰妙超, known as Daitō 大燈, a sermon at 祐徳寺, in his Daitokuji record: no better, no worse. The record of Daitō's years at Daitokuji opens with his first sermon there in the twelfth month of 嘉暦 1, early 1327 [30], and runs through the feasts of the year in order. The sermon, preached for the dedication of the Buddha hall of 祐徳寺, to which Daitō says he came over mountains and rivers, 山僧歴山渡水。得得而來開堂演法, carries no date of its own [4]; it stands after the fourth New Year sermon from the opening and the winter-solstice sermon that follows it, and before the next sermon on the Buddha's enlightenment, so the record's order puts it in the winter of 1330–31, the year after Musō's [31]. A patron has built a temple, 祐徳寺, for his late parents, and a monk asks whether its merit is better or worse than that of Sudatta 須達, who built the Jetavana for the Buddha: 其益還有優劣也無。師云。無有優劣, "Is there better or worse in its benefit?" The master said: "There is no better or worse" [4]. Daitō closes the sermon: 山河大地草木叢林。情與無情。因中與果上。無高無下 … 諸人要見此事麽。竹有上下節。松無古今青, mountains, rivers, the great earth, grasses and forests, the sentient and the insentient, cause and fruit: no high, no low … Do you want to see this? The bamboo has joints above and below; the pine has no green of past or present [4]. In a later sermon, at the end of a summer retreat, he sets the same couplet beside 平等性智, the wisdom of sameness [32]. Daitō keeps the Chinese 青, and here the couplet answers a question of ranking: no high, no low.

The fourteenth century, undated, Ryūshū Shūtaku 龍湫周澤 (1308–1388), a sermon for 寶洲居士: which is the better? Musō's dharma heir [33], preaching at a Buddhist service the governor of Sagami held for 寶洲大居士, sets the governor's offering beside the copy of the Diamond Sutra that Su Shi 蘇軾 wrote out in his own hand for his late father's repose, and asks: 且道與它蘇文忠公其優劣如何。竹有上下節松無古今色, say then: set beside Su Shi's, which is the better? The bamboo has joints above and below; the pine has no color of past or present [5]. It is Daitō's question, better or worse?, answered with the couplet alone, now with 色. The sermon is undated and is read here in a print of 1707 [5].

Undated, Zeami 世阿弥 (1363?–1443?), 五音曲條々 (Goon kyokujōjō), the pine of felicitation. In a short treatise on the kinds of voice in Noh singing, which likens each kind to a tree, Zeami sets the pine for the 祝言, the felicitation voice [7][34]:

松はもとよりれいほくとして、古今の色なく、千秋の風姿、をのつから滿目靑山のまそをいをなせり、祝言の曲聲、安全の感音をなす所、相當是なり、

The pine is from the first a sacred tree: without a color of past and present, its form of a thousand autumns makes of itself the dress of green mountains filling the eye; the felicitation song, where it sounds peace and safety, is this [7]. The treatise carries no date; its first editor, Yoshida Tōgo 吉田東伍, in 1909, placed it, as a conjecture, near the 花伝 secret transmission of 応永 25, 1418 [7], and the modern reference works count it among the treatises that are Zeami's own [34]. Zeami's felicitation Noh 高砂 (Takasago) sings the same pine in the same words, this pine above all excels the myriad trees: in the dress of the eighteen lords (十八公, the character 松 taken apart), making the green of a thousand autumns, it does not see the color of past and present: 中にも此松は萬木にすぐれて、十八公のよそほひ、千秋の綠を爲して、古今の色を見ず [14][35]. Here the pine without a color of past and present is the pine of long life and blessing, and no Zen couplet is named.

1638 to 1646, Takuan Sōhō 沢庵宗彭 (1573–1646), at Tōkaiji: is that nature or cause? In the 萬松語錄, his record named, as I read the name, for 萬松山, the mountain name of Tōkaiji in Shinagawa, the temple founded for him in 1638 or 1639 [36][37], Takuan sets the couplet among pairs of things that are as they are: 松直棘曲。竹有上下節。松無古今色。鷺不晒白。鴉不染黑。是自然耶。是因緣耶, the pine is straight, the thorn is crooked; the bamboo has joints above and below; the pine has no color of past or present; the heron is not bleached white, the crow is not dyed black. Is this nature? Is this cause?, as the library's text layer of a 1929 edition reads it; the page image is not served outside Japan [3]. Takuan was the heir of 一凍紹滴 and an abbot of Daitokuji, Daitō's temple, so of Daitō's line and not of Musō's [37], so 色 stood in both lines by the middle of the seventeenth century.

Early Edo, the phrase book 句雙紙 (Kuzōshi): the pine first. The Zen phrase book in a manuscript the national catalogue dates to the early Edo period, and in its print of 1645, turns the couplet round: 松無古今色 / 竹有上下節, the pine first [38][6]. Its neighbors are the same in both: 十方無虚空 and then 無物堪比倫 before it, and 行到水窮處 after it. The pine-first order is that of the phrase books; no Chinese text read and no Japanese record before them has it.

1688, the 増補首書 禪林句集 (Zenrin kushū with added headnotes): the turn noted, the line glossed. The enlarged phrase book of 1688 prints 松ニ無シ古今ノ色 竹ニ有リ上下ノ節 with a head note above it, 會元句作上下, in the 會元 the line runs top and bottom: the 五燈會元 sets it the other way, bamboo above [12][26]. Its foot gloss reads the couplet: 皆不違其性現成有侭此上玄妙也, none goes against its own nature; manifest just as it is; there is no mystery beyond this [12].

1688, Uejima Onitsura 上島鬼貫 (1661–1738), a New Year haikai: the felicitation. In an Osaka anthology of New Year verse, 『大坂辰歳旦惣寄』, with its preface dated 貞享 5, 1688 [39][40], the poet heads his New Year verse as Yamazaki Kiyoshi 山崎喜好 quotes it in his study of 1944:

歳旦、松に古今の色なし、一句に四つの季なふしてしかもゆたかなる心深し。我このことぶきを始めて世に常盤句をうたふ。

New Year's day. The pine has no color of past or present: a verse without the four seasons, and yet a rich heart deep in it. I begin this felicitation and sing to the world a verse of the evergreen [8]. The line in its Japanese reading opens a year: ことぶき, felicitation, and 常盤, the evergreen. Yamazaki reads it as Onitsura's way of finding richness where past and present, and the four seasons, are not told apart, 古今とか四季とかの別を考へないところに却つて豊かなるものを感じようとする [8].

Before 1707, Hattori Ransetsu 服部嵐雪 (1654–1707), the haikai poet and the Zen master; earliest witness 1774. Bashō's disciple [41], back from a walking pilgrimage, is asked by a master, named 濟雲 in the 1893 typeset of the collection and in a retelling of 1892, for the line in which there is no color of past or present, and answers with another [23][42][43]:

師問云去春望別送乞片語今秋帰来相見了也即今如何是行脚眼某答云觀音境裡古枀樹師云枀無古今色作麼生無古今色的一句某進云春色無高下花枝自短長師領之休去某拜退参堂去

The master asked: "Last spring, at parting, you asked me for a word. This autumn you have come back and we have met. Now, what is the eye of your pilgrimage?" I answered: "The old pine in the realm of Kannon." The master said: "The pine has no color of past or present. What is the line with no color of past or present?" I went on: "Spring's color has no high or low; the flowering branches are of themselves short and long." The master accepted it and let the matter rest. I bowed, withdrew and went to the hall [23]. The earliest witness in the national catalogue of premodern books and the National Diet Library's full text is the collection of Ransetsu's prose edited by Ōshima Ryōta 大島蓼太 and prefaced in 安永 3, 1774 [23][44], sixty-seven years after Ransetsu's death; the 1893 typeset re-sets its text, the 1892 retelling follows its wording with small changes, and no telling read shows another source [42][43]. Ransetsu's answer is a Song saying, which a monk offers in the recorded sayings of Yuanwu Keqin 圜悟克勤 and Hongzhi Zhengjue 宏智正覺 introduces with 所以道, so it is said: the same spring with no high or low, the branches each of its own length [45][46]. Sameness and distinction is how he read it, and the master accepted the reading.

1736, as a story of Hori Bakusui 堀麦水 (1718–1783) dates it: the one legible scroll. In the 三州奇談 (Sanshū kidan), a collection of strange tales of the three provinces of Kaga, Etchū and Noto [47][48], an old monk who travels the northern road in the sixth month of 享保 21, as the tale dates it (by that month the era had been renamed 元文; the year is 1736) [49], writing for people as he goes, is killed by dogs and found to be an ancient badger. His scrolls cannot be read, the hand far from a human one, except one: 只黒津舟齋藤丹後守が所持の一軸は。是のみ文字正しく松無₂古今色₁竹有₂遠近節₁と能く讀めけるも一興なり, only the scroll kept by Saitō Tango-no-kami of Kurotsubune was written correctly and could be read plainly, 松無古今色 竹有遠近節, which was amusing [50]. The pine first, as on the tea scroll, and 遠近, near and far, for 上下, a variant in no other witness read. The tale is read in a typeset of 1903; its manuscripts were not opened.

1749, Hakuin Ekaku 白隠慧鶴 (1685–1768), the 槐安國語 (Kaian kokugo): only half said. In his commentary on Daitō's record [51][52], Hakuin writes against the couplet that closes the 祐徳寺 sermon of so great a National Teacher of two courts and all this tangle of vines, 大小大兩朝國師。打許多葛藤 [53], and then, in the print whose afterword is dated 寛延 3, 1750, 末後只道得一半何故倉米既赫赤不貸人斗升, at the end he manages to say only half. Why? The granary rice is red with age, and he will not lend a man a peck [54]. The blame is the commentary form's praise: the rest is withheld. Of the second sermon he writes 山河大地通上孤危。萬象森羅徹下嶮峻, mountains, rivers and the great earth stand alone all the way up; the myriad forms are sheer all the way down [55]: each thing whole at its own height.

1758 and after, the play 祇園祭礼信仰記 (Gion sairei shinkōki): even the pine perishes. A puppet play first staged at Osaka's Toyotake-za from the fifth day of the twelfth month of 宝暦 7, which the dictionaries give as 1757 and which was 14 January 1758, and taken up on the kabuki stage in Kyoto in the first month of the next year, 宝暦 8, which the encyclopedia gives as 1758 [56][49]. In the kabuki text printed in 1931, her son, the monk 慶覺, refuses his mother's call to return to lay life; she has torn a painting of a pine in two, and he reads the act back to her: 竹に上下の節あり、松に古今の色なしと云へど、北州の千年も、遂には亡びる例しありと、松の繪を裂いたるお心, though it is said the bamboo has joints above and below and the pine no color of past or present, even the thousand years of the northern continent end at last in ruin: that was your heart in tearing the painting of the pine [57]. The line is quoted in order to be overturned.

1794, Tatsuoka Mansaku 辰岡萬作 (1742–1809), the kabuki 傾城青陽鷄: parent and child. In a play first staged at Osaka's Kado theater in the first month of 寛政 6, 1794, as the volume's introduction gives it [58], the hero cuts a bamboo heavy with snow: 松に古今の色なし。竹に上下の親子の仲を、隔つる雪は雪ぐとも讀む, the pine has no color of past or present. Between parent and child, the bamboo's above and below, the snow that parts them is read also "to wash clean" [58]. 上下 has become parent and child, and the bamboo shoot in the snow the filial son.

1804, a gazetteer of Harima, the legend of the Red Pine. The 播磨名所巡覧図会 (Harima meisho junran zue) of 文化 1, 1804, describing the temple 宝林寺 on Mount Akamatsu, Red Pine, sets down what it is said, 傳曰, of its founding [59]:

傳曰圓心別法和尚に問て曰法に二法なし然るに別法とは如何和尚答て曰松に古今の色なし然るに赤松とは如何

It is said that Enshin asked the monk 別法: "The Dharma has no second dharma; why then 'another dharma'?" The monk answered: "The pine has no color of past or present; why then 'Red Pine'?" [59]. Akamatsu Enshin 赤松円心 is the warlord, his house's name Red Pine, and the monk's name 別法 means another dharma: each turns the other's name into a koan, and the line's sameness reading, the pine has no color, makes the joke. It is a legend, set in the fourteenth century, and 1804 is its earliest attestation in the National Diet Library's full text, searched oldest first; the 日本歴史地名大系's article on the temple, following the 雪村和尚行道記, gives its founding to Akamatsu Norisuke 赤松則祐 and the monk Sesson Yūbai 雪村友梅 in the 貞和 era (1345–1350) [60].

1814, Jippōan Keijun 十方庵敬順, the 遊歴雑記 (Yūreki zakki): the felicitation pine in the line's words. In the first part of his travel diary, prefaced in 文化 11, 1814 [61], the Edo priest opens a list of thirty-six famous pines [9]:

松は諸木にすぐれて古今の色なく、十八公の榮へ久敷、一千年の壽き目出度ければ、既に大夫の官位も有となん、故に高砂、安宅、武隈、阿古屋、唐崎等の名は人皆しれり、

The pine excels all trees, without a color of past and present; the glory of the eighteen lords is long, and its thousand years' felicitation auspicious, so that it is even said to hold the rank of a grandee, 大夫: therefore everyone knows the names of Takasago, Ataka, Takekuma, Akoya and Karasaki [9]. The pine of 高砂 and of long life, in the words of the Zen line, with no Zen in it.

1889, the 禅林句集 re-cut. A Meiji print of the phrase book keeps the 1688 entry, writes the pine 柗, and drops the first character of the head note, so that it reads 元句作上下 [22].

1893 to 1908, Meiji: the longevity verse, the stock phrase, each one's lot. A literary magazine of 1893 prints, for a woman's seventy-seventh birthday, 松無古今色、鶴有千年春, the pine has no color of past or present; the crane has a thousand years of spring, as the library's text layer reads it; the page image is not served outside Japan [15]. A collection of Buddhist maxims edited by the novelist Yamada Bimyō 山田美妙 (1868–1910) in 1900 gives (四七六)松に古今の色無く、竹に上下の節有り(會元), crediting the line, pine first and 色, to the 五燈會元, whose text has neither [62][26]. The Buddhist writer Katō Totsudō 加藤咄堂 (1870–1949) in 1907 lists it among 禪家常套の句, the stock phrases of the Zen house, with the gloss 現成公案、其性を違せず, the koan manifest; nothing goes against its nature, the 1688 foot gloss in other words [63]. A preacher, Matsuura Hyakuei 松浦百英, in a sermon of 1908 on the precept against stealing, writes 御互に果報分限といふものを明めて見れば、松に古今の色なく竹に上下の節あり、鷺は白いもの、烏は黑いもの, if we make clear to one another what each one's lot and station is: the pine has no color of past or present and the bamboo has joints above and below; the heron is white and the crow is black, and so there is nothing to steal [16].

1911 to 1938, integrity, chastity, ruler and subject. Akiyama Goan 秋山悟庵 (1863–1943), under the heading 節操, integrity, in 1911: 松に古今の色なく、竹に上下の節ありとは、よくも吾人に節操の守るべきことを自然が敎へて居る, the pine without color of past or present and the bamboo with joints above and below: so well does nature teach us to keep our integrity, and he goes on at once to women: 殊に女子は最もこの節操を以て婦德の美をなして居る, women above all make the beauty of womanly virtue out of this constancy [17]. Iida Tōin 飯田欓隠 in 1931 quotes the line after a poem of the Emperor Meiji and one of the Empress Shōken, hers 君と臣心の色に移さばやいつもかはらぬ松の綠りを, would that ruler and subject took into their hearts the green of the pine that never changes [64]. Nakane Kandō 中根環堂, in a book of 1938 on religious education grounded in the national polity, writes 松に古今の色なく、竹に上下の節あるやうに、君君たり臣臣たり、父父たり子子たりで、各自其守るべき道を守り, as the pine has no color of past or present and the bamboo has joints above and below, let the ruler be ruler and the subject subject, the father father and the son son, and each keep the way he should keep [18]. 上下 is now the order of rank, and 節 the virtue of keeping it.

The tea room, reported in 1935 of the Edo period, and listed from the 1910s. A book on the house of Urasenke, published by it in 1935, says that its room 無色軒 was added by the seventh head of the house, 最々齋竺叟, and 松無古今色の一句から命名したもので、今も其眞蹟が傳つてゐる, named from the line 松無古今色, and the autograph of it survives to this day [65]; he was Sen Sōshitsu 千宗室, head of the house until his death in 1733 [66]. Two Nagoya sale catalogues, in a series the National Diet Library dates 1913 to 1917, list 一淸巖和尙一行 松無古今色, a one-line scroll by the monk Seigan, 松無古今色, and 一宗完書畫双幅 松無古今色一行 / 瀧自畫讃, a pair by 宗完 (which 宗完 is not identified): a one-line 松無古今色, and a waterfall he painted and inscribed [67][68]; Seigan Sōi 清巌宗渭 (1588–1662) was an abbot of Daitokuji and of Tōkaiji and the Zen teacher of the tea master Sen Sōtan 千宗旦 [69]. The catalogues attribute; they do not show the scrolls. In 1920 the tea master Takahashi Sōan 高橋箒庵 records a gathering at which 床には清巖和尙筆松無古今色と云ふ五大字横物を掛けて, in the alcove hung a horizontal scroll of five large characters, 松無古今色, by the monk Seigan, with the ruby まつにここんのいろなし [20]. A guide to Zen lines for tea-room scrolls of 1928 lists the two halves as separate entries, the pine as the valley pine that snow presses on and cannot break, 雪壓せども摧け難き, and the bamboo as order within an unequal world, 此の世界と云ふ物は、一切不等なるものではあるが、其の中に、上下といふ物を附け, as the library's text layer reads it [70].

2022, a New Year greeting. The president of the Japan Institute of Metals, in the New Year number of its journal, writes 五灯会元の「松無古今色，竹有上下節」の句には様々な解釈があります, the line of the 五灯会元 has many interpretations, and reads the pine as constancy and steady growth, the bamboo as sudden change, and 節 as the turning point that New Year marks in the passing years, お正月のような節目 [19]. The line in this form is not in the 五燈會元 [26].

What is not a source. The line as the scroll writes it, pine first and 色, is in no Chinese text: the Chinese couplet has the bamboo first and 青 [1][26][27], and the credit to the 五燈會元 that print has given it since 1900 is to a text that has neither change [62][19]. 色 is Japanese: among the witnesses read it is first in Musō in 1329 [2]; the pine-first order is the phrase books' [38][6]. Zeami's pine of felicitation uses the same Japanese words, and no witness read says he took them from the Zen couplet or that the Zen masters took them from him: the two are parallel, not source and borrowing [7][14]. The meeting of Akamatsu Enshin and the monk 別法 is a legend [59][60], and the Seigan scrolls of the tea trade are attributions [67][20].

The line in English

1981, Sōiku Shigematsu, A Zen Forest: Sayings of the Masters. No pine has two colors, / old and new; / The bamboo's knot marks / up and down, no. 569, read in the appendix Matsu ni kokon no iro naku; Take ni jōge no fushi ari, where the characters are printed 松無古今色 竹有上下節, pine first [13]. In his introduction Shigematsu gives it in his passage on equality and difference: of the saying before it, A long one is the Long Body of Buddha; a short one the Short Body of Buddha, he writes Indeed this saying is basic to Zen. It insists on two facts: equality and difference … Here, however, the two subjects, apparently incompatible, have miraculously merged into one statement, and then gives the pine and the bamboo [13]. Two colors, old and new turns no color of past or present into not two colors, a paraphrase; knot is the joint.

1998, Audrey Yoshiko Seo with Stephen Addiss, The Art of Twentieth-Century Zen. A teabowl carries the bamboo half alone, Bamboo has upper and lower nodes [71].

2003, Victor Sōgen Hori, Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases for Kōan Practice. Matsu ni kokon no iro naku, / Take ni jōge no fushi ari. / The pine has no old or new color, / The bamboo has upper and lower joints, a capping phrase from the phrase books, pine first [21]. The nearest to the words.

2020, Noriko Morishita, Wisdom of Tea: Life Lessons from the Japanese Tea Ceremony. The scroll in the tokonoma read: Matsu ni kokon no iro nashi and, as its sense, Young or old, the pine is always green [24]. A reading of the pine's constancy, given as the scroll's sense; the full-text search shows the line and this gloss, not the passage around them.

Today. The English given in the work order for the scroll is The pine's green has no old or new: it keeps Hori's no old or new and gives 色 the color that every witness read that names the pine's color names, green, the Chinese 青 and the Empress's 松の綠 [1][64]; word for word the line says color, and a rendering should keep that the pine has no color of time, past or present, which is where both readings meet.

A reading

The line has been read two ways, and they are not one reading with an ornament. In the Zen couplet it answers a question. Musō imagines being asked why he accepts today what he refused last year [2]; Daitō is asked whether the merit of a patron's temple is better or worse than that of the Jetavana Sudatta built for the Buddha, and says there is no better or worse [4]; Ryūshū asks the same of a governor's offering and answers with the couplet alone [5]. Each time the pine is the same in every age, and the bamboo's joints are each where they are. Takuan's record asks whether that is nature or cause [3]; the phrase book of 1688 answers that nothing goes against its own nature [12]; Ransetsu, asked for the line with no color of past or present, gives spring with no high or low and branches long and short [23]. That is sameness across time and distinction in place, held together, which is the equality and difference of Shigematsu's passage [13].

The other reading is the pine alone. Zeami's pine without a color of past and present is the felicitation voice [7], and through 高砂, Onitsura's New Year, the travel diary's thirty-six pines and the Meiji birthday verse it became the pine of long life [14][8][9][15]. The modern readings that bent 上下 into rank and 節 into chastity and loyalty took the couplet whole and gave it a duty [17][18]; the scroll that hangs alone, as the tea trade sold it in the 1910s and a tea room hung it in 1920 [67][20], does not carry the bamboo, and with it leaves those readings behind.

I read the scroll's line as the Zen masters used it, read in the pine half alone: the pine that is the same in every age, not because it does not change but because no age is better or worse than another in it. That is also where the felicitation reading meets it. The pine on a New Year's scroll or a birthday is the same green it was, and a blessing that it will be; the Zen pine is the same green in every age, and the answer that there is nothing to rank. Hung alone, the line says both, and a reader may take either.

Notes

Japanese Scrolls by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

Japanese Scroll of The Pine Has No Color of Past or Present (matsu ni kokon no iro nashi) in a block font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
松無古今色VB5JBlock
Japanese Scroll of The Pine Has No Color of Past or Present (matsu ni kokon no iro nashi) in a cursive font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
松無古今色VC5JCursive
Japanese Scroll of The Pine Has No Color of Past or Present (matsu ni kokon no iro nashi) in Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase's own style (jiun)
松無古今色VD5JJiun
Japanese Scroll of The Pine Has No Color of Past or Present (matsu ni kokon no iro nashi) in a semi-cursive font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
松無古今色VS5JSemi-Cursive

Sources not seen

『大坂辰歳旦惣寄』, the Osaka New Year anthology of 貞享 5 (1688), edited by 千嶋: the 国書データベース lists a manuscript in the 柿衛文庫 and a print in the 天理図書館 綿屋文庫, neither imaged (https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/work/362867). It would show Onitsura's headnote as the anthology prints it, which the history quotes from a study of 1944.

The older copies of the phrase book 句雙紙 that the 国書総目録 lists, as the 国書データベース carries its entry: a manuscript of the end of the Muromachi period and one of 慶長 17, 1612, in the collection of 川瀬一馬; a manuscript of about the 慶長 era in the 竜門文庫; and a print of 寛永 17, 1640, at Komazawa University; none is imaged in the 国書データベース (https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/work/252006). They would show whether the pine-first order is older than the copies read [38].

『玄峰集』, Ransetsu's hokku, printed in 寛延 3, 1750: the Kobe University copy was opened at the 国書データベース and turned through, but its cursive was not read line by line, so whether it sets the exchange of 1774 as a headnote is not known (https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/work/174210). It would show whether the story was in print before 1774.

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

References

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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.

Checked · Takase Studios (an address check by script), 2026-10-17, citations — the cited web addresses opened and the quoted words looked for at each; every address answered with the words sought; nothing found to differ · two fresh-context readers per round (Claude), 2026-10-17, every claim in the page's summary block traced to its source, claim by claim: round 1 FAIL on a reader's finding of a wrong fact (a scroll line said to be one that people knew), and findings from both that moved the page (a copy taken for the print of 1750 was a reprint of 1886; a sermon fell a year later than the page said); round 2 PASS, both; corrections made

Research depth: step 3 of our 10-step ladder, foundation complete · October 2026

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 松無古今色 (matsu ni kokon no iro nashi)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/matsu-ni-kokon-no-iro-nashi.