Fine Japanese Calligraphy

The Art of Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase

0
Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, PayPal accepted
Home › Library › Philology › See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil

見猿聞か猿言わ猿 mizaru kikazaru iwazaru See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil

This is a philological study of the Japanese proverb 見猿聞か猿言わ猿 (mizaru kikazaru iwazaru). It spans four centuries, from three monkeys in a manuscript of 1597 to the English see no evil of 1894 and after, and examines the pun that makes the sentence and the picture one, the fourth monkey, and the pairings scholars have set beside it.

Japanese Scroll of See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil (mizarukikazaruiwazaru) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil (mizarukikazaruiwazaru)

See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil (mizarukikazaruiwazaru) on a traditional Japanese Scroll by Master Eri Takase.

View Scroll ›

Abstract

見猿聞か猿言わ猿, see not, hear not, say not, is a proverb that was a picture before it was a sentence: three monkeys with their hands over eyes, ears and mouth are in a manuscript of 1597, in a Kyoto hall by 1632 and on roadside 庚申 stones by the 1780s, and the sentence first appears in a comic poem of 1649 that puns on them. The pun is the spelling: 猿 is read さる and voices to ざる, the negative ending. The Japanese tradition's own moral is prudence about other people's faults, with a fourth monkey, not thinking; the Confucian line and the Nikkō carving are pairings and an instance, not origins. The English see no evil is a guidebook's gloss of the early 1890s on a sentence that has no object, given to the three monkeys by name in Lafcadio Hearn's Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan of 1894 and carried into English speech by the travel books that followed.

Overview

The sense. The old sense is prudence about other people's faults, and it comes with a fourth monkey. From the 1597 manuscript through the Tendai poems to the 1810s, the Japanese tradition's own moral is that not seeing, not hearing and not saying are the easy three, and not thinking is the hard one [1][2]. By 1897 the phrase 三猿主義, the three-monkey principle, is said of a man who refuses to know [3], and a dictionary of 1946 glosses it pigheadedness [4]. Today's dictionaries carry both: a rule of restraint, and a name for looking away [5][6].

The words. Three verbs in the classical negative: 見ざる, not seeing, 聞かざる, not hearing, 言わざる, not saying. The sentence has no object, and the dictionaries supply one. The 精選版日本国語大辞典 says 他人の欠点・あやまち、あるいは自分に都合の悪いものなど, other people's faults and mistakes, or what is inconvenient to oneself; デジタル大辞泉 says 余計なことは, what is none of your business [5]; a dictionary of 1906 calls the whole a recluse's rule, 隱遁する義 [7]. Nothing in the Japanese says evil. That word is an Englishman's, below. The pun is the point of the spelling. 猿, monkey, is read さる, and in compounds it voices to ざる, which is also the negative ending, so 見猿 reads mizaru and means, at once, not seeing and the seeing monkey. The spelling with 猿 is the headword form in both major dictionaries [5]. The three monkeys as a set are 三猿, san'en or sanzaru [8].

The proverb in English. The bilingual dictionaries from Hepburn 1867 to 1946 never carry the English maxim; Hepburn has mizaru only as a headword glossed 不見, neg. of mi, miru [9][10], and the 1946 Standard has only the three monkey principle; pigheadedness [4]. The formula went into English through the guidebooks and the travel books, not through a dictionary: Murray's Handbook for Travellers in Japan, Chamberlain and Mason's, explains the Kōshin monkeys as the blind monkey, the deaf monkey, and the dumb monkey whose idea is that this curious triad will neither see, hear, nor speak any evil [11]; a traveler's book of 1892 has the three no evil clauses at Nikkō [12]; Hearn's Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan of 1894 gives the three apes their names with evil [13]; and the proverb dictionaries date see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil in English speech from 1905 [14][15]. Buchanan has it in 1965 as a headword with a literal and a gloss [16]; not in Galef (1987, 2000) or Zona (1996) [17][18][19]; Trimnell in 2004 carries the formula as if it were the proverb [20].

The historical record

1597, in a manuscript of 無住's 沙石集 (the tales themselves are of 1283). The oldest text known. One manuscript witness of the collection, whose colophon is dated 慶長二年, 1597, carries a passage the others lack: 或人世のつねには三猿をたもつ。道人は四猿をたもつべし。其中に殊にたもつべきは、不思なりと云心をよめる, someone said: the ordinary man of the world keeps three monkeys; a man of the Way should keep four, and the one above all to keep is not-thinking [1]. Then the poem: いはざるとみざるときかざると世にはあり思はざるをばいまだみぬかな, not-saying, not-seeing and not-hearing there are in the world; not-thinking I have yet to see [1]. The three monkeys are already a set with names, and already worldly prudence next to a monk's harder rule.

1632 and 1675. The three-monkey hall at 粟田口 in Kyoto, and the Tendai story. A guide of 1632, 尤草紙, knows a hall of three monkeys at 粟田口, with the speechless one in the middle, its mouth closed, and the not-seeing and not-hearing ones flanking it, said to be the work of 傳教大師, the founder of Japanese Tendai; litigants borrowed the monkeys to win their suits. A scholar's notebook of 1675, 遠碧軒記, gives the learned explanation: the Tendai master's three truths, 空假中, were set against 不見不聞不言, not seeing, not hearing, not saying, and the founder expressed that as monkeys. The attribution to the founder is legend, and the Edo writers who repeat it say とかや, so they say. Both are quoted in 藤井乙男's 諺語大辞典 of 1910, in the 日本社会事彙 of 1891 and, from 山東京伝's 疑問録, in the 続燕石十種 of 1909 [21][22][2].

1649. 石田未得, 吾吟我集, a collection of comic verse, book six, the poem On the Monkey in a series of love poems on animals. うき事はみざるきかざるいはざるよ かほあかめあふうらみせんなし, my grievance is see-not, hear-not, say-not; we just blush at each other, and resenting it is no use [23]. The first appearance of the sentence, and it is already a joke on the monkeys: the poem is on the monkey and the three negatives are its pun. The 日国 takes this as the first attestation [5]. The poem is also quoted by 藤井 in 1910 [21].

About 1700. 天野信景, 鹽尻. The same story, and a correction: this has nothing to do with the 庚申 cult, and the priests who put the monkeys on 庚申 halls are mistaken, as quoted in a book of 1932 [24].

About 900 to 1782. The 庚申 stones. The three monkeys' second home is the 庚申 vigil, a Taoist practice in which three worms inside the body report a sleeper's sins to Heaven on the night of the 庚申 sign, a belief attested in Japan from about 900 [25][26]. The monkeys attach to it by another pun, 申 being read saru. By 1782 a roadside 庚申 stone with three monkeys is a stock image [27], and the proverb dictionary of 1910 files the maxim under 庚申塚ノ三猿 as well as under itself [21]. The learned writers of Edo agree that the attachment came later.

1810s. 山東京伝's questions and the 兎園 circle's answers. The novelist asked where the 庚申 monkeys covering their eyes, ears and mouth came from and who first said it. The antiquarians reached for the Tendai poems attributed to 慈惠大師, and admitted they could not find them in any scripture. One quoted a travel book's version of the fourth monkey: 見す聞すいはさるまてはつなけとも思はさるこそつなかれもせす, you can tie up the not-seeing, the not-hearing and the not-saying, but the not-thinking cannot be tied [2].

About 1800. 大田南畝, on a picture. Three monkeys under a cherry tree: the white one shuts its own mouth and covers the other two's ears and eyes with its hands. His verse: 面白い事をもみざるきかざるはさくらを花といはざるの智惠, not seeing or hearing the interesting thing is the wisdom of not calling the cherry a flower [28]. The maxim as a wit's dodge.

1894. 尾崎紅葉, 紫. 物言へば唇寒し秋の風、見猿聞か猿言は猿がよし, Bashō's line about the cold that follows speaking, then see-monkey, hear-monkey, say-monkey is best, said of a man enduring a talker [29]. The spelling with 猿 in exactly this pattern.

1910. 藤井乙男, 諺語大辞典. The standard proverb dictionary files the sentence with a Chinese moral source from a Song tract, 省心詮要, 耳不聞人之非、目不視人之短、口不言人之過, the ear does not hear others' faults, the eye does not see others' shortcomings, the mouth does not speak others' errors; the 1649 poem; a Buddhist teaching verse; and the Tendai story [21].

Undated. A dōka attributed to 一休. Among the didactic verses printed as Ikkyū's in Blyth's English of 1962 is Nanigoto mo mizaru iwazaru kikazaru wa, tada hotoke nimo masaru narikeri, who sees naught, says naught, hears naught, simply surpasses the Buddha; the three negatives in the proverb's order but for the middle two, the attribution Blyth's, and the Japanese source unnamed [30]. The collections of Ikkyū's dōka are Edo compilations, so the verse dates the pairing of the three verbs with a Buddhist moral no earlier than the 沙石集 manuscript does.

The dictionaries today. The 日国: 他人の欠点・あやまち、あるいは自分に都合の悪いものなどは、見ない、聞かない、言わないということを表わす, with the 1649 poem as first attestation [5]. The ことわざを知る辞典, under the kana spelling, adds the modern turn: 自己保身のために見て見ぬふりをする場合にも使われ、現代では否定的なニュアンスを伴うことも少なくありません, it is also used of looking away to protect oneself, and today often carries a negative shade, and notes that three-monkey images have since been discovered in many parts of the world, so the Japanese pun cannot be the whole story [6].

What is not a source. Confucius. The line always cited, from the Analects, is 非禮勿視，非禮勿聽，非禮勿言，非禮勿動: four clauses, the fourth do not move, the object what is not ritual, and no monkey [31]. The Xunzi's 勸學 has a four-clause cousin with a different fourth, 使目非是無欲見也，使耳非是無欲聞也，使口非是無欲言也，使心非是無欲慮也, eye, ear, mouth and mind [32]. The Edo dictionaries cite neither; they cite the Song tract above, three clauses in the Japanese order about other people's faults. The Analects link is a twentieth-century pairing, and the fourth monkey sometimes added to fit do not move is a rationalization after the fact; the Japanese fourth monkey is not thinking. The famous carving at the Nikkō shrine is an instance, not an origin: the earliest book in a local mirror of the National Diet Library's digitized prewar books to connect it with the maxim is a railway guide of 1919 [33], while the English travel books connect the carving with the three no evil clauses from 1892 [12], and Lloyd in 1907 reads the same carving as a Zen emblem of what cannot be transmitted, Eye hath not seen it, ear hath not heard it, tongue hath not spoken it [34]. The attribution of that carving to the sculptor 左甚五郎 has no source in any book cited here.

The proverb in English

1892. Ethel Gwendoline Vincent, Newfoundland to Cochin China, page 143. At Nikkō, of the three monkeys on the stable: one signifying that you must see no evil; the other that you must hear no evil; the last that you must speak no evil [12]. The three clauses in English two years before Hearn, from a traveler with a guidebook.

1894. Murray's Handbook for Travellers in Japan, Chamberlain and Mason, fourth edition, page 44. The Introduction's list of deities, under Kōshin: This being the day of the Monkey, it is represented by three monkeys (sambiki-zaru) called respectively, by a play upon words, mi-zaru, kika-zaru, and iwa-zaru, that is, "the blind monkey," "the deaf monkey," and "the dumb monkey." Stone slabs with these three monkeys in relief are among the most usual objects of devotion met with on the roadside in the rural districts of Japan, the idea being that this curious triad will neither see, hear, nor speak any evil [11]. The paragraph stands unchanged in the fifth edition of 1898, and Munro in 1905 and Smith in 1910 quote it as Chamberlain and Mason's [11][35][36]. The pun, the roadside stones and the evil are all here; the third edition of 1891 was not opened.

1894. Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, volume one, the chapter Bon-odori, page 97. He is now Saruda-hiko-no-mikoto; and his presence is revealed only by the statues of the Three Mystic Apes which are his servants, — Mizaru, who sees no evil, covering his eyes with his hands, Kikazaru, who hears no evil, covering his ears with his hands, Iwazaru, who speaks no evil, covering his mouth with his hands [13]. In the Enoshima chapter he finds them carved under roadside 庚申 stones [13]. This is the earliest English to give each monkey its name with evil, and the wording the later books copy; the formula itself is the guidebook's, above, and evil is an English gloss on a Japanese sentence that has no object.

1896 to 1899. Nikkō in the guidebooks. The Yale Book of Quotations finds Don't see any wrong … don't hear any wrong … don't talk any wrong in Robert C. Hope's Temples and Shrines of Nikko of 1896, describing the carvings on the Sacred Stable [14]; Noyes in 1899 quotes the same words as the facile pen of N. Ban's, punningly called first mizaru (don't see any wrong); second, kikazaru (don't hear any wrong); third, iwazaru (don't talk any wrong) [37].

1906 to 1914. The travel books. The formula is a fixture of the English book about Japan: Fisher in 1906 makes the Nikkō monkey Nikko's holy trade-mark … bidding the harsh censor, "Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" [38]; the Japan Weekly Mail in 1908, the year of the monkey, explains the pun, tivasaru, hikasaru, misaru for not-speaking, not-hearing and not-seeing, and calls it a good motto for monkey-year: hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil [39]; Joly's Legend in Japanese Art of 1908 lists the three mystic apes under Kōshin, MIZARU, with a hand over his eyes, who sees no evil [40]; Lady Lawson in 1910 has them symbolize Oriental reserve, Not see, Not hear, Not talk, with Zaru, the termination of each infinitive giving a pun on "Monkey" (Saru) [41]; Davis's Myths and Legends of Japan of 1912 gives them in a footnote, He who sees no evil, He who hears no evil, He who speaks no evil [42]; Pier's Temple Treasures of Japan of 1914 names the stable's three brown and white monkeys "Mizaru" or "See no evil" and so on [43]; Isabel Anderson's Spell of Japan of 1914 closes with the little apes of Nikko … Mizaru, who sees no evil [44]. Lloyd alone reads them differently: in the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan of 1907 and his Wheat among the Tares of 1908, the Nikkō carving tells what the heart of Buddha is, Eye hath not seen it, ear hath not heard it, tongue hath not spoken it [34], and Lawton's Empires of the Far East of 1912 copies him word for word [45].

1905 to 1955. The proverb in English speech. The Yale Book of Quotations dates see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil to the Forum of February 1913 and speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil to the Dallas Morning News of 9 July 1905 [14]; the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs opens its entry with an Army and Navy Stores catalogue of 1926, The three wise monkeys, and Whiting's Modern Proverbs runs the sayings from 1931 to 1983, hear nowt, see nowt, say nowt among them [15][46]; Kin's American proverb dictionary of 1955 files it under Virtue, Mieder's under evil, the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations under Proverbs, and Doyle's Dictionary of Modern Proverbs lists it in the appendix of proverbs found to be older than 1900 [47][48][49][50].

1965. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, page 76. Mizaru, kikazaru, iwazaru: Lit., "Not to see, not to hear, not to speak." That is, not to see other's faults, not to hear other's scandals, and not to talk of other's failures [16]. He explains the pun, zaru for saru, describes the three monkeys with their hands to eyes, ears and mouth as see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, and adds that the emphasis is negative — not what one should do, but what one should not do [16]. Hearn's evil is the gloss here too, seventy years on, and the proverb is read as a rule of good breeding.

1974 to 2002. The reference books. Nelson's character dictionary of 1974 has 三猿 san'en as three monkeys who see, hear, and speak no evil [51]; the Kodansha Encyclopedia of 1993, under Three Monkeys, gives not seeing (mizaru), not hearing (kikazaru), or not speaking (iwazaru) and dates the carving of the figures on Kōshin pillars to the late Muromachi period [52]; Garrison's Kodansha Dictionary of Basic Japanese Idioms of 2002 heads the entry "see monkey, hear monkey, speak monkey", glosses it see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil, gives two modern example sentences about keeping out of other people's quarrels, and explains zaru as a play on the negative ending [53].

2004. Edward Trimnell, Tigers, Devils, and Fools, page 91. "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil." Don't concern yourself with that which does not concern you. Mind your own business and avoid trouble [20]. Hearn's evil carried as if it were the proverb.

Today. JMdict: see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil; the three wise monkeys. The house title, See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil, is the English formula, and it is right; what a rendering must keep is that the Japanese names no evil, only restraint, and that the sentence is three monkeys read aloud.

A reading

The monkeys came first: three monkeys with their hands over eyes, ears and mouth are in a 1597 manuscript, in a Kyoto hall by 1632, on roadside stones by the 1780s, and the sentence first appears in 1649 as a pun on them. The 猿 spelling is not a flourish on a kana proverb: it is the pun, and it is the dictionaries' own headword. The monkeys are older than the maxim, the maxim is the monkeys read aloud, the English evil is Hearn's word of 1894, and the Japanese tradition's own moral is the fourth monkey, that not seeing, hearing and saying are easy and not thinking is the hard one.

References

  1. 無住『沙石集』, 1283; the 徳本 manuscript of 1597 in the 岩波 edition of 1943, 筑土鈴寛 校訂, National Diet Library pid 1040496, scan 186. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1040496/1/186
  2. 山東京伝, 疑問録, in 『続燕石十種』第2, 国書刊行会, 1909, National Diet Library pid 991280, scan 196. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/991280/1/196
  3. A local mirror of the National Diet Library's digitized prewar books, searched on 三猿主義 (44 books, the earliest of 1897); the counts are held in the research record.
  4. 竹原常太『スタンダード和英辞典』, 1946, National Diet Library pid 1126792, scan 398. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1126792/1/398
  5. 「見猿聞か猿言わ猿」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典 · デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/見猿聞か猿言わ猿
  6. 「見ざる聞かざる言わざる」, ことわざを知る辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/見ざる聞かざる言わざる
  7. 熊代彦太郎 編『俚諺辞典』, 1906, National Diet Library pid 900343, scan 249. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/900343/1/249
  8. 「三猿」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/三猿
  9. J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese and English Dictionary, Shanghai, 1867, p. 280, s.v. Mizaru (the shelved Tuttle reprint of 1983, and the archive.org text layer japaneseenglishd00hepb).
  10. Hepburn, dictionary of 1872, under MIZARU.
  11. Basil Hall Chamberlain and W. B. Mason, A Handbook for Travellers in Japan, 4th ed., John Murray, London, 1894, Introduction, p. 44, s.v. Kōshin; the same paragraph in the 5th ed., 1898 (the archive.org text layers). https://archive.org/details/ahandbookfortra01masogoog
  12. Ethel Gwendoline Vincent, Newfoundland to Cochin China: by the Golden Wave, New Nippon, and the Forbidden City, Sampson Low, Marston, London, 1892, p. 143 (the archive.org text layer). https://archive.org/details/cihm_09246
  13. Lafcadio Hearn, Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan, Houghton Mifflin, 1894, vol. 1, pp. 97 and 70–72. Internet Archive glimpsesunfamil05heargoog. https://archive.org/details/glimpsesunfamil05heargoog
  14. Fred R. Shapiro, The New Yale Book of Quotations, Yale University Press, 2021, p. 564, Proverbs no. 80.
  15. Jennifer Speake, The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, Oxford University Press, 2015, s.v. SEE no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil (the shelved copy carries no page numbers).
  16. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, 1965, p. 76 (read at the shelf's text layer; the page image was not opened).
  17. David Galef, Even Monkeys Fall from Trees, Tuttle, 1987.
  18. David Galef, Even a Stone Buddha Can Talk, Tuttle, 2000.
  19. Guy Zona, Even Withered Trees Give Prosperity to the Mountain, Simon and Schuster, 1996.
  20. Edward Trimnell, Tigers, Devils, and Fools, Beechmont Crest, 2004, p. 91.
  21. 藤井乙男『諺語大辞典』, 1910, p. 948, National Diet Library pid 862766, scans 492 and 124. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/862766/1/492
  22. 『日本社会事彙』, 1891, National Diet Library pid 898056, scans 502–503. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/898056/1/502
  23. 石田未得『吾吟我集』, 1649; the 1776 Osaka reprint, National Institute of Japanese Literature, BID 200002654, canvas 45. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/biblio/200002654
  24. 金井紫雲『動物と芸術』, 1932, National Diet Library pid 1176096. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1176096
  25. 「庚申待」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/庚申待
  26. 「三尸」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/三尸
  27. 「庚申塚」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/庚申塚
  28. 大田南畝, in 『太田南畝集』, 有朋堂文庫, 1913, National Diet Library pid 1913656, scan 137. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1913656/1/137
  29. 尾崎紅葉『紫』, 1894; 『紅葉集』, 1910, National Diet Library pid 886301, scan 459. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/886301/1/459
  30. R. H. Blyth, Zen and Zen Classics, vol. 5, Hokuseido, Tokyo, 1962, Ikkyū's Dōka no. 57, pp. 182–183.
  31. 『論語』顏淵第十二, at the Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/論語/顏淵第十二
  32. 『荀子』勸學篇, at the Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/荀子/勸學篇
  33. 『一泊旅行 土曜から日曜』, 1919, National Diet Library pid 925400, scan 160. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/925400/1/160
  34. Arthur Lloyd, The Formative Elements of Japanese Buddhism, Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan vol. XXXV part 1, 1907, p. 218; and The Wheat among the Tares: Studies of Buddhism in Japan, Macmillan, 1908, p. 55 (the archive.org text layers). https://archive.org/details/wheatamongtaress00lloy
  35. Neil Gordon Munro, Coins of Japan, 1905, the note on the Kōshin sen (the archive.org text layer). https://archive.org/details/coinsofjapan00munr_0
  36. Guy H. B. Smith, Hand Book of Japan, with Notes on Hongkong, Canton, Macao, Shanghai, 1910, pp. 34–35 (the archive.org text layer). https://archive.org/details/hand-book-of-japan-with-notes-on-hongkon
  37. Theodore W. Noyes, War of the Metals; Washingtoniana; Mexico, Hawaii and Japan, 1899, p. 111 (the archive.org text layer). https://archive.org/details/warofmetalswashi00noyeiala
  38. Gertrude Adams Fisher, A Woman Alone in the Heart of Japan, 1906, p. 100 (the archive.org text layer). https://archive.org/details/awomanaloneinhe01fishgoog
  39. The Japan Weekly Mail, Yokohama, the bound volume January to June 1908 (line 47158 of the archive.org text layer). https://archive.org/details/jwm-bound-1908.1-6
  40. Henri L. Joly, Legend in Japanese Art, John Lane, London, 1908, entries 40 Apes and 454 Kikazaru (the archive.org text layer). https://archive.org/details/legendinjapanese00jolyuoft
  41. Lady Kate Lawson, Highways and Homes of Japan, 1910, p. 338 (the archive.org text layer). https://archive.org/details/highwayshomesofj00lawsuoft
  42. F. Hadland Davis, Myths and Legends of Japan, Harrap, London, 1912, p. 272, note (the archive.org text layer). https://archive.org/details/mythslegendsofja00davirich
  43. Garrett Chatfield Pier, Temple Treasures of Japan, 1914, pp. 289–290, Figure 222 (the archive.org text layer). https://archive.org/details/templetreasures00pier
  44. Isabel Anderson, The Spell of Japan, 1914, p. 379 (the archive.org text layer). https://archive.org/details/spellofjapan00ande
  45. Lancelot Lawton, Empires of the Far East, 1912, the passage at line 32793 of the archive.org text layer. https://archive.org/details/empiresoffarea01lawt
  46. Bartlett Jere Whiting, Modern Proverbs and Proverbial Sayings, Harvard University Press, 1989, p. 421, s.v. Monkey.
  47. David Kin, Dictionary of American Proverbs, Philosophical Library, New York, 1955, § Virtue.
  48. Wolfgang Mieder ed., A Dictionary of American Proverbs, Oxford University Press, 1992, s.v. evil, no. 33.
  49. Elizabeth Knowles ed., Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 8th ed., Oxford University Press, 2014, § Proverbs, See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
  50. Charles Clay Doyle, Wolfgang Mieder and Fred R. Shapiro, The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs, Yale University Press, 2012, appendix Some No Longer "Modern" Proverbs.
  51. Andrew Nathaniel Nelson, The Modern Reader's Japanese-English Character Dictionary, 2nd rev. ed., Tuttle, 1974, p. 30, s.v. 三猿.
  52. Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, Kodansha, 1993, s.v. Three Monkeys.
  53. Jeffrey G. Garrison, Kodansha's Dictionary of Basic Japanese Idioms, Kodansha International, 2002, pp. 490–491, s.v. Mizaru kikazaru iwazaru.

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 · grok-4.6 (xAI), 2026-09-05, citations · gpt-6-astra (OpenAI), 2026-09-05, citations