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人間万事塞翁が馬 ningen banji saiō ga uma All is Saiou's Horse

人間万事塞翁が馬 (ningen banji saiō ga uma), everything in this world is the old man's horse, is a proverb whose parable comes from the 淮南子. Its seven characters are a line of verse by a Yuan Zen monk about 1300, named as his in a Japanese dictionary of 1444. This study follows how the monk's name was lost and given to Su Dongpo, and how 人間 is read.

Japanese Scroll of All is Saiou's Horse (ningen banji saiō ga uma) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
All is Saiou's Horse人間万事塞翁が馬ningen banji saiō ga uma

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

人間万事塞翁が馬, everything in this world is the old man's horse, is a Japanese proverb whose parable is Chinese, from the 淮南子's second-century-BC chapter on a frontier diviner whose lost horse becomes his family's survival. Its seven characters are a line of Zen verse by a Yuan monk about 1300, and the line is a headword in a Japanese dictionary by 1444, the 下学集, which names the monk, and a saying in a Japanese encyclopedia by 1446, standing by 1638 in 毛吹草, the earliest proverb book of the Edo period. The monk's name then fell away: a poetic glossary of 1673 calls the couplet a Song poet's line, and a proverb book of 1701 gives it to Su Dongpo, a credit proverb books still printed in the 1930s, though a Confucian scholar's essay, printed in 1763, set the monk back in his place. The first two characters, 人間, are read ningen in every witness that writes the sound, from the dictionary's printing of 1617 to 1939, and never jinkan, though a modern dictionary records the latter as a learned alternative.

Overview

The sense. The sense has not moved. The 下学集 and the 節用集 say 不可喜不可悲, the 1673 glossary よろこぶべからず かなしむべからず, the 1910 dictionary 禍福は糾へる繩の如く常なき, and the modern dictionaries say the same in modern words: fortune reverses without warning, so neither good news nor bad is to be trusted yet. What the witnesses add is a temperament. In the 淮南子 the old man is a diviner who declines to react; in the monk's couplet he is the figure for a man listening to the rain; in the Japanese verb ほくそ笑む, if the old etymology holds, he is a half-smile. The proverb is used, then and now, as consolation after a loss, and 太宰治 in 竹青 (1945) has a farmer say exactly that to a stranger down on his luck: 人間万事塞翁の馬。元気を出して、再挙を図るさ, the old man's horse; take heart and try again [1].

The words. 人間 is the word the reading turns on. In this line it is the Chinese word for the human world, not the Japanese word for a human being, and the question is how to say it. Every Japanese witness that writes the sounds says にんげん, ningen: the 1617 printing of the 下学集, the 1656 proverb book, the 1665 household dictionary, the 1673 poetic glossary, the 1695 retelling, the Noh text the dictionaries take as the first attestation, 馬琴's own furigana in a novel, the 1910 proverb dictionary twice, and the dictionaries of the 1930s. An archive of seven thousand nine hundred and eighty-five public-domain books has no jinkan for this line at all. Jinkan is the Sino-Japanese reading of the Chinese word, and one modern dictionary records it as an interpretation some readers prefer: 「人間」を「じんかん」と読み、「世の中の運不運は見極めがたい」という意味だとする解釈もあります. It is a legitimate learned choice; it is not the older reading. It is a recent one: in the full-text index of the National Diet Library, じんかんばんじ for this line first appears in 1986, in books of Chinese sayings, and by 1999 a book on the one-line scrolls of the tea room reads 人間万事塞翁馬 as じんかんばんじさいおうがうま; every earlier row the index returns for the sound is a misread of other words [2]. 万事, banji, is all matters. 塞翁, saiō, is the old man at the frontier fort: 塞 is a border stronghold and 翁 an old man, and no text gives him a name. が is the classical possessive, the old man's. 馬, uma, is the horse; the seventeenth-century books spell it むま. The old man has a second Japanese name, 北叟, the old man of the north, and it may survive in an everyday verb: ほくそ笑む, to smile to oneself. The 日国 records, as one account (説) going back to the 壒嚢鈔, that the verb comes from the 北叟笑い, the frontier old man's half-smile at every turn of fortune, and the 大辞泉 writes 「北叟」か, perhaps 北叟 [3].

The proverb in English. Europe read it first in German: August Pfizmaier in 1874 translated the 1673 glossary's entry as das Pferd des Greises von Sai, the horse of the old man of Sai [4], and P. Ehmann in 1897 gave Es ist mit allen menschlichen Dingen wie mit Saiō's Pferd, telling the story of a wise old man in China named Saiō [5]. The English career of the proverb begins in the Meiji dictionaries, and every later equation descends from them [6]. 井上十吉's dictionaries of 1909 and 1911 give The unexpected turns of the world's affairs [7], and 新渡戸稲造 in the same year opens an essay in English with it, Life, like Sai-o's horse, now brings blessing and now a curse [8]; 斎藤秀三郎 in 1915 gives Inscrutable are the ways of Heaven, in three places [9]; the 1946 スタンダード和英辞典 gives Nothing is certain in the world [10]. The proverb is absent from Hepburn's dictionary of 1872 and from nine other Japanese-English dictionaries between 1904 and 1929. Buchanan in 1965 reads 人間 as ningen and renders an evil sometimes turns out to be a blessing in disguise, crediting the retelling to a 1955 Japanese booklet; a blessing in disguise carries only half the proverb, the half where bad turns good [11]. It is not in Galef's two collections, Trimnell's, or Zona's.

The historical record

Second century BC. 淮南子 (Huainanzi), the chapter 人間訓. The parable, without any proverb attached. A man skilled in divination lives near the frontier. His horse runs off to the nomads and the neighbors console him; he asks how they know it is not good fortune. The horse comes back leading a fine nomad horse and the neighbors congratulate him; he asks how they know it is not calamity. His son rides the new horse, falls and breaks his thigh; the neighbors console him. A year later the nomads invade, nine in ten of the young men die in the fighting, and the lame son and his father keep each other alive. The chapter's own moral: 故福之為禍，禍之為福，化不可極，深不可測也, so fortune becomes calamity and calamity fortune; the change cannot be exhausted and the depth cannot be measured [12].

About 1300. 晦機元熙 (Huiji Yuanxi), a Zen monk of Yuan China, the poem 寄徑山虛谷陵和尚. The seven characters are the seventh line of his eight-line poem, whose last couplet reads 人間萬事塞翁馬、推枕軒中聽雨眠, everything in the human world is the frontier old man's horse; I push away the pillow and lie in the veranda room listening to the rain. The couplet is a Zen monk's equanimity, not a moral. It is the line Japan took [13].

Thirteenth century, before the poem: the old man of the north in court poetry. The parable was in Japanese verse before the monk wrote, under the name 北の翁. The retired emperor Go-Toba 後鳥羽院, in exile after 1221, is quoted: いつとなく北の翁が如くせばこのことわりや思ひ入れなん, if I could be like the old man of the north, would I take this reason to heart?; Tsuchimikado 土御門院: 心をば北の翁にならへども又たちかへる駒だにもなし, I school my heart on the old man of the north, but no horse comes back to me. A poem by 公朝 already has the proverb's whole shape: 世の中は北の翁の馬なれや善きもあしきも後を知らねば, the world is the old man of the north's horse: good or bad, no one knows what follows. Why north: 馬琴 explained in an essay, 燕石雑志, that 塞, the frontier, meant the northern frontier, so the poets translated the word [14][15][16].

Fourteenth century. The Zen monasteries. Seisetsu Shōchō 清拙正澄, who came from China to Kamakura in 1326, preached the Chinese four-character forms from the hall: 塞翁得馬未必為福 塞翁失馬未以為禍, the old man gaining a horse was not necessarily fortune; losing one was not necessarily calamity. The 精選版日本国語大辞典 gives the 東海一漚別集, about 1375, as the first Japanese use of 塞翁が馬; the dictionary names only the title, and the 東海一漚集 is the collected writings of the Zen monk Chūgan Engetsu 中巌円月 (1300–1375) [17][18][19].

1390s. 明徳記, the war tale of the rebellion of 1391. 誠ニ人間萬事塞翁カ馬ニ比シテ暫ク薄命ヲ全シ給ヒ, truly, likening it to the old man's horse in all things human, he kept his frail life a while. The tale was written soon after the rising and revised in 1396; the line is read here in its printing of 1614, and which recension first carried it is not settled here [20].

1444. 下学集, a dictionary of the words in common use. The whole line is a headword, 人間萬事塞翁馬, and the entry reads 是宋人晦機師頌句也, this is a verse of the Song man Master 晦機, quotes the couplet, glosses it 此句意人間萬事善不必善悪不必悪不可喜不可悲義也, the sense of this line is that in all things human the good is not necessarily good and the bad not necessarily bad; one is not to rejoice and not to grieve, and tells the 淮南子 parable, in which the son breaks his arm. The dictionary was compiled in 1444; it is read here in a manuscript of the late Muromachi period, whose couplet ends 推枕軒中聴雨眠, and in the first printing of 1617, which writes 軒頭 for 軒中 and gives 間 the reading ゲン, that is ningen [21]. The dictionary calls him a Song man; 伊藤東涯 and the dictionaries after him, a monk of the Yuan.

1446. 壒嚢鈔, an encyclopedia by the monk 行誉. The parable told in Japanese, ending 是ヲ人間万事塞翁カ馬ト云也。サレバ吉凶ハ糺縄ノ如シト云リ, this is what is called the old man's horse in all things human; and so they say fortune and misfortune are a twisted rope, and followed by the retired emperor Go-Toba's poem of the old man of the north. A saying, and already paired with the 史記's rope [22].

Late Muromachi, as the 日国 dates its text. The Noh play 綾鼓, the passage sung by the chorus. 然るに世の中は、人間萬事塞翁が馬なれや, and so the world is the old man's horse in all things, with the reading にんげんばんじさいをうがうま written beside it in the 1908 edition. This is the line the 日国 takes as the first attestation of the full proverb; the dictionary of 1444 and the encyclopedia of 1446 carry it earlier [23][1].

Late Muromachi. A 節用集, a household dictionary, in a manuscript the library dates to the end of the period. Under the headword 寒翁 (for 塞翁) the book tells the parable in Chinese, draws the moral 不可喜不可悲之意, the sense that one should neither rejoice nor grieve, and adds 世俗口號云人間萬事塞翁馬, what the world says is: everything in the human world is the old man's horse. A proverb already, and called one. The 節用集 is the 下学集 re-sorted by the syllabary, and the entry is the 下学集's, cut down [24][21].

1638. 毛吹草, by 松江重頼, the earliest collection of proverbs of the Edo period. 人間萬事塞翁が馬 stands in its list of sayings, between a sleeve you have can be waved and one you lack cannot and calamity too becomes the beginning of fortune [25].

1656. 世話尽, edited by 皆虚, the next Edo proverb collection after 毛吹草 in 藤井's account. 人間万事塞翁が馬 with every syllable written beside it: にんげん ばんじ さいおう が むま. The earliest dated witness that tells us how the line was said [25][26].

1673. 和歌呉竹集, a glossary for poets. きたの翁とは塞翁が事なり。宋人の句に人間万事塞翁馬推枕軒中聴雨眠 此句のこゝろは人間万事善も善ならず悪も必しも悪ならず よろこぶべからず かなしむべからず, the old man of the north is the frontier old man. A Song poet's line runs 人間万事塞翁馬推枕軒中聴雨眠; its meaning is that in the human world good is not good and bad is not necessarily bad, so rejoice at nothing and grieve at nothing. The reading beside the couplet is にんげんばんじさいをうがむま. Where the 下学集 named the poet, the glossary keeps only his dynasty: 宋人の句, a Song man's line [27].

1695. 世話重宝記. The parable retold in Japanese, ending 人間生の事善悪禍福ともに極むべからず, in a human life good and bad, calamity and fortune, can none of them be settled, and 塞翁が馬 read さいおうがむま [28].

1701. 貝原好古, 諺草. The proverb book gives the couplet a poet: 人間萬事塞翁馬 東坡詩, a poem of Su Dongpo's. Read here as the 益軒全集 of 1911 prints it, and as 俚言集覧 cites it, 〔諺草〕東坡詩; the 1701 leaf is not read [29][16].

1763. Itō Tōgai 伊藤東涯, 秉燭譚. The Confucian scholar, who died in 1736, in an essay printed in 1763, sets the monk back: 人間萬事塞翁馬ト云ハ元ノ僧熙晦機ノ詩ナリ, the line is a poem by the Yuan monk 熙晦機, and he names its anthology, the 江湖風月集, the collection of Yuan Zen verse the Japanese monasteries read. The dictionaries of 1906 and 1910 and the modern 日国 follow him. The glossary of 1673 and 俚言集覧 keep a nameless Song poet, and the proverb books of 1894, 1901 and 1933 keep 諺草's Su Dongpo [13].

Early nineteenth century. 曲亭馬琴. The novelist used the line three ways: as the title of an illustrated comic book, 人間萬事塞翁馬, whose preface puns the horse on his own pen name and whose year of print stands unsettled; as a line in the 八犬伝, 禍福は糾纏の如し、人間万事往として、塞翁が馬ならぬはなし, fortune and calamity are a twisted rope; in all things human there is nothing that is not the old man's horse; and in an essay, 燕石雑志, as the explanation of why the court poets said north [30][1][16].

1910. 藤井乙男, 諺語大辞典, the standard proverb dictionary. Two entries. 【塞翁ノ馬】吉凶禍福の轉變常なきをいふ, it says that good and ill, calamity and fortune, turn without constancy, followed by the 淮南子 parable in Chinese, the court poems, and a 1638 haikai verse that puns the horse on the year of the horse: 萬事よき春や塞翁が馬の年. The long form is shelved under ニンゲン [14].

The dictionaries today. 精選版日本国語大辞典: 人間の吉凶や禍福は、転変きわまりがないことをいう, with the Noh line as first attestation and the monk's poem as its source. 故事成語を知る辞典: 一見、不運に思えたことが幸運につながったり、その逆だったりすることのたとえ。幸運か不運かは容易に判断しがたい, a figure for what looked like bad luck leading to good, or the reverse: luck and misfortune are not easily told apart, with Sōseki 漱石 in 1905–06 (人間万事塞翁の馬、七転び八起き) and Enchi Fumiko 円地文子 in 1979 (君がくよくよすることはないよ。人間万事塞翁が馬さ) as its examples [1].

What is not a source. 禍福は糾える縄の如し, fortune and calamity are strands of one rope, is from the 史記, 賈誼's 夫禍之與福兮，何異糾纆 and the historian's own 成敗之轉，譬若糾墨; the 壒嚢鈔 paired it with this proverb in 1446, the dictionaries list it as a synonym, and 藤井 used it to gloss this proverb; it is a parallel, not an origin [31]. 沈む瀬あれば浮かぶ瀬あり, 楽あれば苦あり and 一の裏は六 are Japanese kin proverbs of the same sense. The Chinese four-character cut 塞翁失馬, usually completed 焉知非福, the old man lost his horse; how do you know it is not a blessing, is the form the saying takes in Chinese and in English books about China; it comes from the same parable by a different road and is not the Japanese proverb's source. Su Dongpo did not write the couplet, whatever the proverb books say.

The proverb in English

1874, August Pfizmaier, Die poetischen Ausdrücke der japanischen Sprache, Vienna, page 400. The 1673 glossary's entry, transcribed and put into German, from a copy a Professor Hoffmann lent him: nin-gen-ban-zi sai-ō-ga uma, das Pferd des Greises von Sai, the horse of the old man of Sai, and the parable as the glossary tells it, in which the son breaks his arm [4].

1897, P. Ehmann, Die Sprichwörter und bildlichen Ausdrücke der japanischen Sprache, page 230, no. 2127. Ningen banji Saiō ga uma. Es ist mit allen menschlichen Dingen wie mit Saiō's Pferd, then Was ein Unglück scheint, ist oft ein Glück, und umgekehrt, and the story of a wise old man in China, named Saiō, whose son is spared the labor on the Great Wall [5]. The frontier fort has become a man's name, and the war a wall.

1904, イーストレーキ and 越山, 新撰英和熟語集. Under the English proverb It is an ill wind that blows nobody good the Japanese gloss reads 人間萬事塞翁の馬, with the translator's warning that the English saying is 意味深長 and not to be read by its letters [6].

1909 and 1911, 井上十吉, 和英辞典 and 新訳和英辞典. Saiō-no-uma, n. The unexpected turns of the world's affairs; 人間萬事塞翁の馬, The unexpected always happens in human affairs [7].

1909, 新渡戸稲造 Nitobe Inazō, Thoughts and Essays, Tokyo, page 135. The essay Uses of War and of Peace opens: Life, like Sai-o's horse, now brings blessing and now a curse. Joys and sorrows alternating make up our life. The proverb in English prose, by a Japanese writer, with no gloss [8].

1915, 斎藤秀三郎, Idiomological English-Japanese Dictionary. Inscrutable are the ways of Heaven = 人間萬事塞翁が馬, in three places: under heaven, under inscrutable (天道不可識, then the proverb) and under way [9].

1946, スタンダード和英辞典. Saiō-ga-uma … Nothing is certain in the world [10].

1958. Okada Rokuo, Japanese Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, page 119. Ningen banji saio-ga-uma. Inscrutable are the ways of Providence. This proverbial expression refers to the inscrutability of the ways of Heaven. The allusion is to a story in a Chinese classic. An old man living near the Great Walls (this old man is referred to as a saio) had a horse… and the parable retold [32].

1965. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, page 156. Ningen banji Saiō no uma: "An evil sometimes turns out to be a blessing in disguise." (Lit., "People and all things are like Saiō's horse."), then the parable in five sentences, and The future often provides happy solutions of difficult problems. He reads 人間 as ningen, in 1965, and credits the retelling to Okada Rokuo's Japanese Proverbs (Japan Travel Bureau, 1955). A blessing in disguise carries only half the proverb, the half where bad turns good. The proverb is not in David Galef's Even Monkeys Fall from Trees (Tuttle, 1987) or Even a Stone Buddha Can Talk (Tuttle, 2000), nor in Edward Trimnell's Tigers, Devils, and Fools (2004) or Guy Zona's Even Withered Trees Give Prosperity to the Mountain (1996) [11].

Today. What a rendering must keep: the old man, who is a person and not a name; the reversal running both ways; and the refusal to rejoice or grieve yet, which a blessing in disguise, every cloud has a silver lining and inscrutable are the ways of Heaven each lose in a different place.

A reading

Seven characters unchanged since the 1440s, with no owner, no sect and no legend. 人間 is read ningen in every witness from 1617 to 1939, from a dictionary to a proverb book to a Noh text to 馬琴's own furigana, and jinkan nowhere among them; jinkan is a learned modern choice, not the older reading. 塞 is a frontier fort, and the old man has no name in any Chinese or Japanese text: Saiou is a description, not a surname, though a German collection made a name of it by 1897. The fuller story is a Han parable, carried into Japanese court poetry as the old man of the north, given its seven characters by a Yuan Zen monk listening to rain, taught from the hall at Kamakura, entered with the monk's name in a Japanese dictionary by 1444, and standing by 1638 in the earliest proverb book of the Edo period. The name was lost by 1673 and given to Su Dongpo by 1701, and proverb books went on printing Su Dongpo into the 1930s, beside dictionaries that followed the scholar who set the monk back. If the old etymology of ほくそ笑む holds, the old man's smile is still in the language as a verb.

References

  1. 「人間万事塞翁が馬」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, 故事成語を知る辞典 and ことわざを知る辞典 (太宰治『竹青』, 1945, as its example), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/人間万事塞翁が馬-593690
  2. National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text search for じんかんばんじ, 38 items, read in their snippets, in September 2026: 『中国名言集』, 1986, pid 12414945; 『「故事名言」の事典』, 1986, pid 12414951; 『茶掛の一行書』, 1999, pid 14156523; the rows before 1986 are misreadings (人甲板上 and the like). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=じんかんばんじ
  3. 「ほくそ笑む」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典 (補注: 「北叟笑い」からとする説〔壒嚢鈔〕) and デジタル大辞泉 (「ほくそ」は「北叟」か), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/ほくそ笑む-629476
  4. August Pfizmaier, Die poetischen Ausdrücke der japanischen Sprache, in Denkschriften der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Classe, Band 23, Vienna, 1874, p. 400, s.v. Kita-no okina. https://archive.org/details/denkschriftende03klasgoog/page/n408
  5. P. Ehmann, Die Sprichwörter und bildlichen Ausdrücke der japanischen Sprache, Supplement der Mittheilungen der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens, Tokyo, 1897, p. 230, no. 2127. https://archive.org/details/mitteilungender13unkngoog/page/n258
  6. イーストレーキ・越山『新撰英和熟語集』, 1904. National Diet Library pid 870143, scan 77. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/870143/1/77
  7. 井上十吉『和英辞典』, 1909, scan 651; 『新訳和英辞典』, 1911, scan 653. National Diet Library pids 1869465 and 870153. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1869465/1/651
  8. Inazo Nitobe, Thoughts and Essays, Teibi Publishing Company, Tokyo, 1909, p. 135, Uses of War and of Peace. https://archive.org/details/thoughtsessays00nitouoft/page/n154
  9. 斎藤秀三郎『熟語本位英和中辞典』, Saito's Idiomological English-Japanese Dictionary, 正則英語学校出版部, Tokyo, 1915, p. 551 s.v. heaven, p. 634 s.v. inscrutable, p. 1513 s.v. way (the Harvard copy) · the 1918 printing, the same entries, National Diet Library pid 1681530, scans 283, 325 and 764. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1681530/1/283
  10. 『スタンダード和英辞典』, 1946. National Diet Library pid 1126792, scan 392. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1126792/1/392
  11. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1965, p. 156.
  12. 『淮南子』人間訓, 2nd century BC, at Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/淮南子/人間訓
  13. 伊藤東涯『秉燭譚』, 1763, quoting 晦機元熙's poem. National Diet Library pid 2564858, scan 18. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2564858/1/18
  14. 藤井乙男『諺語大辞典』, 有朋堂, 1910. National Diet Library pid 862766, scans 167, 234 and 395. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/862766/1/234
  15. 『大日本国語辞典』, 1915. National Diet Library pid 954645, scan 562. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/954645/1/562
  16. 『俚言集覧』, 1900 edition. National Diet Library pid 991569, scan 356. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/991569/1/356
  17. 清拙正澄, 『清拙和尚語録』, manuscript, 14th century. National Diet Library pid 2537749, scan 71.
  18. 「塞翁が馬」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/塞翁が馬-507194
  19. 「中巌円月」, デジタル大辞泉 (著「語録」「東海一漚集」) and ブリタニカ国際大百科事典 (1300–1375), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/中巌円月-97093
  20. 『明徳記』, 3 vols., 慶長19 (1614), National Diet Library pid 2532182, scan 75. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2532182/1/75 · 「明徳記」, 世界大百科事典 (a first draft soon after the rebellion, revised 1396), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/明徳記-141142
  21. 『下学集』, compiled 文安元年 (1444): a manuscript the library dates 室町末期, National Diet Library pid 2532290, scan 69, https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2532290/1/69 · the first printing, 元和3 (1617), pid 2533531, scan 77, https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2533531/1/77 · the entry copied in 『増補大節用集』, 寛文5 (1665), pid 2566396, scan 23, https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2566396/1/23 · 「下学集」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典 and 世界大百科事典 (the 節用集 as the 下学集 re-sorted), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/下学集-43320
  22. 行誉『壒嚢鈔』, 文安3 (1446), in its printing of 正保3 (1646), National Diet Library pid 2597263, scan 53. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2597263/1/53
  23. 『綾鼓』, in 大和田建樹『謡曲評釈』, 1908. National Diet Library pid 876570, scan 23. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/876570/1/23
  24. 節用集, c. 1500–1600. National Diet Library pid 2532232, scan 89. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2532232/1/89
  25. 松江重頼『毛吹草』, 1638; in 藤井乙男『諺の研究』, 1929, scan 147, whose p. 240 (scan 127) names it the earliest collection of proverbs of the Edo period and 世話尽 the next. National Diet Library pid 1452761. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1452761/1/147
  26. 皆虚 編『世話尽』, 1656. National Diet Library pid 2554768, scan 6. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2554768/1/6
  27. 『和歌呉竹集』, 1673. National Diet Library pid 2550690, scan 11. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2550690/1/11
  28. 『世話重宝記』, 1695. National Diet Library pid 2550735, scan 19. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2550735/1/19
  29. 貝原好古『諺草』, 元禄14 (1701), National Diet Library pids 14671775–14671784 (the leaf not read) · the typeset in 『益軒全集』, 1911, National Diet Library pid 992412, read in the full-text search's snippet (第四 仁 … 人間萬事塞翁馬 東坡詩).
  30. 曲亭馬琴, 黄表紙集, 1926 typeset. National Diet Library pid 1018333, scans 9 and 104. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1018333/1/9
  31. 『史記』, 卷84 屈原賈生列傳 (賈誼, 鵩鳥賦: 夫禍之與福兮，何異糾纆) and 卷113 南越列傳 (太史公曰: 因禍為福。成敗之轉，譬若糾墨), at Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/史記/卷084 · https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/史記/卷113
  32. Rokuo Okada, Japanese Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, Japan Travel Bureau, Tokyo, 1958, p. 119.

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

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 人間万事塞翁が馬 (ningen banji saiō ga uma)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/ningen-banji-saio-ga-uma.