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猿も木から落ちる saru mo ki kara ochiru Even Monkeys Fall Out Of Trees

猿も木から落ちる (saru mo ki kara ochiru), even monkeys fall from trees, is a native Japanese proverb for the expert who slips at the very thing they are good at, already called a saying in a haikai verse of 1638. English has rendered it word for word since 1872, and paired it with Homer nods since 1908.

Japanese Scroll of Even Monkeys Fall Out Of Trees (saru mo ki kara ochiru) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Even Monkeys Fall Out Of Trees (saru mo ki kara ochiru)

Even Monkeys Fall Out Of Trees (saru mo ki kara ochiru) on a traditional Japanese Scroll by Master Eri Takase.

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Abstract

猿も木から落ちる, even monkeys fall out of trees, is a native Japanese proverb, already called a saying in a haikai verse of 1638 and set down in a book of sayings in 1656. Its sense is narrow: the expert slips at the very thing they are expert in, and the tradition uses it two ways, as a warning not to relax where one is skilled and as a reason to forgive a skilled person's slip. The Chinese lines the dictionaries set beside it are parallels of image and thought, not its source. English has rendered it word for word since Hepburn's dictionary of 1872, and the earliest known pairing with Homer nods, the English proverb for the same thought, is in The Japan Weekly Mail in 1908.

Overview

The sense. One sense, and it is narrower than nobody is perfect: the expert fails at the very thing they excel in. The Nihon kokugo daijiten calls it a figure for how even one who excels at a thing sometimes fails [1], the 1906 俚諺辞典 says that the able and the skilled also err at times [2], and every kin proverb the dictionaries give has that shape: Kōbō Daishi's slipping brush, the drowning kappa, water leaking from the skilled hand [1][3]. The tradition uses it two ways, and both are old. A comic tale of 1718 uses it to say do not relax where you are good [4]; the modern proverb dictionary's last sentence uses it to forgive, so for ordinary people a small failure is only to be expected [1].

The words. 猿 saru is the monkey, in Japan the macaque; Hepburn's dictionary of 1872 gives A monkey, ape [5]. も is even: even a monkey. 木から落ちる, ki kara ochiru, is falls from a tree, and the verb is where the witnesses differ. The classical attributive 落つる, otsuru, stands in the dictionaries of 1900 and 1906 and in Fujii's quotation of the 1638 verse [6][2][3]; the same verb with its ending unwritten, 落る, in 1656 and 1718 [7][4]; the colloquial 落ちる, ochiru, in Hepburn and in every modern dictionary [5][1]. The form on the scroll is the modern standard.

The proverb in English. The English is literal from the first. Hepburn's dictionary of 1872 has even a monkey sometimes falls from a tree [5], Brinkley's dictionary of 1896 repeats it and adds no man is entirely infallible [8], and a Japanese teacher's exercise book of 1898 gives the same sentence [9]. The English books keep from: Faulds in 1885 [10], MacCauley in 1896 [11], Buchanan in 1965 [12], Galef in 1987 [13], Zona in 1996 [14] and Trimnell in 2004 [15]. Out of trees is Henderson's wording in 1945 [16], Draeger's in 1973 [17], and the title of Ragle's 1987 collection of John Naka's proverbs [18]. The standing equivalent is Homer nods, paired with the proverb in The Japan Weekly Mail in 1908 [19], in Henderson's parentheses in 1945, and in Kenkyusha's dictionary in 1983 [20]. JMdict today gives even monkeys fall from trees, anyone can make a mistake, pride comes before a fall and even Homer sometimes nods [21].

The historical record

1638. A haikai verse. The oldest place the proverb survives is a hokku by 定之 in the third book of 鷹筑波集, an anthology of the Teimon school edited by 西武. The Nihon kokugo daijiten prints it as its first citation [1]:

猿も木から落るたとへの木葉かな Even monkeys fall from trees, as the saying goes: and so the leaves.

Fujii's 1910 dictionary quotes the same verse as 猿も木から落つるたとへの木の葉かな, with the poet's name after it [3]. The verse calls the proverb a たとへ, a saying, so it was one before the poet used it; he makes the autumn leaves fall with it.

1656. A book of sayings. Kaikyo's Sewazukushi 世話尽 has 猿も木から落る in a column of monkey sayings: the monkey's rice cakes, the monkey's cleverness, the monkey's Tosa dance, monkey eyes [7].

1718. A comic tale. やふにまくは, a book of comic stories [4]:

文殊も筆の誤、猿も木から落る事もしれず Even Mañjuśrī's brush slips, and who knows, even a monkey may fall from a tree.

The story that follows is of a master well-digger who tells his apprentice to be careful only on the easy last step of the climb out, because that is where the skilled man relaxes. The proverb is already paired with its brush-slip cousin, and already a warning.

1872. Hepburn. A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, second edition, page 434, under SARU: — mo ki kara ochiru (prov.) even a monkey sometimes falls from a tree [5]. The first English, with the modern verb. Sometimes is Hepburn's, and fair, since the proverb says the fall can happen, not that it must.

1898. A Japanese teacher's English. Inoue Jūkichi's lecture course on translating Japanese into English, page 57, sets 猿も木から落る with Even a monkey sometimes falls from a tree, Hepburn's sentence word for word [9].

1900 and 1906. Two Meiji proverb dictionaries. 世諺叢談 explains the picture [6]:

猿は四手獣とて四肢皆手の如くなれば、樹木を昇降すること巧にして … されど猿もたまさかには木の上より落つることあるは何ぞや、是れ謂はゆる智者千慮の一失 The monkey is a four-handed beast, all four limbs like hands, so it climbs trees with skill … yet even a monkey sometimes falls from a tree, and why is that? It is what is called the wise man's one slip in a thousand thoughts.

俚諺辞典: 能者功者といへども、時に失敗過誤あるをいふ, it says that even the able and the skilled fail and err at times, with the 淮南子 cited beside it [2].

1910. Fujii Otoo, 諺語大辞典, pages 462 and 463. 【猿モ木カラ落チル】弘法ニモ筆ノ誤といふ類, of the same kind as "even Kōbō's brush slips"; then the 1638 verse with the poet's name; three Chinese lines, from the 淮南子, the 説苑 and the 史記; and two European proverbs, A good marksman may miss and the Italian A horse may stumble though he have four legs [3]. He files the proverb with its cousins, the slipping brush and the stumbling of a fine horse.

Today. 精選版 日本国語大辞典: その道にすぐれている人でも、時には失敗をすることがあるというたとえ, a figure for how even one who excels at a thing sometimes fails, with the slipping brush and the leaking hand beside it and the 1638 verse as its first citation. ことわざを知る辞典: 木登りのじょうずな猿でも木から落ちることがある。名人や達人でも時には失敗するたとえ。まして凡人なら、少々の失敗はしかたがないことになる, even a monkey good at climbing sometimes falls from a tree; a figure for how even masters and experts sometimes fail; and so for ordinary people a small failure is only to be expected [1].

What is not a source. The three Chinese lines Fujii gives are parallels, and none of them is this proverb. The 淮南子 has monkeys stumbling and losing their branches, 猿狖顛蹶而失木枝, because the dragon has risen and heaven and earth are in uproar: a picture of cosmic terror, not of skill failing [22]. The 説苑 has a monkey off its tree, 猿猴失木，禽於狐貉者，非其處也, caught by foxes because it is out of its element, in the same sentence that puts a great fish out of water at the mercy of ants [23]; Fujii files that image under its own headword, 【木ニ離レタル猿】, a monkey that has left its tree, meaning helpless [3], and Buchanan gives the Japanese idiom of that sense, ki kara ochita saru no yō, a helpless condition [12]. The 史記, 智者千慮，必有一失, the wise man in a thousand thoughts has one slip, is the sense without the monkey [24]. The Japanese proverb joins a Chinese thought to an image Chinese texts use for something else, and makes a picture of its own: the climber falling from the thing it climbs.

The proverb in English

1885. Henry Faulds, Nine Years in Nipon, page 290. Among the sayings that require no elaborate commentary to explain them: "Even monkeys fall from the tree." [10] The earliest known English book outside the dictionaries to print the proverb, with no Japanese.

1896. Clay MacCauley, An Introductory Course in Japanese, page 457. The primer arranges forty-eight proverbs in iroha order and makes each the text of a conversation; the thirty-seventh, for さ, is Saru mo ki kara otsuru. Even monkeys fall from trees., in the classical verb [11]. The conversation it heads is about a careful servant who has broken a shaving glass.

1896. F. Brinkley and others, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary, page 1186. Saru mo ki kara ochiru, 猿モ樹カラ墮チル, which the entry labels a proverb and renders literally, even a monkey sometimes falls from a tree, then glosses, no man is entirely infallible [8]. Hepburn's sentence, the tree written 樹 and the verb 墮, and a gloss that states the sense.

1908. The Japan Weekly Mail, 1 February, "Monkey Year", signed E.W.C., pages 126 and 127. An essay on the year of the monkey, in Japanese art and speech [19]:

The proverb, "Even a monkey sometimes falls from a tree," is an equivalent of the Occidental proverb, "Even Homer nods."

Hepburn's rendering, and the earliest known pairing with Homer nods.

1945. Harold G. Henderson, Handbook of Japanese Grammar, under datte. The proverb recast with that particle, saru datte ki kara ochiru sa, glossed Even monkeys fall out of trees. (Even Homer sometimes nods.) [16] A grammar example, and the equivalent in parentheses.

1965. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, page 248 [12]:

Saru mo ki kara ochiru: "Even a monkey will fall from a tree." Since skillful people sometimes make mistakes, we should be tolerant of all. English parallel: A good marksman may miss.

The forgiving use, and Fujii's European parallel of 1910. On page 133 he gives the idiom of the fallen monkey, Ki kara ochita saru no yō: "A helpless condition." (Lit., "Like a monkey fallen from a tree."), which is the other proverb, the 説苑's.

1973. Donn F. Draeger, Classical Budō, page 30. But the meijin is not infallible. He can and does make mistakes. The Japanese have a saying illustrating this: Ki kara saru mo ochiru, "Even monkeys fall out of trees." [17] The word order inverted, 木から猿も落ちる, a variant of use and not of text; the page is unchanged in the 2007 edition.

1987. David Galef, Even Monkeys Fall from Trees: The Wit and Wisdom of Japanese Proverbs, number 3, page 20. Saru mo ki kara ochiru. Even monkeys fall from trees, with Jun Hashimoto's drawing of three monkeys in a tree and one in the air, and in the book's list of English equivalents, Anybody can make a mistake [13]. Galef's preface says the equivalents were his own newspaper game. The 2012 reissue prints the equivalent as Anyone can make a mistake and adds a note: Even the naturally graceful may slip at times … The ancient Greco-Roman world had a saying, "Even Homer nods," parallel to Kōbō ni mo fude no ayamari [25].

1987. Nina Shire Ragle, Even Monkeys Fall Out of Trees: John Naka's Collection of Japanese Proverbs. A collection of John Naka's proverbs, with plates by Naka, that takes this proverb as its title [18]. That two English collections of Japanese proverbs took it as their title in the same year says where it stands in English.

1996. Guy A. Zona, Even Withered Trees Give Prosperity to the Mountain, page 18. Even monkeys fall from trees. No Japanese and no source [14].

2004. Edward E. Trimnell, Tigers, Devils, and Fools, page 126. "Even monkeys fall from trees." This is perhaps the most famous of all Japanese proverbs … this proverb suggests that anyone can fall victim to carelessness. Moreover, even the experts can be expected to make a mistake from time to time. [15] Both uses, the warning and the patience, in one paragraph.

The equivalent. Homer nods is Horace's quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus, Ars Poetica 359 [26]. Its earliest English in the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs is Trevisa's translation of Higden, 1387, the grete Homerus slepeth somtyme [27]; the 1970 Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs begins its English quotations at Palsgrave, 1530 [28]; the Penguin Dictionary of Proverbs sets it under imperfection beside He who makes no mistakes, makes nothing [29]; and Whiting's Modern Proverbs records it in English and American fiction from 1929 to 1976, the last Even Homer was allowed the odd nod [30]. Kenkyusha's dictionary of 1942 gives Homer nods for the sibling proverb 弘法も筆の誤り [31], and its collegiate dictionary of 1983 gives Homer sometimes nods for this one [20]. The English equivalent is older in English than any Japanese witness to the proverb.

Today. JMdict gives even monkeys fall from trees, anyone can make a mistake, pride comes before a fall and even Homer sometimes nods [21]. The third is an error: the proverb is about skill, and nothing in it is pride. The house title, Even Monkeys Fall Out of Trees, is the out of trees of Henderson, Draeger and Ragle, and it keeps what a rendering must keep: the monkey, and the fall from the thing it climbs. Even says the fall can happen to the best of them, not that it always does.

A reading

The proverb is about the expert's slip, and it is narrower than nobody is perfect: every cousin the dictionaries give is a master failing at his own art, and the English writers who reached for Homer nods heard that. The dictionaries set the 淮南子 and the 説苑 beside it, but the Chinese monkey is a monkey off its tree, helpless in the wrong element. The Japanese monkey falls, and the fall is the point. It has always had two hands: the well-digger's careful on the easy step, and the dictionary's patience with an ordinary person's failure. Both are in the sources, and a reader who hangs the scroll may take either.

Notes

References

  1. 「猿も木から落ちる」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典 · ことわざを知る辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/猿も木から落ちる-512429
  2. 『俚諺辞典』, 1906, National Diet Library pid 900343, scan 124. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/900343/1/124
  3. 藤井乙男『諺語大辞典』, 有朋堂, 1910, 【猿モ木カラ落チル】, pp. 462–463, National Diet Library pid 862766, scan 248. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/862766/1/248
  4. 『やふにまくは』, 1718, National Diet Library pid 2568481, scan 14. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2568481/1/14
  5. J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, 2nd ed., American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1872, p. 434. National Diet Library pid 993689, scan 235. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/993689/1/235
  6. 『世諺叢談 出処註釈』, 1900, National Diet Library pid 757592, scans 63–64. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/757592/1/63
  7. 皆虚『世話尽』, 1656, National Diet Library pid 2554768, scan 27. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2554768/1/27
  8. F. Brinkley and others, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary (和英大辞典), Sanseidō, Tokyo, 1896, p. 1186. National Diet Library pid 903159, scan 613. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/903159/1/613
  9. 井上十吉『英語学講義録』和文英訳, 1898, p. 57, National Diet Library pid 869647, scan 31. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/869647/1/31
  10. Henry Faulds, Nine Years in Nipon: Sketches of Japanese Life and Manners, Alexander Gardner, London, 1885, p. 290. Internet Archive cu31924023514338. https://archive.org/details/cu31924023514338
  11. Clay MacCauley, An Introductory Course in Japanese, Kelly and Walsh, Yokohama, 1896, p. 457. Internet Archive anintroductoryc01maccgoog. https://archive.org/details/anintroductoryc01maccgoog
  12. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1965, pp. 133 and 248.
  13. David Galef, Even Monkeys Fall from Trees: The Wit and Wisdom of Japanese Proverbs, illustrated by Jun Hashimoto, Charles E. Tuttle, Rutland and Tokyo, 1987, no. 3, p. 20.
  14. Guy A. Zona, Even Withered Trees Give Prosperity to the Mountain: And Other Proverbs of Japan, Simon & Schuster, New York, 1996, p. 18.
  15. Edward E. Trimnell, Tigers, Devils, and Fools: A Guide to Japanese Proverbs, Beechmont Crest Publishing, 2004, p. 126.
  16. Harold G. Henderson, Handbook of Japanese Grammar, 1945; Routledge Library Editions, 2011, under datte.
  17. Donn F. Draeger, Classical Budō, Weatherhill, 1973, p. 30; the 2007 edition, p. 30.
  18. Nina Shire Ragle, Even Monkeys Fall Out of Trees: John Naka's Collection of Japanese Proverbs, Nippon Art Forms, Laguna Beach, 1987. Open Library OL2410781M. https://openlibrary.org/books/OL2410781M
  19. E.W.C., "Monkey Year", The Japan Weekly Mail, 1 February 1908, pp. 126–127. Internet Archive jwm-bound-1908.1-6. https://archive.org/details/jwm-bound-1908.1-6
  20. 市川繁治郎 編『新和英中辞典』(Kenkyusha's New Collegiate Japanese-English Dictionary), 3rd ed., 研究社, 1983, p. 487, さる¹.
  21. JMdict, 「猿も木から落ちる」, at Weblio 英和・和英辞典. https://ejje.weblio.jp/content/猿も木から落ちる
  22. 『淮南子』覽冥訓, at the Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/淮南子/覽冥訓
  23. 劉向『說苑』卷十六 說叢, at the Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/說苑/卷16
  24. 司馬遷『史記』淮陰侯列傳, at the Chinese Text Project. https://ctext.org/shiji/huai-yin-hou-lie-zhuan/zh
  25. David Galef, Japanese Proverbs: Wit and Wisdom: 200 Classic Japanese Sayings, Tuttle, 2012, no. 3.
  26. Horace, Ars Poetica 359, in Elizabeth Knowles (ed.), Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 8th ed., Oxford University Press, 2014, p. 397.
  27. Jennifer Speake (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, 6th ed., Oxford University Press, 2015, s.v. Homer sometimes nods.
  28. F. P. Wilson (ed.), The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, 1970, p. 379.
  29. Rosalind Fergusson, The Penguin Dictionary of Proverbs, Penguin, 1983, p. 131.
  30. Bartlett Jere Whiting, Modern Proverbs and Proverbial Sayings, Harvard University Press, 1989, H265, p. 314.
  31. 武信由太郎 編 Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, American edition, Harvard University Press, 1942, p. 993, Kōbō.
  32. 「いろはかるた」, Wikipedia (Japanese). https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/いろはかるた

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1 and Opus 5, 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