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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 Japanese proverb for the expert who slips. Its oldest known witness, a haikai verse in an anthology prefaced in 1638, already calls it a saying. This study follows its two uses, warning and excuse, and its English renderings, among them the pairing with Homer nods.

Japanese Scroll of Even Monkeys Fall Out Of Trees (saru mo ki kara ochiru) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Even Monkeys Fall Out Of Trees猿も木から落ちるsaru mo ki kara ochiru

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

猿も木から落ちる, even monkeys fall out of trees, is a Japanese proverb whose oldest known witness, a haikai verse in an anthology prefaced in 1638, already calls it a saying; a book of sayings set it down in 1656. Its sense in the dictionaries is narrow, the expert slipping at the very thing they are expert in, and from its first prose witnesses it is used two ways: as a warning not to relax where one is skilled (1718), and as an excuse for a slip, which by 1881 reaches everyone less skilled than the monkey. Japanese commentators set Chinese lines beside it as its sense, though no Chinese text read carries the proverb itself, and a Korean proverb in the same words stands beside it in a modern dictionary. 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. A comic tale of 1718 uses it to say do not relax where you are good, in a tale that retells Kenkō's master tree-climber [4][5], and a children's book of 1892 says the same to children [6]. The other use excuses a slip, and it is in print by 1881, when a book on housekeeping reasons that since even monkeys fall, even wives skilled at keeping house cannot be sure never to blunder, how much less the rest [7]. A man in a play by Kawatake Mokuami, printed in 1897, laughs off his own defeat with it [8], and Nitobe Inazō in 1909 uses it to say that one slip is no measure of a man [9]. The modern proverb dictionary's last sentence is the reasoning of 1881: so for ordinary people a small failure is only to be expected [1]. The sense is the expert's, and the excuse has reached everyone less skilled from its first witness.

The words. 猿 saru is the monkey, in Japan the macaque; Hepburn's dictionary of 1872 gives A monkey, ape [10]. 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 [11][2][3]; the same verb with its ending unwritten, 落る, in 1656 and 1718 [12][4]; the colloquial 落ちる, ochiru, in Hepburn and in every modern dictionary [10][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 [10]; Griffis's The Mikado's Empire prints that sentence word for word in 1876 [13], Brinkley's dictionary of 1896 repeats it and adds no man is entirely infallible [14], and a Japanese teacher's exercise book of 1898 gives the same sentence [15]. The English books keep from: Griffis in 1876, Reed in 1880 [16], Faulds in 1885 [17], MacCauley in 1896 [18], Buchanan in 1965 [19], Galef in 1987 [20], Zona in 1996 [21] and Trimnell in 2004 [22]. Out of trees is the wording of Henderson's grammar of 1943, read in its British printing of 1945 [23], Draeger's in 1973 [24], and the title of Ragle's 1987 collection of John Naka's proverbs [25]. The standing equivalent is Homer nods, paired with the proverb in The Japan Weekly Mail in 1908 [26], in Henderson's parentheses in 1943, and in Kenkyusha's dictionary in 1983 [27]. JMdict today gives even monkeys fall from trees, anyone can make a mistake, pride comes before a fall and even Homer sometimes nods [28].

The historical record

1638. A haikai verse. The oldest place the proverb is known to survive, by the dictionary's first citation and by the National Diet Library's full text, which has nothing before 1718, is a hokku the Nihon kokugo daijiten gives to 定之, in the third book of 鷹筑波集, an anthology of the Teimon school edited by 西武. Its preface by Teitoku is dated 1638, it was printed in 1642, and it gathers verses Teitoku had marked over some thirty years [29], so the verse is older than the printing and may be older than the preface. The dictionary prints it as its first citation, dated by the preface [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 names the proverb a たとへ, a saying or a figure, and 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 its list of sayings that begin with さ, in a column of its own, just after 三人よれは文珠のちゑ and 座頭は牛七疋ほどすねる; a run of monkey sayings stands a few entries before it: the monkey's cleverness, the monkey's Tosa dance, the monkey's rice cakes, monkey eyes [12].

1718. A comic tale. やふにまくは, a book of comic stories; its eighth tale is headed 文殊も筆の誤 and opens with the proverb [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.

Three masters follow: the skilled painter sketches first in charcoal, the master drummer rehearses backstage, and a famous well-digger, 井堀 (いどほり), has his apprentice dig and calls out 油断すな, do not be careless, only when the man has climbed nearly out, because in a dangerous place one takes care anyway, and it is at the easy place, 安き所, that one relaxes and is hurt. The tale retells, with a well-digger, Kenkō's master tree-climber in section 109 of the 徒然草, who warns his man only at the height of the eaves, because mistakes are always made when people get to the easy places [5]. The proverb is already paired with its brush-slip cousin, already a warning, and its first prose use stands beside a tree-climber's lesson.

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 [10]. 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.

1881. A book on housekeeping. 中野了随's 『女房の不経済』 [7]:

俚諺にも云へる如く猿も木から落つるといへば家政に巧みなる妻君方にても必ず失策なきことを得べからず況してやその餘の妻君方におゐてをや As the proverb says, even monkeys fall from trees; so even wives skilled at keeping house cannot be sure never to blunder, and how much less the rest.

The excuse, reasoned from the expert to everyone else, as the modern dictionary still reasons.

1892. A children's book. 岡本可亭's 『知識之金庫』 sets the proverb for さ in an iroha list of its own, which is not MacCauley's of 1896, and glosses it: 梢から梢へ傳ひ廻る猿さへも。其木から落ることあり。人の身の上安心なりとて。油斷はならず, even the monkey that goes from treetop to treetop sometimes falls from its tree; do not be careless because you think yourself safe [6]. The warning, for children.

1895. A comic novel. In 福地桜痴's 『伏魔殿』 a borrower tells the moneylender who lent to him without a bond that it was the blunder of his life, 手長猿が木から落て、弘法さまが看板を書損ねたも同樣の失敗よ, the same failure as a long-armed monkey falling from a tree, or Kōbō botching a signboard [30]. The pair of 1718 again, here as a taunt.

1897. A kabuki play. In a play by Kawatake Mokuami (1816–1893), printed in the seventh volume of his scripts in 1897, a man who has been shamed by an opponent he took lightly laughs it off [8]:

小敵と見て侮つた故の事則是が誠の怪我弘法にも筆の誤り猿も木から落るでムるて It came of taking a small foe lightly; a true mischance, that. Even Kōbō's brush slips, even a monkey falls from a tree, you know.

ムる is the printer's sign for ござる. The slipping brush and the falling monkey together again, and here as his own excuse: the slip is to be overlooked because the proverb says it happens to the best.

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 [15].

1900 and 1906. Two Meiji proverb dictionaries. 世諺叢談 explains the picture [11]:

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].

The Chinese lines. None of the three Chinese lines Fujii gives is this proverb. The 淮南子 has monkeys stumbling and losing their branches, 猿狖顛蹶而失木枝, one of the creatures, with the snakes, the bears and the tigers, that cower when the red dragon rises in a storm and its might shakes heaven and earth [31]: the climber does fall, from fear of a greater power rather than by its own slip. 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 [32]; 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 [19]. 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 [33].

The Japanese commentators set the 淮南子's falling monkey and the 史記's wise man beside the proverb as its sense, and the pairing is older than Fujii's dictionary. 輪池叢書, a manuscript miscellany in the National Diet Library that is undated in its catalogue and carries the art name of the scholar 屋代弘賢 (輪池, 1758–1841) [34], copies a note that sets the 淮南子 line and the 史記 line under 猿も木から落る and ends 是猿も木から落ると云意なり, this is the sense of "even a monkey falls from a tree" [35]. The editors who enlarged 太田全斎's 俚言集覧 for its printing in 1900 added the proverb with the same closing words, naming three older proverb books that carry it (和漢古諺, 野語述說 and 諺草) and taking the 淮南子 line from a fourth, 本朝俚諺 [36]. Whether the picture came from the 淮南子 or was made in Japan, no witness read here settles: no Chinese text read carries the proverb itself, and its oldest witness is the Japanese verse. ことわざを知る辞典 sets beside it a Korean proverb in the same words, 원숭이도 나무에서 떨어진다 [1]; which of the two is the older was not looked into.

The proverb in English

1876. William Elliot Griffis, The Mikado's Empire, page 511. In the chapter of Japanese proverbs, between a cur that barks before its own gate and rubbing salt on a sore: Even a monkey sometimes falls from a tree. [13] Hepburn's sentence of 1872 word for word, with no Japanese, and the earliest English book outside the dictionaries known to the Internet Archive's full-text index to print the proverb.

1880. Sir Edward J. Reed, Japan, volume 2, page 105. Even the monkey falls from the tree, in a list of proverbs Reed says he selected from the collections of Pfoundes, Knobloch and Griffis [16].

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." [17] No Japanese beside it.

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 [18]. 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 [14]. 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 [26]:

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 pairing with Homer nods known to the Internet Archive's full text, searched for Homer nods, Homer sometimes nods and Homer nodded beside the monkey.

1909. Nitobe Inazō, Thoughts and Essays, page 38, "Being and Doing". It is dangerous to infer from a single action the character of a man. A Kobo may make a slip with his pen; a monkey may fall from a tree. It is not fair to judge a man by an isolated act. [9] A Japanese writer's English, and the forgiving use in so many words: the brush and the monkey as reasons not to judge.

1943. Harold G. Henderson, Handbook of Japanese Grammar, under datte, read in the British edition of 1945. The proverb recast with that particle, glossed Even monkeys fall out of trees. (Even Homer sometimes nods.) [23]; the copy read prints the Japanese as Sam datte hi kara ochiru sa, a misreading of saru datte ki kara ochiru sa. A grammar example, and the equivalent in parentheses.

1965. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, page 248 [19]:

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." There is thus a permitted, even expected, degree of lack of mastery in the master [24]. The excuse carried into the dōjō, where the master's slip is expected. The word order is inverted, 木から猿も落ちる, an order no other witness here prints; 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 [20]. 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 [37].

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 [25].

1996. Guy A. Zona, Even Withered Trees Give Prosperity to the Mountain, page 18. Even monkeys fall from trees. No Japanese and no source [21].

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. [22] Both uses, the warning and the patience, in one paragraph.

The equivalent. Homer nods is Horace's quandoque bonus dormitat Homerus, Ars Poetica 359 [38]. Its earliest English in the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs is Trevisa's translation of Higden, 1387, the grete Homerus slepeth somtyme [39]; the 1970 Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs begins its English quotations at Palsgrave, 1530 [40]; the Penguin Dictionary of Proverbs sets it under imperfection beside He who makes no mistakes, makes nothing [41]; 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 [42]. Kenkyusha's Japanese-English dictionary, in its 1939 printing, gives Homer nods for the sibling proverb 弘法も筆の誤り [43], and its collegiate dictionary of 1983 gives Homer sometimes nods for this one [27].

Today. JMdict gives even monkeys fall from trees, anyone can make a mistake, pride comes before a fall and even Homer sometimes nods [28]. 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 pictures the expert's slip: every cousin the dictionaries give is a master failing at his own art, and Homer nods, the equivalent English settled on, is the greatest of poets nodding. But it was never kept for experts. Its first prose use stands beside a tree-climber's lesson, a warning for the skilled; the next, in 1881, uses the expert's slip to excuse everyone less skilled, which is how the modern dictionary still ends, and English from Brinkley's no man is entirely infallible to Galef's Anybody can make a mistake says the wider thing outright. The commentators set the 淮南子's falling monkey beside it, and that monkey falls from fear of the dragon; the Japanese monkey falls where it is at home, on the easy branch, and that is the picture the proverb makes. It has two hands, the well-digger's careful on the easy step and the patience with a slip, and a reader who hangs the scroll may take either.

Notes

Sources not seen

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

References

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  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
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  22. Edward E. Trimnell, Tigers, Devils, and Fools: A Guide to Japanese Proverbs, Beechmont Crest Publishing, 2004, p. 126.
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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

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 猿も木から落ちる (saru mo ki kara ochiru)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/saru-mo-ki-kara-ochiru.