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千秋万歳 senshūbanzai A Thousand Years of Long Life

千秋万歳 (senshūbanzai), a thousand autumns and ten thousand years, means forever, and is a wish for long life. In Chinese it was also the polite way to speak of a ruler's death, and the 日本書紀 of 720 carries both lives. This study follows it to the New Year performers at the gate, from whom the dictionaries trace 漫才.

Japanese Scroll of A Thousand Years of Long Life (senshūbanzai) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
A Thousand Years of Long Life千秋万歳senshūbanzai

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

千秋万歳, senshūbanzai, a thousand autumns and ten thousand years, is in the Japanese dictionaries a thousand years and ten thousand, forever, and a word to wish someone long life. In Chinese it was written on the roof tiles of the Han, and from the Han histories on it was also the polite way to speak of a ruler's death; the 韓非子 of the third century BCE already quotes it as the shamans' empty blessing. Japan's first official history, the 日本書紀 of 720, carries both lives: the phrase in a king's oath and a court's congratulation, and the empress Saimei 斉明's 萬歳千秋之後, after ten thousand years and a thousand autumns, of her own death. In Japan the words also named a trade, せんずまんざい, the New Year performers at the gate, from whom the dictionaries trace 万歳 and, by 1932, the comic double act 漫才.

Overview

The sense. The デジタル大辞泉 gives the phrase, read せんしゅうばんぜい, as 千年万年。永遠。また、長寿を祝う語, a thousand years, ten thousand years; forever; also, a word wishing long life, and the 精選版 日本国語大辞典 as 千年万年。転じて、永久、永遠。また、それを願うことば。長寿を祝うことば, a thousand years, ten thousand years; by extension, eternity; also, words that wish for it; words wishing long life [1]. JMdict supplies the verb the bare numbers leave out: may you live a thousand years [2]. The 日本国語大辞典's note on the word's history says it came from China as a word celebrating long prosperity and long life, and was used both simply for for ever and ever (幾久しい) and to express great joy [1]. The entries for 千秋万歳 do not give its other use; the dictionaries' entries for 万歳 do. The 世界大百科事典 says that to speak of the death of a king or an emperor without saying it, the 史記, the 漢書 and many texts after them write 〈万歳千秋の後〉, after ten thousand years and a thousand autumns, and the 日本国語大辞典 gives 万歳 the sense 人が死ぬことをいう, of a person's dying, with a Japanese example of 1153 from the courtier's diary 兵範記 [3]. The Japanese chronicle has the four-character form of that use as well (720, below).

The words. Four characters and no verb. 千 is a thousand and 秋 is autumn, 万 ten thousand and 歳 a year; the 四字熟語を知る辞典 puts it in one line, 「秋」も「歳」も年の意, both 秋 and 歳 mean a year [1]. 万歳 is the same two characters as the shout banzai; the 日本国語大辞典 notes that マンザイ is their 呉音 reading and バンゼイ their 漢音 [3]. So the phrase has more than one reading in Japanese, and the dictionaries keep them apart. せんしゅうばんぜい is the 漢音 throughout, and the 日本国語大辞典 heads its longevity entry with it; せんしゅうばんざい, romanized senshūbanzai, is the same phrase in the reading the 日本国語大辞典, the 四字熟語を知る辞典 and JMdict all give beside it [1][2]. せんずまんざい, also せんじゅまんざい, is a different word written with the same characters: the New Year performing art (About 1061 to 1065, below) [1]. And the oldest print of the chronicle read for this history gives the phrase a native Japanese reading in its ruby, 千(チ)秋(アキ)萬歳(ヨロツノヨ), chiaki yorozu no yo [4].

The text in English. The phrase came into English in three streams, and they rarely meet. The first is Japanese. The Jesuit João Rodrigues (1558–1633), in Michael Cooper's English, hears it as a greeting: Gyokei senshū banzai, that is, May your pleasures and joys last for a thousand autumns and ten thousand years, which is their way of saying "for thousands of…", in Cooper's anthology of 1965 and his edition of 1973 [5]. Hepburn's dictionary of 1867 enters SEN-SHŪ-BAN-ZEI, with the kana センシウバンゼイ, (lit. A thousand autumns and ten thousand years). A great many, used only in complimentary letters [6]; his edition of 1888 (copyright 1886) enters SENSHŪ-BANZAI, センシウバンザイ, (lit. a thousand autumns and ten thousand years) Eternal bliss, used only in complimentary letters [7]. Between the two editions the head reading moves from banzei to banzai, and the sense from a great many to eternal bliss. W. G. Aston's Nihongi of 1896 renders all three of the chronicle's uses (720, below) [8], and his sentence for the white-pheasant address is the one the Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East carried in 1917 and Sources of Japanese Tradition printed in 1958, edited lightly around it [9]. Lord Redesdale, printing the court calendar for the New Year of 1869 in his Memories of 1915, gives the performing art its English name: 5th day. The dance called Senshiu Banzai — "a thousand autumns and ten thousand years." [10] The second stream is Chinese literature, where the death euphemism comes through: When, after a thousand autumns and ten thousand years, I shall be no more on earth…, in an English retelling of Yang Guifei of 1928 [11]; J. I. Crump's Chan-kuo Ts'e of 1970, where the king of Chu asks, A thousand autumns hence, who will share such joys with me? [12]; Burton Watson's 史記 of 1993, After my thousand years of life are over [13]; and Watson's 韓非子, May you live a thousand autumns and ten thousand years! [14]. The third is the museum catalogue, because the four characters are a standard inscription on Han bronzes, mirrors, coins and tiles: the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, …obtain what you love; may you have a thousand autumns and ten thousand years; may you have extended years and… (1934) [15] and Great joy, prominence and wealth, a thousand autumns and ten thousand years; may you have wine and food (1941) [16]; Orientations, Great happiness and prosperity, A thousand autumns and ten thousand years of long life, Abundance of wine (1988) [17]; Jessica Rawson and Emma Bunker, …happiness, high rank, prosperity, and a thousand autumns and ten thousand years of long life (1990) [18]; and a Hong Kong coin auction, "Qing Qiu Wan Sui (A thousand autumns and ten thousand years)" (2000) [19]. The romanized phrase turns up in English mostly in books on sumo, which give the formula Senshu banzai daidai kanō and gloss it as a wish that the sport draw audiences for yet another 10,000 years [20].

The historical record

Third century BCE, the 韓非子, chapter 顯學. The 世界大百科事典 cites this chapter as where 千秋万歳 is seen joined as a word of blessing [3]. It appears as the thing Han Fei is attacking. Arguing that talk of the ancient kings is no use to a ruler, he reaches for the most familiar empty words he can think of [21]:

今巫祝之祝人曰：「使若千秋萬歲。」千秋萬歲之聲括耳，而一日之壽無徵於人，此人所以簡巫祝也。

Now when the shamans and invocators bless a man they say, "May you have a thousand autumns and ten thousand years." The sound of "a thousand autumns and ten thousand years" grates on the ear, and yet not one day of life is shown to be added to anyone: this is why people hold the shamans cheap.

The transcription reads 括; the sense wants 聒, noisy, grating, which is the character the 喻林's quotation of the line prints [22], and the English follows 聒. Watson: But the "thousand autumns and ten thousand years" are only a noise dinning on the ear—no one has ever proved that such prayers add so much as a day to anyone's life [14]. To use a phrase as the example of empty noise, Han Fei needed one his reader already knew by heart.

202 BCE to 220 CE, the Han dynasty, on the roofs. The plain, cheerful life of the phrase is in the archaeology. The Qing scholar Gong Zizhen 龔自珍 recorded fifty-five inscriptions from Han roof tiles, and two of them are this phrase: 千秋萬歲, and 千秋萬歲，與地無極, a thousand autumns and ten thousand years, boundless as the earth [23]. They stand in his list beside 長生未央 and 長樂未央, long life without end, long joy without end.

About 91 BCE, the 史記, and the shadow. At the same time the phrase took on a use no one could say out loud. In the 史記's account of the King of Liang, the emperor Jing, drinking with his brother the king, says 千秋萬歲後傳於王, after a thousand autumns and ten thousand years, it passes to the king; the king declined it, but was glad at heart, and so was their mother [24]. The emperor is speaking of his own death and the throne, and does not name either. A later supplement to the chapter tells the scene again with the mother at the table, in the form 千秋萬歲之後傳王 [24]; the 史記's biography of Dou Ying tells it a third time with the shorter 千秋之後, which is the line Watson renders After my thousand years of life are over [25][13]. The 戰國策, the stories of the Warring States collected by Liu Xiang 劉向 at the end of the Former Han, has the king of Chu, laughing at the end of a hunt: 寡人萬歲千秋之後，誰與樂此矣, after my ten thousand years and thousand autumns, who will share this joy? [26][12] The poets take up the shadow too. Jiang Yan 江淹, in the fifth century, uses the four characters of a captive king's grief, 千秋萬歲，為怨難勝, a thousand autumns, ten thousand years: the resentment is more than can be borne [27]; and Du Fu 杜甫, dreaming of the exiled Li Bai 李白, writes 千秋萬歲名，寂寞身後事, a name for a thousand autumns and ten thousand years: a lonely business, after the body is gone [28].

So the phrase carries two things in Chinese at once: it is what you write on a roof tile to wish the house well, and it is what you say when you mean when the king is dead.

720, the 日本書紀. The phrase is in Japan's first official history, finished in 720 [29], in at least three places, and with both of its Chinese lives. It is read here in the movable-type print of 1610, at the leaf. In the chronicle's account of the empress Jingū, the King of Paekche, sitting on a rock to swear an oath of alliance, says 是以自今以後千秋萬歳無絶無窮常稱西蕃春秋朝貢, with the ruby チアキヨロツノヨ beside the four characters [4]; Aston: From this time forward, therefore, for a thousand autumns and for ten thousand years, without pause and without limit, we shall bear the regular title of 'The Western Frontier Province,' and every spring and every autumn will attend your Court with tribute [8]. In 650, when a white pheasant is presented as an omen, the minister Kose's congratulation reads 乃是陛下及至千秋萬歳淨治四方大八嶋 [30], This is a sign that Your Majesty will continue for a thousand autumns and ten thousand years peacefully to govern the Great-eight-islands of the four quarters [8]. And in 658, when the empress Saimei's grandson, Prince Takeru 建王, dies at eight, she tells her ministers 萬歳千秋之後要合葬於朕陵 [31]: after ten thousand years and a thousand autumns, he must be buried with me in my own tomb. Aston: After ten thousand years and a thousand autumns he must be interred along with us in our own misasagi, with the footnote A Chinese expression for the date of the death of an Emperor [8]. That is the Han euphemism, word order and all, in the mouth of a Japanese sovereign speaking of her own death.

736, the 続日本紀, and a name. The 日本国語大辞典's earliest Japanese example is later, and blesses a name. In the eleventh month of 天平 8 the prince Kazuraki no Ōkimi 葛城王 petitions to take the surname of his mother's house, 外家之橘姓, and the emperor grants it [32]:

一依表乞賜橘宿禰千秋萬歳相繼無窮

Entirely as the petition asks, we grant the name Tachibana no Sukune: for a thousand autumns and ten thousand years, may it pass on without end.

So it stands, without punctuation, in a manuscript of 1691, the copy Tokugawa Mitsukuni presented to the Shōheizaka hall [32]. The typeset of 1883 prints 表令賜 where the manuscript has 表乞賜, and the modern forms 祢, 万 and 継; the witnesses differ at that one character [33]. The dictionary quotes the line as 賜橘宿禰。千秋万歳、相継無窮 [1]. The wish here is on a family name, that it should continue, not on a body, that it should last.

1007, and a Japanese objection. The 佛學大辭典 of 1922 quotes the 観心略要集, which it gives to 慧心: 世人之愚也，於老少不定之境，成千秋萬歲之執, the folly of the worldly: in a condition where old and young alike are uncertain of life, they conceive an attachment to a thousand autumns and ten thousand years [34]. 恵心 is the name by which the monk Genshin 源信 (942–1017) was known, and the 日本大百科全書 dates the 観心略要集 to 1007 [35]. The complaint is Han Fei's, from a Buddhist, about twelve hundred years later.

About 1061 to 1065, and a trade. The 日本国語大辞典 gives the 新猿楽記 as its earliest witness for せんずまんざい, the New Year performers [1]. Its line, read here at a leaf of the 群書類従 print, names the act among the turns of a night of sarugaku, beside the tales of the lute-playing priests: 千秌萬歳之酒禱, with ズ in the ruby beside 秌 (an old form of 秋) and サカホカヘ beside 酒禱, the blessing over the wine [36]. The 世界大百科事典 takes it as a sign that the act already existed as a trade, and the 日本大百科全書 that in Heian sarugaku the 千秋万歳之酒祷 was played as comic mimicry; the 百科事典マイペディア adds that in the courtiers' diaries of the Heian period the words are mostly the officials' own blessing [1][3]. What the trade was, the 日本国語大辞典 sets out: a New Year blessing art rooted in old belief, performed by 唱門師 in the line of the medieval yin-yang masters, who stood at the gates of houses, chanted words praising the household's fortune and long life, danced, and were paid [1]. In its note on the word's history, the same dictionary gives the direction of the naming, and hedges it: the art's origin is not clear, but it seems to have been named from the words 「千秋万歳」 chanted in it as a blessing [1]. The ブリタニカ国際大百科事典 says the same without the hedge [1]. The blessing is centuries older than the trade in the record; that the trade took its name from it is the dictionaries' reading.

The thirteenth century, the 平家物語. In the great war tale the phrase is the prayer for a sovereign's span of years. The print of 1623 reads 恠ノ賤ノ男。賤ノ女ニ至迄。只此君千秋萬歳ノ寶筭ヲソ祈リ奉ル, with the ruby ホウサン beside 寶筭 [37]: down to the humblest men and women, they prayed only for this lord's years, a thousand autumns and ten thousand years. An undated movable-type print of the 元和 to 寛永 years (1615–44) has the same words with コノ for 此 [38]. The 日本国語大辞典 quotes the line from another text, with the ruby センシウバンゼイ beside the phrase [1].

The late Muromachi to early Edo period, a commentary. A manuscript commentary on the 庭訓往来, the model letters by which children learned to write, glosses the jewelled broom given out on the first Day of the Rat of the New Year with the words 延命千秋万歳ト云, it means long life, a thousand autumns and ten thousand years [39]. The phrase is the commentator's, not the primer's.

A contest older than its copy of 1838, and 1869: the trade at the head of the trades and at court. In 1838 the scholar Ban Nobutomo 伴信友 made his own colored copy of a picture-book of the trades' poetry contests; the contest and its judge's note are older than the copy, which does not date them. The first bout of one of its contests sets 千秋万歳 on the left against 絵解, the picture-preacher, on the right, and the judge explains the order: 左歌千秋萬歳の所作ハ毎年正月の謡曲なれハ諸職諸道の最初に出て哥合の一番にすゝめり, the left poem's 千秋萬歳 is the act sung every New Year, so it comes out first of all the trades and arts and is set as the contest's first bout [40]. A red reading beside the characters begins センズ. At the palace, the 世界大百科事典 says, the Muromachi records have the performers on the fifth day of the New Year [1]; the same encyclopedia says the palace performance lapsed early in the Edo period and was revived in the 貞享 years (1684–88), and the 日本国語大辞典 puts the Heian performance on the fourth day; the court calendar Redesdale printed, from the Gazette for the New Year of 1869, has 5th day. The dance called Senshiu Banzai [10].

1909, the wish in a novel. The 四字熟語を知る辞典's example of the wish is from Tayama Katai 田山花袋's novel 田舎教師 of 1909, where a speaker joins it to the words of the anthem: 皇室の御栄えあらせらるることは、われわれ国民にとってまことに喜びにたえませんことで、千秋万歳、皆さんの毎日お歌いになる君が代の唱歌にもさざれ石の巌となりて苔のむすまでと申してございます通りであります, the flourishing of the imperial house is a joy beyond words to us its people: a thousand autumns and ten thousand years, just as the Kimigayo you all sing every day says, until the pebble grows into a rock and the moss covers it [1].

From the trade to 1932, 万歳 and 漫才. By the Oda and Tokugawa years, the 日本国語大辞典 says, the performers were called simply 万歳, manzai [3], and the 世界大百科事典 quotes the 書言字考 of 1698: 万歳は千秋万歳の略なり, 万歳 is short for 千秋万歳 [3]. The デジタル大辞泉 calls the 万歳 of the New Year 今日の漫才のもと, the origin of today's 漫才 [3]. 漫才 is the variety stage's act in which two performers make an audience laugh with gesture and talk; the 日本国語大辞典 says the characters were first printed, it is reported, in the January 1932 issue of the Yoshimoto company's house magazine, and the 世界大百科事典 and the 百科事典マイペディア date the spelling's use to 1934 [41]. So the line runs 千秋万歳, 万歳, 漫才: the four characters name, at two removes, the comic double act.

Today. The Japanese dictionaries keep the phrase's two senses side by side. The two dictionaries kotobank serves for the four characters, the デジタル大辞泉 and the 日本国語大辞典, each carry the trade and the wish as separate entries; the four encyclopedias treat the trade, and the 四字熟語を知る辞典 gives the wish alone [1]. JMdict gives the wish: may you live a thousand years [2]. In English the usual rendering, in all three streams above, is a thousand autumns and ten thousand years, and two of the catalogues add of long life [17][18].

A reading

Signed, and offered as one voice among the ones above.

The phrase is the formula, the wish everybody knew, and its ordinariness is the reason the canon argues with it. Han Fei could only use it as his example of empty noise because it was already worn smooth; Genshin could only call it an attachment because everyone held it. Neither spoils the wish. A blessing has to be very common before it is worth attacking, and the attack has preserved the fact that it was common.

The shadow is real and it is old, but it is a court's shadow. In the 史記, the 戰國策 and the 日本書紀 alike, the one who says it is a sovereign speaking of a sovereign's own end, and the euphemism works because the wish is so plainly a wish: one says after my ten thousand years precisely because no one says when I die of a king. The dictionaries' entries for 千秋万歳 record the wish and the trade and leave the euphemism to their entries for 万歳 and to the chronicle, and I read that as fair to how the four characters have lived in Japan: Saimei's 萬歳千秋之後 is a sentence in a history, while the gate, the New Year and the comic stage are where the four characters were heard.

Its meaning is the sum of its characters. A thousand autumns; ten thousand years. The phrase supplies no verb, and every blessing that uses it, from the 使若 of Han Fei's shamans to JMdict, supplies the same one: may you.

References

  1. 「千秋万歳」, at kotobank: デジタル大辞泉; 精選版 日本国語大辞典, with its 語誌; 改訂新版 世界大百科事典; 百科事典マイペディア; 四字熟語を知る辞典; ブリタニカ国際大百科事典 小項目事典; 日本大百科全書 (ニッポニカ). https://kotobank.jp/word/千秋万歳
  2. JMdict (EDRDG), entry 2857307, 千秋万歳, as served by jisho.org. https://jisho.org/search/千秋万歳
  3. 「万歳」, at kotobank: 改訂新版 世界大百科事典 (万歳, まんざい and ばんざい); 精選版 日本国語大辞典; デジタル大辞泉. https://kotobank.jp/word/万歳
  4. 『日本書紀』巻九, movable-type print of 慶長15 (1610). National Diet Library pid 2544344, scan 26. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2544344/1/26
  5. João Rodrigues, in Michael Cooper, ed. and trans., They Came to Japan, 1965, and This Island of Japon, 1973; snippet view, Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/theycametojapana0000mich
  6. J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese and English Dictionary, American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1867, p. 391, s.v. SEN-SHŪ-BAN-ZEI. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishd00hepb
  7. J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, fourth edition, 1888 (copyright 1886), p. 550, s.v. SENSHŪ-BANZAI. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishe00hepbuoft
  8. W. G. Aston, trans., Nihongi: Chronicles of Japan from the Earliest Times to A.D. 697, 1896: vol. I, pp. 249–250 (Jingū); vol. II, p. 238 (Kōtoku, the white pheasant) and p. 253 (Saimei, with note 1). https://archive.org/details/nihongi1asto · https://archive.org/details/nihongi2asto
  9. Charles F. Horne, ed., The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, vol. XIII, Japan, 1917, snippet view, Internet Archive; Ryūsaku Tsunoda, Wm. Theodore de Bary and Donald Keene, comp., Sources of Japanese Tradition, Columbia University Press, 1958, p. 77. https://archive.org/details/sacredbooksearly13hornuoft
  10. Lord Redesdale, Memories, vol. II, 1915, pp. 478–479. https://archive.org/details/memories02rede
  11. The Passion of Yang Kwei-fei, from Ancient Chinese Texts, English edition 1928, snippet view, Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/passionofyangkwe0000unse
  12. J. I. Crump, trans., Chan-kuo Ts'e, Clarendon Press, 1970, p. 228.
  13. Burton Watson, trans., Records of the Grand Historian: Han Dynasty II, revised edition, Columbia University Press, 1993, p. 89 (Shi ji 107).
  14. Burton Watson, trans., Han Feizi: Basic Writings, Columbia University Press, 2003, chapter 顯學 (e-book).
  15. Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Bulletin 6, 1934, snippet view, Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/Bulletin6_201704
  16. Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Bulletin 13, 1941, snippet view, Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/Bulletin13
  17. Orientations 19, no. 12, December 1988, snippet view, Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/orientations_1988-12_19_12
  18. Jessica Rawson and Emma Bunker, Ancient Chinese and Ordos Bronzes, 1990, snippet view, Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/ancientchineseor0000raws
  19. Hong Kong Coin Auction: Catalogue 31, 2000, snippet view, Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/hongkongcoinauct00bald
  20. The Essential Guide to Sumo, 1994; Grand Sumo, 1998, both snippet view, Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/essentialguideto00doro · https://archive.org/details/grandsumo0000unse
  21. 『韓非子』顯學, at zh.wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/韓非子/顯學
  22. 『喻林』卷九 (四庫全書本), quoting 韓非子, at zh.wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/喻林_(四庫全書本)/卷009
  23. 龔自珍『瓦錄序』, at zh.wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/瓦錄序
  24. 『史記』卷58, 梁孝王世家, with 褚少孫's supplement, at zh.wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/史記/卷058
  25. 『史記』卷107, 魏其武安侯列傳, at zh.wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/史記/卷107
  26. 『戰國策』楚策一 (士禮居叢書本), at zh.wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/戰國策_(士禮居叢書本)/楚/一
  27. 江淹『恨賦』, at zh.wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/恨賦
  28. 杜甫『夢李白二首』, the second poem, at zh.wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/夢李白二首
  29. 「日本書紀」, デジタル大辞泉 and 日本大百科全書, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/日本書紀
  30. 『日本書紀』巻二十五, movable-type print of 慶長15 (1610). National Diet Library pid 2544351, scan 53. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2544351/1/53
  31. 『日本書紀』巻二十六, movable-type print of 慶長15 (1610). National Diet Library pid 2544352, scan 6. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2544352/1/6
  32. 『続日本紀』, manuscript of 元禄4 (1691), presented by 徳川光圀. National Diet Library pid 2546871, scan 37. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2546871/1/37
  33. 『続日本紀』, typeset of 明治16 (1883), 伴信友 校. National Diet Library pid 772185, scan 33. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/772185/1/33
  34. 丁福保『佛學大辭典』(1922), s.v. 老少不定, at zh.wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/佛學大辭典/老少不定
  35. 「源信」, デジタル大辞泉 and 日本大百科全書, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/源信
  36. 『新猿楽記』, in 『群書類従』 (no date in the library's record). National Diet Library pid 2559129, scan 12. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2559129/1/12
  37. 『平家物語』巻六, print of 元和9 (1623). National Diet Library pid 2567618, scan 7. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2567618/1/7
  38. 『平家物語』巻六, movable-type print of the 元和・寛永 years (1615–1644). National Diet Library pid 2570042, scan 7. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2570042/1/7
  39. 『庭訓往来抄』 (so catalogued; the book is headed 庭訓往来), a manuscript commentary of the late Muromachi to early Edo period. National Diet Library pid 2532287, scan 7. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2532287/1/7
  40. 『職人歌合画本』, 伴信友's coloured copy, 天保9 (1838). National Diet Library pid 2551815, scan 29. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2551815/1/29
  41. 「漫才」, at kotobank: 精選版 日本国語大辞典; 改訂新版 世界大百科事典; 百科事典マイペディア. https://kotobank.jp/word/漫才

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 · Claude Sonnet (Anthropic), 2026-09-15, citations — every claim tested at its address; most verbatim; one page image number wrong in the research record, corrected; the rest not openable, all opened by hand

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 千秋万歳 (senshūbanzai)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/senshubanzai.