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切磋琢磨 sessa takuma Polish One Another

切磋琢磨 (sessa takuma) is the long effort of polishing learning and character, and friends improving one another by encouragement and rivalry. Its four verbs, cut, file, carve and polish, come from a song in the Book of Songs that Confucius's pupil Zigong quotes. This study follows the two readings that run side by side, a person refining himself and people polishing one another.

Japanese Scroll of Polish One Another (sessa takuma) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Polish One Another切磋琢磨sessa takuma

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

切磋琢磨, sessa takuma, is in Japanese today the long effort by which a person polishes learning and character, and the way friends encourage and compete with one another and so improve, as the dictionaries give it [1][2]; its four characters name four crafts: cutting bone, filing ivory, carving jade, grinding stone. The line comes from a song in the Book of Songs that praises a gentleman 如切如磋、如琢如磨, and Confucius's pupil Zigong 子貢 quotes it in the Analects, so for more than two thousand years it has meant the work of making a person, and two readings of that work run side by side through its history. In one, a single person refines himself, the reading Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) [3] gave the Analects and the one English inherited, from James Legge in 1861 to the large Japanese-English dictionaries of the 1970s. In the other, people polish one another, and that reading has witnesses as old: the Mao commentary has the lord polished by the admonition of his ministers and friends, the Tiantai master Zhiyi 智顗 in 594 and his commentator Zhanran 湛然 in 765 apply it to fellow practitioners, Saichō 最澄 writes it in a letter begging a companion to come home, and in Japan in the winter of 1825–26 a circle of four friends titles its book with it and says in the preface that its worth lies 不在獨自。在相焉, not in oneself alone, but in each other.

Overview

The sense. The デジタル大辞泉 traces the word to the 詩経 and gives it as 学問をし、徳を修めるために、努力に努力を重ねること, effort upon effort, to learn and to cultivate virtue, and also as 友人どうしで励まし合い競い合って向上すること, friends encouraging and competing with one another and so improving [1]. JMdict keeps the two senses apart, diligent application (to work or study); cultivating one's character by studying hard and mutual encouragement (to improve); working hard together; friendly rivalry [2]. The 精選版 日本国語大辞典 gives the same two as its second and third senses, 学問や道徳、また技芸などをみがき上げること, polishing one's learning, virtue or art to a finish, and 仲間同士互いに戒めあい、励ましあい、また競いあって向上すること, companions admonishing, encouraging and competing with one another, and so improving. Its first sense is the craft itself, 骨・角・石・玉などを切りみがくこと, cutting and polishing bone, horn, stone or jade, with a mid-Muromachi dictionary as its source and an example of 1660; the 大辞泉 and JMdict list no craft sense, the 大辞泉 noting only that 琢磨 means working jade and stone [1][2]. The witnesses below show the two senses side by side from the start, not one growing out of the other. The single subject (one person working on himself) and the plural subject (people working on one another) both have early, authoritative witnesses, and today's dictionaries give both.

The words. The four characters are four verbs of handwork. In the song they are four similes, 如切如磋、如琢如磨, as if cut, as if filed, as if carved, as if polished [4]. The Mao commentary on the song names the four materials: 治骨曰切，象曰磋，玉曰琢，石曰磨, working bone is called 切, ivory 磋, jade 琢, stone 磨 [5]. Wang Chong 王充 (27–about 97) [6] writes them as one word, 切磋琢磨，乃成寶器, cut, filed, carved and polished, they become precious vessels [7]. The second character has two forms, 磋 with the stone radical and 瑳 with the jade radical, and the song's own text has been carried in both [4]. Japanese writers before 1868 wrote both and occasionally a third (Notes). The reading is sessa takuma, せっさたくま [2].

The text in English. The earliest English rendering read for this history is James Legge's, in 1861: As you cut and then file, as you carve and then polish [8]. His and then is Zhu Xi's, and his heading for the passage, the successive steps in self-cultivation, gives the single-subject reading in so many words. Arthur Waley in 1937 and 1938 drops the steps (As thing cut, as thing filed, / As thing chiselled, as thing polished) and says in a footnote that the song was a lover's [9][10]. The large Japanese-English dictionaries render the Japanese word as solitary labor, from Hepburn's of 1886 (with great labor and toil) to Kenkyusha's of 1974 (close application; indefatigable assiduity) [11][12]. The earliest English dictionary read for this history that gives working hard together and friendly rivalry is Kenkyusha's school dictionary of 1968, in an example phrase [13]. JMdict today gives both senses [2].

The historical record

Before Confucius. The 詩經, the Book of Songs, 衛風, the song 淇奧. The song's first stanza [4]:

瞻彼淇奧，綠竹猗猗，有匪君子，如切如瑳，如琢如磨，瑟兮僩兮，赫兮咺兮，有匪君子，終不可諼兮。

Look at the bend of the Qi, its green bamboo so lush. There is our elegant lord: as cut, as filed, as carved, as polished; how grave, how dignified, how bright, how distinguished. There is our elegant lord, never to be forgotten. The text in this edition reads 瑳 and records 磋 as a variant. The song itself does not say whose work made the lord, or who the lord was.

The Mao reading, as Kong Yingda 孔穎達's 毛詩正義 gives it (completed 642). The Mao tradition's preface names him: 《淇奧》，美武公之德也。有文章，又能聽其規諫，以禮自防, "The bend of the Qi" praises the virtue of Duke Wu 武公 of Wey: he had accomplishment, and he could also listen to admonition and guard himself by ritual [5]. The Mao commentary on the line itself: 治骨曰切，象曰磋，玉曰琢，石曰磨。道其學而成也。聽其規諫以自脩，如玉石之見琢磨也, working bone is called 切, ivory 磋, jade 琢, stone 磨. It speaks of his learning brought to completion. He listened to admonition and so cultivated himself, as jade and stone are carved and polished [5]. Kong Yingda's subcommentary says whose admonition: 又能聽臣友之規諫, he could also listen to the admonition of his ministers and friends, and sets the four characters together: 「聽其規諫，以禮自防」，即「切磋琢磨，金錫圭璧」是也 [5]. In the Mao reading of the song, the lord is polished by other people. The commission Kong Yingda led completed the 正義 in 642 [14].

The 論語, the Analects, 學而 1.15. Zigong and Confucius. The passage [15]:

子貢曰：「貧而無諂，富而無驕，何如？」子曰：「可也。未若貧而樂、富而好禮者也。」子貢曰：「《詩》云：『如切如磋，如琢如磨。』其斯之謂與？」子曰：「賜也，始可與言《詩》已矣，告諸往而知來者。」

Zigong said: "Poor without flattering, rich without arrogance: how is that?" The Master said: "It will do. But it is not as good as poor and joyful, rich and loving ritual." Zigong said: "The Songs say: as if cut, as if filed, as if carved, as if polished. Is that what this means?" The Master said: "Ci, at last I can talk about the Songs with you. Told what has gone, you know what is to come." Zigong hears in the line that the good can be made better, and Confucius rewards him for hearing it. The passage is a conversation between teacher and pupil about refining oneself, and the line is quoted inside an exchange in which the teacher is working on the pupil.

The 大學, the Great Learning, a chapter of the 禮記. The chapter divides the line in two: 「如切如磋」者，道學也；「如琢如磨」者，自脩也, "as if cut, as if filed" is the path of learning; "as if carved, as if polished" is self-cultivation [16]. Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 (127–200) [17] glosses 道 as 言, speaks of, and Kong Yingda's subcommentary reads the two halves as first study and repeated practice, 初習謂之學，重習謂之脩 [16].

First century. Wang Chong, the 論衡, chapter 量知. The four characters as one word, and learning as what they make: 骨曰切，象曰磋，玉曰琢，石曰磨，切磋琢磨，乃成寶器。人之學問知能成就，猶骨象玉石切磋琢磨也, bone cut, ivory filed, jade carved, stone polished: cut, filed, carved and polished, they become precious vessels. A person's learning and ability come to completion as bone, ivory, jade and stone are cut, filed, carved and polished [7].

Third century. He Yan 何晏, the 論語集解. A commentary of the Three Kingdoms' state of Wei [18]. Under 1.15, a note given to Kong Anguo 孔安國: 能貧而樂道、富而好禮者，能自切磋琢磨, one who can be poor and delight in the Way, rich and love ritual, can cut and polish himself [19]. The compound in a commentary, with the single subject, 自.

594. Zhiyi, the 摩訶止觀, the Great Calming and Contemplation. The founder of the Tiantai school, lecturing in 594 [20], lists the three kinds of good friend a practitioner needs. The second is the 同行, dōgyō, the fellow practitioner [21]:

二、同行者，行隨自意及安樂行，未必須伴；方等、般舟行法，決須好伴，更相策發，不眠不散，日有其新；切磋琢磨，同心齊志，如乘一船；互相敬重，如視世尊。是名「同行」。

Second, the fellow practitioner. For the practices of following one's own mind and of peace and joy, a companion is not always needed; for the Vaipulya and the pratyutpanna practices, a good companion is required. Spur each other on, neither sleeping nor straying, new every day; cut and polish, one mind and one resolve, as if riding in one boat; honor one another as you would look upon the World-Honored One. This is called the fellow practitioner. The four characters are the work of two monks on each other.

765. Zhanran, the 止觀輔行傳弘決, the commentary on the 摩訶止觀. Zhanran quotes the old glossary of the four crafts and then says what the words mean here: 今謂互相切磋使成法器, here it means cutting and polishing one another, so that each becomes a vessel of the Dharma [22]. This is the mutual sense stated as a gloss, in the commentary of the Tiantai tradition that Japan's Tendai school received.

797. Kūkai 空海, the 三教指帰, Indications of the Goals of the Three Teachings. Kūkai, at twenty-four [23], puts the two halves of the line into a sentence on education. The 1882 print [24]:

則玉緣琢磨成照車器人待切瑳致穿犀才

So jade, by carving and polishing, becomes the gem that lights a carriage; a man, by being cut and filed, gains the talent that pierces rhinoceros hide. The man does not cut himself: he waits on the cutting, 待.

Undated; 816 by the order of the collection. Saichō, a letter to Taihan 泰範. Taihan studied Tendai under Saichō, took initiation with him from Kūkai in 812, and did not return to Saichō's mountain [25]. The letter is headed 與泰範阿闍梨勸歸山書, to the ācārya Taihan, urging him to come back to the mountain, and the 1920 edition prints it [26]:

但出世之友更無他人。善惡之事未察。塔院切瑳琢磨同入水火。… 伏乞照察本願。遙留此院。早歸弊室。俱期佛慧。莫使獨證。… 努力努力。莫棄老僧。

In the life that leaves the world I have no other friend. Good and bad I have not weighed: in the pagoda cloister we cut and polished each other and went together into water and fire … I beg you, look to your first vow, stay at this cloister, come home soon, and let us seek the Buddha's wisdom together; do not leave me to awaken alone … Strive, strive. Do not abandon an old monk. Saichō writes that he is old and grieving, his companion in the Dharma gone. It carries a month and a day, 四月廿一日, and no year [26]. The edition places it directly after a letter of the second month of 弘仁七年 (816) and directly before a second letter to Taihan dated 弘仁七年五月一日, the first day of the fifth month of 816, which sends with it ten 斤 of tea [26][27]. The reply to that second letter, written in Taihan's name, is preserved among Kūkai's collected writings under the title 爲泰範答叡山澄和尙啓書, written for Taihan, answering the letter of the reverend Chō of Mount Hiei [28]. It declines in the language of humility: 泰範智昧菽麥。何辨玉石, I am too dull to tell beans from wheat; how could I tell jade from stone?, and 利他之事悉讓大師, the work of benefiting others I leave entirely to you [28]. The 伝教大師伝 of 1921, edited by Miura Hiroyuki 三浦周行, calls the reply 蓋し弘法大師の代作せるものなり, in all likelihood Kūkai's ghost-writing, and writes that after it 兩大師の間に消息を絕つ, the two great masters ceased to write to one another [29]. Saichō, the founder of the Tendai school in Japan, died in 822 [30]. The 日本国語大辞典 gives his letters as the earliest-dated of its examples of the word [1].

1166. Hongzhi Zhengjue 宏智正覺, a verse on Yantou and Xuefeng. The Chan record of Hongzhi, compiled in 1166, gives the case of Xuefeng 雪峯 and his dharma brother Yantou 巖頭, which ends with Yantou's words 雪峯雖與我同條生。不與我同條死, Xuefeng was born on the same branch as I, but he will not die on the same branch. Hongzhi's verse on it opens 切瑳琢磨。變態肴訛, cutting and filing, carving and polishing; shifting forms, tangles and confusions [31]. The commentary of Wansong Xingxiu 萬松行秀 on the same case says 雪峯傍參巖頭。君子不恥下問, Xuefeng studied at Yantou's side; the gentleman is not ashamed to ask of those below him [32]. The word frames a case about brothers in one lineage testing one another.

1246–1278. Lanxi Daolong 蘭溪道隆, a Chinese Chan master in Kamakura. Lanxi came to Japan in 1246 and founded Kenchōji in Kamakura [33]. In a letter to a monk in his recorded sayings he writes 一動一靜以古爲儔良友。則如岩頭雪峯相似。切磋琢磨。安能不盡善也, in every motion and every stillness take the ancients as your companions and good friends; then, like Yantou and Xuefeng, cut and polish one another, and how could you fall short of the good? [34]. The pair of Hongzhi's verse has become a model of friends.

1420. The 応永本論語抄, a Japanese commentary on the Analects, copied in the Ōei era. The 日本国語大辞典 gives it as its first citation for the third sense, companions improving one another: 法眷に成て友々に切瑳琢磨するは、尤も可楽事也, to become kin in the Dharma and to cut and polish one another as friends is the most joyful of things [1]. A commentary on the Confucian classic explains the line in the Buddhist word for a fellow monk, 法眷.

1807. Kyokutei Bakin 曲亭馬琴, 椿説弓張月, Strange Tales of the Crescent Moon. In the first part of the novel, Shinzei 信西 tells the boy Tametomo 為朝, an archer, that every art takes years. The block of 1807 cuts [35]:

凡藝術ハ夥の月を距年を踰切差琢磨の功を積ざれば

In every art, unless one passes many months and crosses the years and builds up the work of cutting and polishing … The sentence ends that one does not reach its height. This is the second sense, the long labor of one person, and it is the sentence the Kenkyusha-published dictionary of 1918 chose for its example [36].

Winter 1825–26. 『切磋編』, an anthology of four friends, in manuscript. The catalogue gives it to 若林子憲 and others; the preface names four friends. Its preface, dated 乙酉十二月, the twelfth month of 文政8, which fell in early 1826, and signed 國友輔, reads [37]:

學貴切磋。而非貴獨自切磋也。朋友相切磋。是貴也。予与若子憲・村文叔・松元芳友已幾年。而未嘗一日而不如切如磋也。可謂近矣。今茲予集其詩文稾及巳詞而編之。編成。三子者曰。此編也成。何以名之。予曰。是平生切磋之效也。請名曰切磋編。三子者可。終名焉。於乎。此編也唯可觀吾儕平生之交且學之貴切磋。不在獨自。在相焉。而不可問工拙何如也。

Learning prizes cutting and polishing, but it does not prize cutting and polishing by oneself: friends cutting and polishing one another, that is what is prized. 若子憲, 村文叔, 松元芳 and I have been friends for some years, and not a day has passed that we did not cut and file one another; we may be said to have come near. Now I have gathered their verse and prose and made a book of them. When it was done the three said: the book is made; what shall we call it? I said: it is what our cutting and polishing has produced; let us call it the Book of Cutting and Polishing. The three agreed, and so it was named. Ah, this book shows only our friendship, and that learning's worth in cutting and polishing lies not in oneself alone but in each other; ask nothing of whether the verses are good.

1864. The rules of the school of the Yoshii domain 吉井藩, printed in 1927. The domain's lord opened a school in 文久四年, 1864, and the rules posted in it are printed in the county gazetteer of 1927. The fourth article [38]:

切磋琢磨は朋友之道也面々於堂中相與に道義を研窮し講習討論の際聊大聲に至候共不苦候得共義を聞て服し善を見て從ひ秋毫鄙吝の心を生せす公明正大唯其義理を講明するを以て務と可致事

Cutting and polishing is the way of friends. In the hall, investigate the Way together; in lecture and debate it is no fault if voices rise a little, but on hearing what is right, yield, and on seeing the good, follow it; harbor not a hair of meanness, and make it your duty, open and upright, only to make the right plain. Elsewhere the rules ask the students, as brothers, to warn and guide one another when they see a fault [38].

1876. Kawaji Toshiyoshi 川路利良, 警察手眼, precepts for the police. 僚友ハ素ヨリ互ニ切磋琢磨ノ交義アリト雖, though colleagues have from the first a bond of cutting and polishing one another, 公私ノ兩則ヲ犯セル以上ハ決シテ曲庇ス可カラズ, once a man has broken the rules, public and private, he must never be shielded [39]. The mutual sense in the language of a Meiji institution, named as the bond a policeman must not let stand above the rules.

1942. Nakajima Atsushi 中島敦, 山月記, The Moon over the Mountain. The poet who has become a tiger confesses: 己は詩によって名を成そうと思いながら、進んで師に就いたり、求めて詩友と交って切磋琢磨に努めたりすることをしなかった, though I meant to make my name by poetry, I did not go to a teacher, nor seek out fellow poets and strive to cut and polish one another, and gives the reason: 己の珠に非ざることを惧れるが故に、敢て刻苦して磨こうともせず, because I feared I was not a gem, I would not suffer the polishing [40]. The 日本国語大辞典 gives the passage as its second citation for the third sense [1].

What is not a source. Diamond cut diamond, which the 1918 Japanese-English dictionary sets beside the word, is an English proverb of two equally sharp opponents, a pairing made by the dictionary [36].

The text in English

1861. James Legge, The Chinese Classics, vol. 1, pp. 8 and 227. The Analects: "It is said in the Book of Poetry, 'As you cut and then file, as you carve and then polish.' The meaning is the same, I apprehend, as that which you have just expressed", under the heading AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE SUCCESSIVE STEPS IN SELF-CULTIVATION [8]. The Great Learning: "As we cut and then file," indicates the work of learning. "As we chisel and then grind," indicates that of self-culture [8]. And then is Zhu Xi's sequence, not the Chinese text's.

1871. James Legge, The She King, pp. 91–92. The song itself: There is our elegant and accomplished prince,— / As from the knife and the file, / As from the chisel and the polisher!, headed The praise of duke Woo, his accomplishments, his assiduous cultivation of himself, his dignity, with the note that the lines tell how he had cultivated himself [41]. Legge renders the preface's Duke Wu and drops the preface's admonition, so the lord is again alone.

1886. James Curtis Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary. SESSATAKUMA … adv. With great labor and toil: — shite gakumon wo suru; — no kō wo tsumu [11]. The earliest entry for the Japanese word in the English dictionaries read for this history (Hepburn's editions of 1867 and 1872 have none), in the second sense.

1896. F. Brinkley and others, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary. A noun, marked in the entry as Chinese in origin: Sessa-takuma … Working or studying with great diligence and toil. Sessa-takuma no kō munashikarazu, his (or her) great diligence and toil was not in vain [42].

1918. Takenobu Yoshitarō 武信由太郎, 武信和英大辞典, pp. 1770–1771. sessa (切磋). n. Diligence; assiduity; application. ¶ 切磋琢磨 great diligence and labour; diamond cutting diamond, with Bakin's sentence as the example: 藝術は切磋琢磨の功を積まざれば其の極に到り難し. Art requires years of hard application before it reaches perfection [36]. Diamond cutting diamond is the earliest hint, in the English dictionaries read for this history, that two are at work.

1937 and 1938. Arthur Waley, The Book of Songs, no. 42, p. 46, and The Analects of Confucius, p. 87. Waley files the song under COURTSHIP and gives it a woman's voice: Delicately fashioned is my lord, / As thing cut, as thing filed, / As thing chiselled, as thing polished … Never for a moment can I forget him [9]. In the Analects a year later he translates the line the same way and adds a footnote: The Book of Songs p. 46, which describes the elegance of a lover. Tzu-kung interprets it as describing the pains the gentleman has taken to improve his character [10]. The footnote says in two sentences what the reception shows at length: the line was a song before it was a lesson, and the lesson was a reading.

1968. Kenkyusha's New School Japanese-English Dictionary, p. 911. Work (study) hard; apply oneself closely to (one's study), and under it the phrase 切磋琢磨し合う, work hard together; be in friendly rivalry (with) [13]. The mutual sense enters an English dictionary as an example phrase.

1971. Donald K. Swearer, compiler, Secrets of the Lotus. On a Zen monastery, as the Internet Archive's full-text index gives the passage (the book is lent, not open): The mind of the individual monk is polished by the others. Sessa takuma, literally "rubbing one another in order to become polished" [43]. The mutual sense given as the literal meaning, in a book on Buddhist practice.

1974. Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, fourth edition. Close application; indefatigable assiduity [12]. The large dictionary still gives the second sense alone.

1979. D. C. Lau, Confucius: The Analects, I.15. Like bone cut, like horn polished, / Like jade carved, like stone ground [44]. Lau names the materials, as the Mao commentary does, with horn where the commentary has ivory.

2002. Jeff Garrison and others, Kodansha's Dictionary of Basic Japanese Idioms, p. 501. sessa-takuma "cut, plane, fashion, and polish": to strive to improve oneself intellectually or morally; to strive together with others for such improvement, with the note that just as in former times an artisan would cut, then file and plane, then form the shape, and finally polish a piece of ivory or horn [45]. Both senses, and Zhu Xi's sequence still teaching the craft.

2003. Edward Slingerland, Confucius: Analects, I.15. As if cut, as if polished; / As if carved, as if ground, with the commentary that cutting and carving are the initial rough stages, and polishing and grinding the finishing touches, after Zhu Xi [46].

Today: JMdict gives diligent application (to work or study); cultivating one's character by studying hard and mutual encouragement (to improve); working hard together; friendly rivalry [2]. Cut, file, carve, polish renders the four characters word for word. What a rendering must keep is that the four verbs have an object, and the history has supplied two: the self, and one another.

A reading

Zhu Xi read the line as a sequence. In his commentary on the Analects the bone-worker cuts and then files, the jade-worker carves and then polishes, and what is already fine is made finer: 治之已精，而益求其精也 [47]. In his commentary on the Great Learning the same sequence runs from rough to smooth [48]. Through Legge that reading became the English one, and through the dictionaries it became the English for the Japanese word for a century: one person, alone, applying himself. The Qing scholar Chen Qiyuan 陳啟源 objected that the four are simply the names of four crafts, 非有淺深, with no shallow and deep, and that Zhu Xi forced the text [49]. I think Chen is right about the song and that Zhu Xi was right about what Zigong heard in it. Neither of them was arguing about who does the polishing. On that question, the Mao tradition had already answered: the Mao preface's lord is polished because he listens to his ministers and friends. Zhu Xi himself, in a letter to a minister, uses the four characters for exactly that: the minister who would counsel the throne should first set his own mind at rest, and then 博延天下之賢人智士日夕相與切磋琢磨, invite widely the wise and able of the realm and cut and polish together with them day and night [50]. The solitary sense belongs to his commentary on one line, not to his use of the word. The mutual sense was never the late, softer meaning that the English dictionaries make it look like. It is the sense Zhiyi gave the fellow practitioner in one boat, the sense Zhanran glossed in so many words, the sense Saichō wrote when he begged Taihan to come back, and the sense four friends in 1826 put in the title of their book and argued in its preface: 學之貴切磋。不在獨自。在相焉. That sentence is the best short commentary on the four characters I know of, and it is better than Zhu Xi's for what the word does in Japanese now. Bone and jade do not polish themselves, and Kūkai's man 待切瑳, waits on the cutting. The 1864 school rule says what that costs a group of young men: voices may rise in the hall, but when one hears what is right, one yields. Nakajima's tiger gives the same answer from the other side. He would not let others work on him, for fear that the work would show he was no gem, and that refusal is the story of his ruin. I read the four characters as the work people do on one another, done with patience. A single person can also do the work alone, and the long tradition of the second sense is real, but even Zigong only heard the line because his teacher was working on him.

Notes

Sources not seen

The 応永本論語抄, the copy of the 論語抄 made in 応永二七 (1420), which the catalogue gives to the hand of Emperor Shōkō 称光天皇, in ten 巻 in five volumes, held in the 東山御文庫, the imperial collection in Kyoto, as listed in the 国書総目録 (国書データベース, https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/work/539537). It is the 日本国語大辞典's first citation for the mutual sense, and its sentence is quoted here from the dictionary. It would settle the sentence as the manuscript writes it, the form of 瑳, and what the commentary is explaining at that point.

種村和史, 「二つの斷章取義：宋代における「如切如磋、如琢如磨」解釋の展開」, 『日本宋代文學學會報』 5, 2018, pp. 1–28; National Diet Library bibliographic record 029546783. It is a study of how Song readers interpreted the line. It would settle whether the sequence of rough and fine that this history gives to Zhu Xi had Song predecessors.

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

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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.

Not yet reviewed.

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 切磋琢磨 (sessa takuma)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/sessa-takuma.