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住めば都 sumeba miyako Home Is Where You Live

This is a philological study of the Japanese proverb 住めば都 (sumeba miyako). It spans a courtier's failed consolation at sea in 1183, a tale of 義経 refused an island's invitation, a 1656 proverb book, and a one-vowel twin that means the opposite of what it is often taken for.

Japanese Scroll of Home Is Where You Live (sumeba miyako) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Home Is Where You Live (sumeba miyako)

Home Is Where You Live (sumeba miyako) on a traditional Japanese Scroll by Master Eri Takase.

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Abstract

住めば都, live there, and it is the capital, is a Japanese proverb that any place, however remote or poor, becomes home once one has lived in it. Its oldest witness is a poem of 1183, written at sea by an exiled Taira courtier, where the sentence is literally true because the child emperor is aboard; a century later, in a tale of Minamoto no Yoshitsune 義経 refused an island's hospitality, the emperor has dropped out and the sentence has become an offer to anyone. It stands as a proverb by 1614 and in the first Japanese proverb book by 1656. A twin one vowel away, 住まば都, means the opposite — settle where the capital is — and the modern dictionaries warn against confusing the two.

Overview

The sense. The sentence was true before it was wise. For two courtiers in exile, in 1183 and in the 1350s, where the sovereign dwells is the capital was a fact of Japanese political grammar and a consolation that did not console; both poems say and yet. The tale of Minamoto no Yoshitsune takes the emperor out and makes it an offer: stay, anywhere is a capital. The 1614 witness makes it a rule with its own proof, and where you do not live, even the capital is a journey. The proverb books of 1638 and 1656 file it beside even hell is home. The songs make it a village's pride; 春水 makes it love's; 蘇峰 in 1896 makes it Stoicism, heat and cold are in the mind. The modern dictionaries flatten it to habituation and add the warning about its twin. In none of these is the place chosen. That is the one thing every sense keeps: the capital is wherever you already are.

The words. Two words. 住めば, sumeba, is the verb 住む, to dwell, in its conditional form: if one lives there, once one lives there. 都, miyako, is the capital, and in 1872 Hepburn still defined it as the place in which the Mikado resides, the Imperial city [1]. That is the word's old sense, and it is the reason this proverb could begin as a sentence about the emperor. 藤井乙男's 1910 dictionary glosses the whole: おのが住所となればいかなる邊鄙も都のやうに思はる, once it is one's own dwelling, however remote a place comes to seem like the capital [2]. The modern dictionaries add the turn the proverb took: 精選版日本国語大辞典, どんなさびしい田舎や不便な所でも、住み慣れれば住みよくなって、離れにくいものだ … 転じて、物質的わびしさも慣れれば、精神的楽しさになる, however lonely or inconvenient the place, once you are used to it it is good to live in and hard to leave; by extension, material poverty, once you are used to it, becomes a pleasure of the mind; ことわざを知る辞典 extends it to any hard circumstance, 厳しく辛い境遇も、慣れてしまえば苦にならず [3]. The proverb is about habituation, not about choice. It has a twin one vowel away that means the opposite. 住まば都, sumaba miyako, is if you are to live anywhere, let it be the capital, and it is older in print: a small song of the 1590s, 住まば都よ、捨てば都、あぢきなの身や, if I am to live, the capital; if I am to throw myself away, the capital; what a wretched body. The 精選版日本国語大辞典 gives it its own headword and gloss, 住むなら都がよい, and the デジタル大辞泉 warns under the main entry: 住むのなら都会が良いの意で使うのは誤り, to use this to mean "the city is the place to live" is an error [3]. Sumaba is a distinct, older phrase, not a variant of sumeba. The reading is sumeba miyako. The archive writes it 住めば都, すめば都, 住ば都 and すめばみやこ, one proverb in four spellings.

The proverb in English. Chamberlain's Handbook of 1888 gives the earliest English, If you live in a place, it becomes the capital so far as you are concerned, with There is no place like home in brackets [4]; Brinkley's dictionary of 1896 keeps the capital and reaches for Latin, ubi bene, ibi patria [5]; 井上十吉 in 1898 gives the earliest known equation, Where we live, there is the capital, literal and keeping the capital, so the sentence can still be true of an emperor [6]. 藤井 in 1910 gives There is no place like home, and the Italian To every bird its own nest is charming, both proverbs of the home one already has, the opposite direction from a proverb about the home one grows into [2]. Takehara Tsunetaō 竹原常太 in 1946 repeats 藤井's equation [7]. Buchanan in 1965 gives the right literal and gloss but a parallel that points the wrong way, an Englishman's home is his castle, a proverb about a man's right to his own house, not about growing used to a place [8]. Trimnell in 2004 keeps 井上's direction and the right sense [9]. The Galef collections of 1987, 2000 and 2012 and Zona's of 1996 do not carry the proverb; the 2012 Galef attaches There's no place like home to a different Japanese proverb, birds return to their old nests.

The historical record

1183. A Taira courtier, a poem in the 源平盛衰記, book 33. The Taira have fled the capital with the child emperor and are at sea off Kyushu on the harvest moon; the courtiers are given the topic love, on the moon, and one of them writes 君すめばこゝも雲居の月なれどなほ戀しきは都なりけり, since you, my lord, dwell here, this too is the moon above the cloud-palace; and yet what I long for is the capital. The chronicle says they looked at one another and wrung out their sleeves. Who wrote it depends on the chronicle. In the 源平盛衰記, the poem stands under Taira no Tokitada 平大納言時忠, and Taira no Yukimori 左馬頭行盛's poem is the next one, 名にしおふ秋のなかばも過ぎぬべしいつより露の霜に替らむ; 藤井 in 1910 and the 俚言集覧 of 1900 cite the poem from the 平家物語 under Yukimori, and the dictionaries follow them. The proverb's sentence is here in its first form, 君住めば, since the sovereign dwells here, and it is literally true: the capital is where the emperor is. It is also a consolation that fails [10][2][11].

1381. Fujiwara no Tametada 藤原為忠, in the 新葉集, the Southern Court's anthology. At the mountain temple that served the exiled court as a palace: 君すめば峯にも尾にも宮居して深山ながらの都なりけり, since my lord dwells here there are palaces on every ridge and spur, and deep in the mountains it is a capital. The same sentence, two centuries on, from the other side of a civil war, and still about the emperor [11].

Muromachi period. 御曹子島わたり, a tale of the young Minamoto no Yoshitsune's voyage to the islands. The islanders of Ezo urge him to stay: これより都へは、順風よくして七十餘日、只よの常の船路ならず、同じくは是にとゞまり給ふべし、住めばいづくも都なり, from here to the capital is seventy days with a fair wind and no ordinary voyage; you had better stay here; live anywhere, and it is a capital. The emperor has dropped out of the sentence. It is now about anyone, and it is an invitation. Minamoto no Yoshitsune refuses [12].

1614. 慶長見聞集, a book of things seen and heard in the new capital of Edo. 野の末山のおくにも住ば都、すまされば都も旅なり, at the end of the moor or the back of the mountains, live there and it is a capital; where you do not live, even the capital is a journey. The first attestation the dictionaries give for the proverb as a proverb, and the one that states its logic whole: the second half is the proof of the first [13].

1638. 毛吹草, the first collection of Japanese proverbs. みやこもたびはうし ぢごくもすみか, even the capital is hard when you are a traveler; even hell is home. The proverb's sibling, in the first book to gather proverbs, eighteen years before the proverb itself is written down in one [14].

1656. 世話尽, the second proverb collection, book two, leaf 33. In the list of sayings beginning with す, between すいよりぎやう and すねものゝにがわらひ: すめばみやこ. The proverb in a proverb book, in the hand of its first printing [15].

1703. 松の葉, a songbook. 鳥も通はぬ山なれど住めば都よ我が里よ, a mountain no bird visits, but live there and it is a capital, my own village. A song line in the 七五七五 measure, and still sung in the provinces two centuries later: a Shimane boat-launching song collected in 1914 has 住めば都に尙まさる, and a Gunma folk song of 1925 has the 1703 line word for word [16].

1832. Tamenaga Shunsui 為永春水, 春色梅児誉美, the first of the sentimental novels. 外は田畑の薄冰、心解けあふ裏借家も、住めば都にまさるらん, thin ice on the fields outside, but a back-alley rented room where two hearts thaw is better than the capital, once you live in it. Love makes the tenement a capital; the dictionary still quotes the line under 裏借屋 [17].

1888 to 1896. Meiji prose. 宇田川文海 in 1888, 住めば都とか云ふ譬喩もあれば、山家の住居を面白いものと思へは; a tract of 1891, 地獄も住み家深山の奧荒磯の浦も所謂住めば都なり, pairing the proverb with its sibling; and Tokutomi Sohō 徳富蘇峰 in 1896 making a maxim of the mind of it: 熱も冷も … 心より生ずる … 住めば都とは、則ち此の意味なり, heat and cold are born in the mind; this is what "live there and it is the capital" means [18].

1910. 藤井乙男, 諺語大辞典. 【住メバ都】, with the gloss quoted above and four sources in order: the 平家物語 poem, the 御伽草子 islanders, the 松の葉 song, and the Chinese cousin from 荀子; then two English and Italian parallels, There is no place like home and To every bird its own nest is charming. Beside it, 【住メバ田舍モ名所】, live there and even the country has its famous sights, and elsewhere 【地獄モ住所】住メバ都と同意 [2].

1929 and 1933. 藤井 lists it among the two- and three-word proverbs, 「善は急げ」「十人十色」「住めば都」「氣は心」, and reproduces a comic song that strings proverbs together, 我いまだ住めば都を見ず候程に. 中野's 俚諺大辞典 of 1933 repeats 藤井's gloss and sources and, under the sibling 地獄も棲所, names the 1699 諺草 as the book that first set 荀子 beside it [19][20].

The dictionaries today. The dictionary glosses quoted under Overview's The words; ことわざを知る辞典's example is a 1952 story set in a Hokkaidō coal town, いまは、住めば都だと思っている, now I think of it as home. The National Diet Library's public-domain books carry the proverb in its main spelling in four hundred and six books, from 1888 onward in typeset, and in the 1656 leaf in kana [3].

What is not a source. Two foreign cousins are set beside the proverb and neither is its parent. The Chinese is 荀子's 榮辱篇: 越人安越，楚人安楚，君子安雅, the man of Yue is at ease in Yue, the man of Chu in Chu, the gentleman in what is correct, and the passage says why, 是注錯習俗之節異也, it is a matter of habit and custom, not of nature; 藤井 and 中野 cite it, and 中野 says the pairing goes back to the 1699 諺草 [21]. The Latin is Pacuvius through Cicero's Tusculans, patria est, ubicumque est bene, one's country is wherever one is well, with Socrates calling himself a citizen of the world, and the Proverbia Senecae's non in loco, sed in homine est, it is not in the place but in the man; the Italian dictionary's tag ubi bene ibi patria is the late form [22]. Both cousins are about the man who is at ease anywhere; the Japanese proverb is about the place that becomes home. And the twin 住まば都, one vowel away, is not a variant but a contrary, older in print, and to be kept apart.

The proverb in English

1888. Basil Hall Chamberlain, A Handbook of Colloquial Japanese, page 324. Number 29 of his list of proverbs: Sumeba miyako. If you live in a place, it becomes the capital so far as you are concerned. ("There is no place like home.") [4]

1896. F. Brinkley and others, 和英大辞典, page 1396. Under the verb, marked as a proverb: Sumeba miyako, すみば都, wherever I live, there is the capital (almost equal in sense to the Latin ubi bene, ibi patria — where it is well with me, there is my country) [5].

1898. 井上十吉, 英語学講義録, lessons in translating Japanese into English. 住めば都, Where we live, there is the capital. The earliest known equation, and the best: literal, with the capital kept, so that the sentence can still be true of an emperor [6].

1909. 井上十吉, 和英辞典, page 1049. Under 都: 住めば都. One gets used to any place [23].

1910. 藤井. There is no place like home, and the Italian To every bird its own nest is charming. Both are proverbs of the home one already has and loves, which is the opposite direction from a proverb about the home one grows into [2].

1915. 斎藤秀三郎, page 1237. Under so: Home is home, be it ever so homely. 見苦しくとも住めば都 [24].

1942. 研究社, Kenkyūsha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, page 1243. Under 都, There is no place like home; the copy's text layer does not preserve the Japanese beside it, and elsewhere the same dictionary has the variant 見苦しくとも住めば我家, Home is home, however homely it may be [25].

1946. Takehara Tsunetaō, スタンダード和英大辞典. 住メバ都, There is no place like home: 藤井's equation, thirty-six years on [7].

1958. Okada Rokuo, Japanese Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, page 149. Sumeba miyako. If you live long, no matter where, that place will be as good as the capital for you. The place you live in, however out-of-the-way it may be, is bound to become so dear to your heart after a long residence, that you will come to like it as the best place in the world. It is well said that "a man's house is his castle." "There is no place like home." [26] Okada's is the reading that keeps the growing-into.

1965. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, page 180, chapter PRACTICALITY. Sumeba miyako: "If you live there, it is the capital." Where you live will become the capital in your eyes and the best of all possible places. English parallel: An Englishman's home is his castle. His literal is right and his gloss is right; his parallel points the wrong way, since the English proverb is about a man's right to his own house and not about growing used to a place [8].

1968. Charles Corwin, A Dictionary of Japanese and English Idiomatic Equivalents. Sumeba miyako, 住めば都, Once I get accustomed to it, any place is good to live in (marked "(P)" in Corwin's headword system) [27].

1974. 研究社, fourth edition, page 1111. Under 都: 住めば都. There's no place like home [28].

1980. 研究社, Kenkyūsha's New English-Japanese Dictionary, fifth edition, page 172. Under bird: Every bird likes its own nest the best. どの鳥でも自分の巣を最も好む (cf.「住めば都」): the proverb as a cross-reference to the bird proverb 藤井 set beside it in 1910 [29].

2004. Edward Trimnell, Tigers, Devils, and Fools, Beechmont Crest, page 134. Wherever one lives is the capitol (his spelling), A person grows fond of the place in which he is living. Even if he didn't want to live in a particular town or region at first, over time he will come to think of it as the best place on earth. 井上's direction, the capital kept, and the right sense [9].

Today. JMdict: you can get used to living anywhere; home is where you make it; wherever I lay my hat is home [30]. The house title, Home Is Where You Live, is the nearest of the shelf's, and 井上's 1898 line is its ancestor. What a rendering must keep: the direction, from living to home and not from home to loving; the capital, which is what makes the sentence about an emperor possible; and the warning that sumaba is a different proverb.

A reading

The proverb began as a courtier's sentence about the emperor, where you dwell, my lord, is the capital, said twice in exile by men who did not believe it, and the people made it true of themselves by the Muromachi period. The 1614 witness gives its logic entire, live there and it is the capital; do not, and even the capital is a journey; and there is a twin one vowel away that means the reverse and is older in print. My own reading is that the proverb's whole force is in the failed consolation it began as. The courtier wrote that the moon over the sea was the palace moon because the emperor was there, and then wrote that he still longed for the capital; the proverb is what happened when ordinary people took the first half and lived long enough somewhere for the second half to stop being true.

References

  1. James Curtis Hepburn, 『和英語林集成』, 1872. National Diet Library pid 993689, scans 180 and 271. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/993689/1/180
  2. 藤井乙男『諺語大辞典』, 有朋堂, 1910, pp. 546–547. National Diet Library pid 862766, scan 290. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/862766/1/290
  3. 「住めば都」・「住ば都」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典・デジタル大辞泉・ことわざを知る辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/住めば都
  4. Basil Hall Chamberlain, A Handbook of Colloquial Japanese, Trübner, 1888, p. 324.
  5. F. Brinkley, F. Nanjō and Y. Iwasaki, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary, Sanseidō, 1896, p. 1396, s.v. 都 (miyako).
  6. 井上十吉『英語学講義録』, 1898, p. 61. National Diet Library pid 869647, scan 33. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/869647/1/33
  7. 竹原常太『スタンダード和英大辞典』, 1946. National Diet Library pid 1126792, scan 502. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1126792/1/502
  8. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1965, p. 180.
  9. Edward E. Trimnell, Tigers, Devils, and Fools: A Guide to Japanese Proverbs, Beechmont Crest Publishing, 2004, p. 134.
  10. 『源平盛衰記』巻33, 1926 typeset, pp. 300–301. National Diet Library pid 1018065, scan 160. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1018065/1/160
  11. 『俚言集覧』, 1900 增補版. National Diet Library pid 991570, scan 221. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/991570/1/221
  12. 『御曹子島わたり』, 1922 annotated edition, pp. 78–79. National Diet Library pid 977912, scan 54. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/977912/1/54
  13. 『慶長見聞集』, 1614. Cited at kotobank, 「住ば都」. https://kotobank.jp/word/住ば都-2053961
  14. 松江重頼『毛吹草』, 1638. Cited at kotobank, 「地獄も住家」. https://kotobank.jp/word/地獄も住家-2045593
  15. 皆虚 編『世話尽』, 1656, book two, leaf 33. National Diet Library pid 2554768, scan 35. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2554768/1/35
  16. 『松の葉』, 1703. National Diet Library pid 1874605, scan 140; the folk-song descendants at pid 1879145, scan 222, and pid 1020918, scan 855.
  17. 為永春水『春色梅児誉美』, 1832; 1928 typeset. National Diet Library pid 1187751, scan 60. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1187751/1/60
  18. 宇田川文海, 1888 (National Diet Library pid 886950, scan 51); a tract of 1891 (pid 755479, scan 26); 徳富蘇峰, 1896 (pid 755005, scan 61).
  19. 藤井乙男『諺の研究』, 1929. National Diet Library pid 1452761, scans 14 and 205. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1452761/1/14
  20. 中野『俚諺大辞典』, 1933. National Diet Library pid 1453041, scans 248 and 291. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1453041/1/248
  21. 荀子『榮辱篇』, at Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/荀子/榮辱篇
  22. Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes V.108, at the Latin Wikisource. https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Tusculanae_Disputationes
  23. 井上十吉『和英辞典』, 三省堂, 1909, p. 1049, s.v. 都.
  24. 斎藤秀三郎, Saitō's Idiomological English-Japanese Dictionary, 正則英語学校出版部, 1915, p. 1237, s.v. so.
  25. 武信由太郎 ed., Kenkyūsha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, Kenkyūsha, 1942 (the Harvard University Press printing), p. 1243, s.v. 都.
  26. Rokuo Okada, Japanese Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, Japan Travel Bureau, Tokyo, 1958, p. 149.
  27. Charles Corwin, ed., A Dictionary of Japanese and English Idiomatic Equivalents, Kodansha International, 1968, s.v. sumeba miyako.
  28. 増田綱 ed., Kenkyūsha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, 4th ed., Kenkyūsha, 1974, p. 1111, s.v. 都.
  29. 小稲義男 ed., Kenkyūsha's New English-Japanese Dictionary, 5th ed., Kenkyūsha, 1980, p. 172, s.v. bird.
  30. JMdict, 「住めば都」, at gokanji. https://new.gokanji.com/word/住めば都

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