笑う門には福来る warau kado ni wa fuku kitaru Fortune Comes To Those Who Smile

笑う門には福来る Original Scroll by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

Abstract

笑う門には福来る, fortune comes to the gate that laughs, is a native Japanese proverb with no Chinese source, and by 1792 a line of comedy in the kyōgen 筑紫奥, where two farmers use it as leverage to make a sour official laugh, though neither its forerunner of 1578 nor its texts of the 1640s have it. The seventeenth-century proverb collections call it the place or the house that laughs, while a novel of 1697 already has 門, the gate, the noun that became standard; by 1829 the nativist scholar Hirata Atsutane 平田篤胤 uses it to explain why houses celebrate the お多福 mask, and the Kamigata karuta puts it on a card with 大黒, the god of fortune, grinning. English met it early and plainly: Hepburn's dictionary of 1872 renders it wealth comes to the house of laughter, a Yokohama newspaper of 1875 quotes it as a true saying, and the dictionaries after them keep the house or the gate until the twentieth century swaps in the English laugh and grow fat, which is about health, not fortune.

A reading

This is a native Japanese proverb, heard as a line of comedy: no owner, no sect, no legend that has to be believed, and a picture — a gate with a laughing house behind it and a god arriving — that the proverb's words carry whole. The story is short and sourced: two farmers trying to make an official laugh because fortune is promised to the gate that laughs; a scholar in 1829 explaining from the same proverb why houses celebrate the お多福 mask; a playing card with the god of fortune grinning. English had the picture first, in Hepburn's house of laughter of 1872 and a Yokohama reporter's laughing house of 1875, and lost it to laugh and grow fat; the paperbacks that came back to the gate and the home were recovering what the first dictionary already had.

Overview

The sense. The sense has not moved in four hundred years; what has moved is the noun. The proverb collections of the seventeenth century said the place and the house; the gate, in a novel by 1697, is the literary word that stood for both, and the one that makes a picture: a gate, a god of fortune arriving at it. The proverb has always been a wish for a household rather than advice to a person, and its uses show it: farmers on a stage promising an official a promotion if he will laugh, a scholar explaining why houses celebrate the お多福 mask, a card that shows the god himself grinning, a novelist's character opening the shutters at New Year. The modern dictionary makes one thing explicit that the old books assumed, that the laugh is the innocent kind, from the belly, and not a sneer.

The words. 笑う, warau, in the older spelling 笑ふ, is the one Japanese verb for both laugh and smile; English has to choose. The modern proverb dictionary says which laugh is meant: この笑いは、弱い者や劣った者をばかにする嘲笑ではなく、無邪気で、腹の底から楽しく笑えるもの, not the sneer at the weak or the lesser, but an innocent laugh from the bottom of the belly. 門, kado, is a gate, and by the oldest Japanese figure the house and the family behind it: 「門」は家の出入り口ですが、同時に家そのものや家族、一門を象徴しています. The seventeenth-century proverb collections said it plainly, the place that laughs, the house that laughs; 門 is the literary word that won. 福, fuku, is good fortune, and in the Edo imagination a visitor, 福の神, the god of fortune who comes to the door; that is why the proverb says comes. 来る is read kitaru, the classical form of the verb, not the modern kuru; the proverb keeps the old form. には is the topic particle with a locative before it, as for the gate that laughs, to it fortune comes; the particle is in the kyōgen text and in most witnesses, but a form without は runs beside it, in the novel of 1697, in Hepburn's romaji of 1872, in the 1910 dictionary's headword and in Saitō's dictionary of 1915 under Fat (under Laugh it prints は).

The proverb in English. The proverb entered English with the first bilingual dictionaries and stayed there. Hepburn's second edition of 1872 gives it under warau as wealth comes to the house of laughter ^[1], and The Japan Weekly Mail of 1875 quotes it as Luck comes to the laughing house ^[2]; Brinkley in 1896 keeps the door ^[3], and the language textbooks of 1907 and 1928 use it as a reading sentence ^{[4] [5]}. A Japanese conversation book of 1896 gives it as Fortune comes in by a merry gate ^[6]. The twentieth-century dictionaries add an English proverb about health: Saitō in 1915 ^[7], Kenkyūsha in 1942 ^[8] and Corwin in 1968 ^[9] all give Laugh and grow fat, Kenkyūsha with the merry gate beside it, and Okada in 1958 keeps a gate ^[10]. Daniel Crump Buchanan's Japanese Proverbs and Sayings (University of Oklahoma Press, 1965) gives it as Good luck comes in at a smiling gate, with the merry gate beside it ^[11]. It is not in David Galef's Even Monkeys Fall from Trees (Tuttle, 1987), Even a Stone Buddha Can Talk (Tuttle, 2000) or Japanese Proverbs: Wit and Wisdom (Tuttle, 2012) ^[12]. Of the American paperbacks, Zona's and Trimnell's carry it, and both come after the house title ^{[13] [14]}.

The historical record

1578 to the 1640s. The kyōgen 筑紫奥, before the proverb was in it. The play is older than its proverb line. The 天正狂言本, the oldest surviving book of kyōgen, dated 1578 on its last page and written as outlines rather than scripts, has the play's forerunner, 二人おさめ物, the two men's tribute: 一、つくしの者出る。又たんはの国の者出る。道にて行合、都につきて、おそきとてしからるゝ。そふしや、ひやうしにかかつておさめよといふ, a man of Tsukushi comes on, then a man of Tanba; they meet on the road, reach the capital and are scolded for being late; the official tells them to present their tribute to the beat; the outline then lists the goods, foreign wares from Tsukushi and fruit from Tanba, and ends with no laughing in it. Kanai Kiyomitsu 金井清光, in his commentary of 1989, says the piece had been reworked into 筑紫奥 by the early Edo period ^[15]. The reworked play is in the Ōkura school's first full script, written out by Ōkura Toraakira 大蔵虎明 in 1642: the two farmers, the laugh for every tan of field, and the sour official, 身共はびめいより、ひへいたをあたゝめて、おかしひ事がない, I have been on duty warming a cold board floor since before dawn and find nothing funny. The farmer answers him with the occasion, not the proverb: いや〳〵めでたい折柄なれは御かさうをとらせらるゝは、只今のことじや、ぜひともわらはしられい, no, no: at so happy a time your raise will come any moment now; laugh, whatever you do. The Izumi school's script thought to date from the 1640s, the 天理本 狂言六義, has the farmers plead the occasion and 三神さうおう, all three in harmony (the 虎明本's editors read the 虎明本's さんいんさうおう as an idiom for three present in accord, not a reference to particular gods), and ends with the two of them tickling the official until all three laugh. Neither script has the proverb ^[15].

1638, printed 1645. 毛吹草, by Matsue Shigeyori 松江重頼, the earliest collection of proverbs of the Edo period. わらふところへふくきたる, fortune comes to the place that laughs, written in kana on the printed leaf; 藤井 quotes it as 笑フ所へ福來ル, in his own script; reprinting the book's proverb list in 1929, he says he supplied kanji for it there: 毛吹草の方は殆ど假名がきであるから、適宜に漢字を配合し, since 毛吹草 is almost all in kana, I supplied kanji as fitting ^[16]. The year is the preface's, 寛永15, and the book was printed in 正保2, 1645; the 世界大百科事典 suggests the preface date may belong to a quarrel over which of two books of that year came first ^[16].

1649. 吾吟我集, Ishida Mitoku 石田未得's collection of comic verse. 慶安二年, 1649, is its date in the 国書総目録 and in two dictionaries; a third, the 日本大百科全書, gives 1644 and a printing perhaps that year ^[17]. A verse that turns the proverb on a bird-catcher's owl decoy: みゝづくでたほくとりぬる小鳥こそ笑ふ所へ福きたるなれ, the small birds caught by the horned-owl decoy are fortune coming to the laughing place; the form inside it is the place ^[17].

1656. 世話尽, the next Edo proverb collection after 毛吹草 in 藤井's account. 笑ふ家に福來る, fortune comes to the house that laughs, as 藤井 reprints the book's list in 1929, keeping, he says, its own script; the 俚言集覧 cites it as 笑の家に福來. The house, not yet the gate ^[16][17].

Edo, undated. 和漢古諺 and 野語述説. The 俚言集覧 credits these two books with 笑の所に福來, the place again; its headword above them, 笑ふ門にハ福來る, the gate, with the particle, is the compilers' own form, and the entry sets each source before what it quotes, as it does throughout the leaf ^[17].

1697 to 1828. The gate in Edo print. The novel 好色万金丹, in the National Diet Library's copy of 1697, praises the man who takes nothing amiss, 人は天生の果報ぞかし, born lucky, and closes on the proverb with the gate: 笑ふ門に福来るこそめでたけれ, fortune comes to the gate that laughs, and that is the happy thing; the furigana read かど and ふく, and there is no は ^[18]. In 1784 the comic-verse master Yomo no Akara 四方赤良 prints it in 老莱子, from the publisher Tsutaya Jūzaburō 蔦屋重三郎, with the particle in katakana: わらはゝ笑へ、笑ふ門にハ福来る, let them laugh if they like: fortune comes to the gate that laughs, the furigana reading きたる ^[19]. The gate form runs through the comic fiction of the next forty years, down to Jippensha Ikku 十返舎一九's 有喜世諺草 of 1828, where it reads 笑ふ門に福来る ^[20], so that by the time Hirata wrote it was the form in common use.

1792. The kyōgen 筑紫奥 with the proverb, in the Ōkura school text copied by Ōkura Torahiro 大蔵虎寛. Two farmers, one from the far end of Tsukushi and one from Tanba, have paid their tax and been excused their levies; for laughing aloud so near their lord they have been told, as a penalty, to laugh once for every tan of field; guessing that the order was the sour official's own idea, they turn back to make him laugh too. The official: 汝らこそ御年貢は納る、萬雜公事は御免被成るゝ。笑ふ機嫌も有うが、此の御そうしやは今朝よりひえいたをあたゝめ、わらふ機嫌は無いやい, you have paid your tax and been let off your levies, so you may be in a mood to laugh; this official has been warming a cold board floor since morning and is in no mood for it. (ひえいた is 冷板, a cold plank floor, in the 精選版日本国語大辞典, which quotes the same scene from the 虎明本.) The shite: 左樣では御ざれども、笑らふ門には福來ると申に依て、追付御加增を取らせられ、御立身を被成れうは疑も御ざらぬ。是非共、and both farmers together, 笑らはせられて被下い, and the official, イヤ〱、どう有てもわらふ事は成らぬ. Be that as it may, since they say fortune comes to the gate that laughs, there is no doubt you will soon be given a raise and rise in the world. So please, laugh for us. No, no. Whatever you say, I will not laugh. The proverb is already a proverb, と申に依て, because they say, and it is used as leverage: laughter is owed because fortune is promised. This is the line the 精選版日本国語大辞典 takes as the first attestation, dated by the play, 室町末‐近世初 ^[15]. The play is that old, but the three older texts read here do not have the line: in the texts read, the proverb enters the play between the 1640s and 1792, after 毛吹草 had listed it ^[15][16].

1829. Hirata Atsutane 平田篤胤, 宮比神御伝記. The nativist scholar uses the proverb to explain a household custom: 世の諺に笑ふ門には福きたると云ひて、人相のよきを褒め、おかめの面といふ物を、またお多福ともいひて、諸人の愛敬をのぞむ家々に祝ふことは、或説に足利の末頃とか、ある神社の巫子に亀女とて, as the proverb of the world says, fortune comes to the gate that laughs, so people praise a good face, and the mask called おかめ, also called お多福, is celebrated in houses that hope to be liked by everyone; by one account this began around the end of the Ashikaga years, with a shrine maiden named 亀女. The furigana read わらふかど and ふく. The legend of the shrine maiden is told as 或説に, by one account, and is a legend ^[21].

Undated. The Kamigata いろはかるた. The proverb is on the Kamigata いろはかるた, and its picture card shows 大黒, the god of fortune, grinning: 上方のいろはかるたにも収録され、絵札には満面の笑みを浮かべた大黒さまが描かれていました. Behind the card the dictionary sets the medieval door-to-door blessing arts, the 大黒舞, performers dressed as 大黒 and 恵比須 who came to the gate scattering laughter ^[22].

1872 to 1896. The bilingual dictionaries. Hepburn's second edition, 1872, under WARAU: Warau kado ni fuki kitaru (prov.) wealth comes to the house of laughter, the fuki a misprint for fuku; the fourth edition of 1888 adds the particle, warau kado ni wa fuku kitaru ^{[1] [23]}. Brinkley's 和英大辞典 of 1896, under Warau, marks it a proverb and a literal rendering: wealth comes to the door of the gay, the last word set at the end of the line below, as the dictionary does with a line that runs over ^[3].

1900 to 1903. Meiji school grammars. 笑ふ門には福が來る in a grammar of 1900, 笑う門には福來る in textbooks of 1902 and 1903: by then a stock example sentence for schoolchildren ^[24].

1910. 藤井乙男 Fujii Otoo, 諺語大辞典, the standard proverb dictionary. 【笑フ門ニ福來ル】笑フ所へとも、祝フ門へともいふ。〔漢書〕劉向傳、和氣致祥、乖氣致異。〔左傳〕桓公六年、民和而神降之福。〔毛吹草〕笑フ所へ福來ル。 The headword drops the particle, as his headwords do; he records the two older forms, the place that laughs and the gate that celebrates; and he gives two Chinese classical lines on harmony drawing blessing. Three cross-references point here: 笑フ所ヘ福來ル, on the same page (笑フ門を見よ), and 和氣、財ヲ生ズ and 祝フ門ヘ福來ル ^[16].

What is not a source. The two Chinese lines 藤井 prints, 和氣致祥、乖氣致異 from the 漢書 and 民和而神降之福 from the 左傳, say that harmony draws blessing and discord draws disaster; they are the classical company he gave a Japanese saying, in his dictionary's habit, not its source. The proverb is native, and no witness gives it a Chinese origin. 祝う門には福来る, fortune comes to the gate that celebrates, is a variant 藤井 records, not a different proverb. In English, laugh and the world laughs with you is about company, not fortune, and a merry heart doeth good like a medicine is scripture about health; laugh and grow fat, which three dictionaries and two proverb books give for it, is about health too. None is an equivalent, and the Japanese has none.

The dictionaries today. デジタル大辞泉: 笑いの絶えない人の家には、自然と幸福が訪れる. 精選版日本国語大辞典: いつも笑い声が満ち、和気あいあいとした家には、自然と幸福が訪れる, with the kyōgen line as its first citation ^[15]. ことわざを知る辞典: なごやかで笑いのたえない家には福の神が訪れ、繁盛する, with two uses, Dazai Osamu 太宰治 in 1945, 笑う門には福が来る … のんきに福の神の御入来を待つがよい, laugh and fortune comes; open the shutters, sweep out the year's dust, and wait at ease for the god of fortune to call, and a street-hawker's patter recorded in 1984 ^[22].

The proverb in English

1872. James Curtis Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, second edition, American Presbyterian Mission Press, under WARAU. Warau kado ni fuki kitaru (prov.) wealth comes to the house of laughter. The romaji prints fuki for fuku, a misprint; the fourth edition of 1888 prints fuku. The earliest known English rendering; his first edition of 1867 has the same entry under WARAU without the proverb ^[25]. The house is the noun, as in the seventeenth-century collections; the particle は is not yet in the romaji ^[1].

1875. The Japan Weekly Mail, Yokohama, 4 December. A sketch of a provincial theater: and here come his wife and children, all smiling and happy. "Luck comes to the laughing house"—indeed a true saying. The proverb in an English sentence, used as English uses a proverb, three years after Hepburn printed it ^[2].

1888. James Curtis Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, fourth edition, Z. P. Maruya, page 725, under WARAU. warau kado ni wa fuku kitaru (prov.), wealth comes to the house of laughter, the particle now in place ^[23].

1896. Shimada Yutaka 島田豊, 『実用速成英和会話』, Shōeidō. 笑フ門ニハ福來ル, Fortune comes in by a merry gate (the print misspells the first word Fortiune), followed by two English lines on the same theme: He who is of a merry heart, has a continual feast, from Proverbs 15:15, and "Your merry heart goes all the day," from The Winter's Tale. The gate is kept and made merry, and the English is offered as the proverb's English, for a Japanese learner ^[6].

1896. Brinkley, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary, Sanseidō, page 1595, under Warau. Warau kado ni wa fuku kitaru, 笑フ門ニハ福來ル, marked as a proverb and rendered literally, wealth comes to the door of the gay; the door for the gate, and the gay for those who laugh ^[3].

1907. Rudolf Lange, A Text-book of Colloquial Japanese, translated by Christopher Noss, Methodist Publishing House, the exercise on warau, page 248. Warau kado ni wa fuku kitaru, set as a sentence for the student to translate, in a run that goes from Mago wo kawaigaru yori inu wo kae through a sentence about forgetting what one meant to say, to this proverb and on to a line on laughing at another's mistake ^[4]. The copy read is the reprint of April 1907; its title verso reads copyright 1903, and neither the 1903 printing nor Lange's German original was opened.

1915. Saitō, Saito's Idiomological English-Japanese Dictionary, SEG Publishing Department, page 390, under Fat. Laugh and grow fat. 笑ふ門に福來る. Under Laugh, page 690, the same English carries the form with は. The earliest, in the books read for this history, to give the English proverb about health for the Japanese one about fortune, in a dictionary that runs from English to Japanese ^[7].

1928. Arthur Rose-Innes, Japanese Reading for Beginners, K. Yoshikawa, Yokohama, lesson 47, 笑ひ. A graded reading that opens on the proverb, "Warō kado ni wa fuku kitaru" to ieri, and builds a lesson from it: parents and children, husband and wife, brothers and sisters in harmony, each enjoying his trade, and the family's fortune opening of itself; yue ni warō beshi, so laugh ^[5].

1938. Gurney Champion, Racial Proverbs, page 441, as Burton Stevenson quotes it in 1948. Fortune will call at the smiling gate, marked Japanese. Stevenson's Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases prints the line under Fortune and gives Champion's page for it ^[26]. These are the words Zona prints in 1996.

1940. The appendix to Huzii's Japanese Proverbs, Tourist Library 33, page 108. The Board of Tourist Industry added to 藤井乙男's book an appendix of some one hundred and fifty specimens of Japanese proverbs, which have not been quoted in the text, each as the Romanized original, the literal translation and the nearest equivalent in European proverbs, and acknowledged that it quoted freely from Akiyama Aisaburō's Japanese Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases (p. 80): Warau kado ni huku kitaru. Fortune comes to a smiling house. Laugh and grow fat ^[27]. The form without wa, as Hepburn's entry of 1872 has it; Hepburn's house, with the smile of Champion's gate of 1938; and Saitō's English proverb of 1915. Which of the appendix's lines are Akiyama's is not settled here. The romanization is the book's own.

1942. Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, Harvard University Press, page 299, under fuku. Fortune comes in by a merry gate. Laugh and grow fat. The gate kept, in the conversation book's words of 1896, and the English proverb set beside it ^[8].

1958. Okada, Japanese Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, Japan Travel Bureau, page 178. Warau kado ni wa fuku kitaru. Fortune comes to the merry gate. Here is another proverb which has become all the more popular because of its inclusion in the so-called iroha-garuta, the "alphabet" cards played by children. There is a saying that fortune favors the brave, but we know of no such English proverb as "fortune favors the cheerful." The Japanese proverb is an encouragement to a family which is merry, harmonious and peaceful. "Laugh and grow fat." "Laughter makes good blood." —Italian. Of the English books read here, the one to say it knows no English proverb of this shape, though it goes on to give two of another, and the one to name the karuta ^[10].

1965. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, page 157. "Good luck comes in at a smiling gate." Fortune comes in by a merry gate. A happy countenance is more likely to be the precursor of a successful life than a scowling mien. The romaji has no は. The gate is kept and the laugh made a smile; the second English line is Kenkyūsha's of 1942, and the note turns the proverb into advice to a person, as Trimnell's does later ^[11].

1968. Corwin, A Dictionary of Japanese and English Idiomatic Equivalents, Kodansha International, page 244. Warau kado ni wa fuku kitaru 笑うかどには福きたる Laugh and grow fat, both marked as proverbs ^[9].

1996. Guy Zona, Even Withered Trees Give Prosperity to the Mountain, Simon and Schuster, page 53. Fortune will call at the smiling gate. The gate is kept, and the laugh is softened to a smile. Zona names no source for any proverb in the book; the words are Champion's of 1938 ^{[13] [26]}.

2004. Edward Trimnell, Tigers, Devils, and Fools, Beechmont Crest, page 154. Fortune comes to the home where there is laughter. Then: People who have an affable and pleasant disposition tend to draw good fortune to them. An optimistic outlook is an asset that can help one succeed. The home, not the gate, and the laughter kept; the commentary turns a wish for a house into advice for a person, which is what English does with it ^[14].

Today. The house title, Fortune Comes To Those Who Smile, moves the subject from the household to the person and the laugh to a smile. Both moves are inside the range of 笑う, and the page's own gloss, good fortune comes to the home that laughs, is exact. What a rendering must keep: the house, because the proverb is a wish spoken over a door and not a rule of temperament; the arrival, because 福 comes as a visitor; and a laugh that is a laugh.

Japanese Scrolls by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

笑う門には福来るVB4CBlock

笑う門には福来るVC5BCursive

笑う門には福来るVD5BEri's Choice

笑う門には福来るVS5CSemi-Cursive

References

1. James Curtis Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, 2nd ed., American Presbyterian Mission Press, Shanghai, 1872, s.v. WARAU. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishe00hepb_0
2. The Japan Weekly Mail, Yokohama, 4 December 1875. https://archive.org/details/jwm-bound-1875
3. Brinkley, 『和英大辞典』 An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary, with Copious Illustrations, Sanseidō, 1896, s.v. Warau, p. 1595.
4. Rudolf Lange, A Text-book of Colloquial Japanese, tr. Christopher Noss, Methodist Publishing House, Tokyo, 1907 (copyright 1903, reprinted April 1907), the exercise on warau, p. 248. https://archive.org/details/textbookofcolloq00langrich
5. Arthur Rose-Innes, Japanese Reading for Beginners, K. Yoshikawa, Yokohama, 1928, lesson 47, 笑ひ. https://archive.org/details/japanesereadingf04rose
6. 島田豊 Shimada Yutaka, 『実用速成英和会話』, 尚栄堂, 1896. National Diet Library pid 871484, scan 142. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/871484/1/142 · https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/api/page/871484_142
7. Saitō, Saito's Idiomological English-Japanese Dictionary, SEG Publishing Department, 1915, s.v. Fat, p. 390, and s.v. Laugh, p. 690.
8. Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, Harvard University Press, 1942, s.v. fuku, p. 299.
9. Corwin, A Dictionary of Japanese and English Idiomatic Equivalents, Kodansha International, 1968, p. 244.
10. Okada, Japanese Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, Japan Travel Bureau, 1958, p. 178.
11. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1965, p. 157.
12. David Galef, Even Monkeys Fall from Trees: The Wit and Wisdom of Japanese Proverbs, Tuttle, 1987; Even a Stone Buddha Can Talk, Tuttle, 2000; Japanese Proverbs: Wit and Wisdom, Tuttle, 2012.
13. Guy Zona, Even Withered Trees Give Prosperity to the Mountain: And Other Proverbs of Japan, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1996, p. 53.
14. Edward E. Trimnell, Tigers, Devils, and Fools: A Guide to Japanese Proverbs, Beechmont Crest Publishing, 2004, p. 154.
15. 能狂言 大蔵虎寛本, ed. 笹野堅 Sasano Ken, 1945, 筑紫奥, pp. 184–185. National Diet Library pid 1129307, scans 93 and 94. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1129307/1/93 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1129307/1/94 · 「笑門には福来たる」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/笑門には福来たる-2094384 · 「冷板」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/冷板-2076568 · The three older texts, each read in the National Diet Library's full-text snippets of a typeset, the pages being open only inside the library: 天正狂言本, 二人おさめ物, in 古川久 Furukawa Hisashi ed., 『狂言古本二種 天正狂言本・虎清狂言本』, わんや書店, 1964, pid 1361362, scan 7, https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1361362/1/7, and in 金井清光 Kanai Kiyomitsu, 『天正狂言本全釈』, 風間書房, 1989, pid 13438076, scans 73 (text) and 77 (commentary), https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/13438076/1/73 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/13438076/1/77 · 大蔵虎明本, つくしのおく, in 池田広司 Ikeda Hiroshi and 北原保雄 Kitahara Yasuo, 『大蔵虎明本狂言集の研究 本文篇 上』, 表現社, 1972, pid 12455280, scans 35–36, https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12455280/1/36 · 天理本 狂言六義, 筑紫奥, in 北川忠彦 Kitagawa Tadahiko et al. eds., 『天理本狂言六義』 下巻, 三弥井書店, 1995, pid 13440371, scans 20–22, https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/13440371/1/22 · 「天正狂言本」, ブリタニカ国際大百科事典 小項目事典, at kotobank (巻末に天正6 (1578) 年の日付). https://kotobank.jp/word/天正狂言本-167867 · 「大蔵虎明本」, 世界大百科事典, at kotobank (大蔵虎明が1642年(寛永19)に書写; the 天理本 狂言六義 正保ころ(1644‐48)). https://kotobank.jp/word/大蔵虎明本-1281037
16. 藤井乙男『諺語大辞典』, 有朋堂, 1910, 【笑フ門ニ福來ル】. National Diet Library pid 862766, scan 566, with the cross-references on the same scan and at scans 564 and 585. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/862766/1/566 · 藤井乙男『諺の研究』, 1929, p. 240 (江戶時代に最も早く諺を蒐集したものは毛吹草で、之に次いで世話盡がある) and p. 241 (毛吹草の方は殆ど假名がきであるから、適宜に漢字を配合し); its reprint of 世話盡, p. 315, scan 164 (笑ふ家に福來る). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1452761/1/164 National Diet Library pid 1452761, scan 127. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1452761/1/127 · 松江重頼『毛吹草』 巻二, a printing of 寛永 to 承応 (1624–1655) by the catalogue, 東京大学総合図書館, in the 国書データベース of the National Institute of Japanese Literature, image 72, the right-hand page facing folio 二ノ三十八. https://doi.org/10.20730/100419933 · 「毛吹草」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典 and 改訂新版 世界大百科事典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/毛吹草-490969
17. 村田了阿編・井上頼圀増補『俚言集覧』, 1900 printing, 笑ふ門にハ福來る. National Diet Library pid 991571, scan 366. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/991571/1/366 · 「吾吟我集」, デジタル大辞泉 and 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/吾吟我集-499022 · 「吾吟我集」, 国書データベース (National Institute of Japanese Literature), work 26948, 慶安二（1649）. https://kokusho.nijl.ac.jp/work/26948
18. 夜食時分『好色万金丹』, 伊丹屋太郎右衛門, the National Diet Library's copy dated 元禄10 (1697), vol. 3. National Diet Library pid 2575197, scan 16. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2575197/1/16 · https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/api/page/2575197_16
19. 四方赤良 Yomo no Akara, ed., 『老莱子』, 蔦屋重三郎, 天明4 (1784), vols. 1–3. National Diet Library pid 8943083, scan 19. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/8943083/1/19 · https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/api/page/8943083_19
20. 十返舎一九 Jippensha Ikku, 『有喜世諺草』, 鶴屋喜右衛門, 文政11 (1828). National Diet Library pid 10300970, scan 13. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/10300970/1/13 · https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/api/page/10300970_13
21. 平田篤胤『宮比神御伝記』, 1829, p. 十九. National Diet Library pid 2539085, scan 22. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2539085/1/22
22. 「笑う門には福来る」, デジタル大辞泉・ことわざを知る辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/笑う門には福来る-665616
23. James Curtis Hepburn, A Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, fourth edition, Z. P. Maruya, Tokyo, 1888, s.v. WARAU, p. 725. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishe00hepbuoft
24. 『国語法階梯』, 1900, National Diet Library pid 863783, scan 82. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/863783/1/82 · 『国文典教科書』巻2, 1902, pid 863793, scan 24. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/863793/1/24 · 『新撰国文典』, 1903, pid 863938, scan 41. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/863938/1/41
25. James Curtis Hepburn, A Japanese and English Dictionary; with an English and Japanese Index, American Presbyterian Mission Press, Shanghai, 1867, s.v. WARAU. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishd00hepb
26. Burton Stevenson, The Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases, Macmillan, New York, 1948, s.v. Fortune, p. 871, quoting Gurney Champion, Racial Proverbs, 1938, p. 441.
27. Huzii Otoo (藤井乙男), Japanese Proverbs, Tourist Library 33, Board of Tourist Industry, Japanese Government Railways, 1940, the Board's appendix, pp. 80 and 108, read on the house's shelf; the house's copy at the page: https://takase.com/library/books/tourist-library/33-japanese-proverbs/chapter-6#p108

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1, Sonnet 5 and Opus 5.5, 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

Research depth: step 3 of our 10-step ladder, foundation complete · November 2026

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 笑う門には福来る (warau kado ni wa fuku kitaru)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/warau-kado-ni-wa-fuku-kitaru.