我事に於て後悔せず ware koto ni oite kōkai sezu Do not regret what you have done
This is a philological study of 我事に於て後悔せず (ware koto ni oite kōkai sezu), the sixth of the twenty-one articles of Miyamoto Musashi's 独行道, a sheet dated days before his death in 1645. It follows the line from that autograph sheet through a 1909 biography that fixed the printed form, to its English translators from Harris in 1974 to Bennett in 2018, and finds that the English tradition turned Musashi's first-person vow into a command he never gave.
Abstract
我事に於て後悔せず, in what I do, I do not regret, is the sixth of twenty-one first-person articles Miyamoto Musashi brushed on one sheet of paper, the 独行道, The Way Walked Alone, dated days before his death in 1645 and addressed to one pupil, in a colophon whose hand is disputed. This study follows the line from that autograph sheet through a 1909 biography that fixed the printed form used ever since, to its English translators from Harris in 1974 to Bennett in 2018. It finds that the English tradition, by way of an uncredited web list, turned Musashi's vow about himself into a command to the reader, and that the honest translation keeps the first person: in what I do, I do not regret.
Overview
The sense. There is one sense, and it is a portrait rather than a maxim. The 1909 biographer reads the whole list as evidence of a character, and the article on regret is one item in that evidence: a man who says of himself that he does not look back. The two Japanese witnesses here supply only the frame, which is the frame that matters: a swordsman near death, writing out his own way for one pupil. The mood has not changed in Japanese in three centuries. It changed in English.
The words. Seven characters and two kana, and the grammar is the whole story. 我事 is my affairs, what I myself do, with the genitive dropped in the written Edo manner. に於て is in, as regards; the manuscript, as transcribed, writes the particle in kana with the historical spelling, 尓おゐて, the same word. 後悔 is regret after the fact. せず is does not, and the manuscript has the object marker before it, 後悔をせず, does no regretting. Every one of the twenty-one articles on the sheet ends the same way, in the negative of something the writer does not do: 世々の道をそむく事なし, I do not turn from the way of the generations; 身尓たのしみをたくまず, I do not contrive pleasures for myself; 常尓兵法の道をはなれず, I never leave the way of strategy (the manuscript brackets each final ず as the transcriber's reconstruction). They are one man's statements about himself; the sheet's colophon dates, signs, seals and addresses them to one person, and whether that colophon is his hand or a later one is disputed. Nothing in the grammar is an imperative. The line as words: in what I do, no regret. The form used since 1909, 我事に於て後悔せず, with 於 as a character and no を, is the printed tradition's; the manuscript's kana particle is a fact of the sheet and not a different reading.
The text in English. Harris's 1974 translation of Musashi, sometimes cited as carrying the sheet, does not; the earliest full English translation of it here is Wilson's, in 2004.
The historical record
1645. Miyamoto Musashi, 独行道, the autograph sheet. Twenty-one articles brushed in ink on one sheet of paper, 16.8 by 97.3 centimeters by the museum's own record, mounted as a hanging scroll, held by 熊本県立美術館 as its 日-書040, and reported as a Kumamoto prefectural important cultural property [1]. The colophon: 正保弐年 五月十二日 新免武藏 玄信（花押）「二天」（朱文額印） 寺尾孫之丞殿, the twelfth day of the fifth month of the second year of Shōhō, signed Shinmen Musashi Genshin with his cipher and a red seal reading 二天, addressed to his pupil Terao Magonojō 寺尾孫之丞 [2]. Whose hand the colophon is, is disputed. The prefecture that designated the sheet a cultural property in 2003 takes the title and the twenty-one articles for Musashi's own hand and the colophon for a later insertion: 題名および２１箇条の本文と奥書部分は墨色が異なる … 年月日以下を後の書き入れと考えたほうが自然であろう, the ink of the title and the twenty-one articles differs from that of the colophon … it is more natural to take everything from the date on as a later insertion, and it reads the address as telling of the sheet's passing down Terao's line, 寺尾孫之丞の系統に本書が相伝されていったことを物語っている [3]. Shitō Seiya 紫藤誠也, in the one study of the sheet as a text, sees the same difference of ink and size and reads it the other way: 別筆ではない, not another hand, the date, signature and address written on a different day from the text [4]. The sixth article, as the Japanese Wikisource transcription gives it: 一 我事尓おゐて後悔をせず; the transcription marks the last kana as its own reconstruction, す written unvoiced as the hand writes it and read zu [2]. By the received account Musashi died a week later, on the nineteenth of the same month; no source for the death date is named here, and the date on the sheet is what the sources here give.
1909. The Miyamoto Musashi Memorial Society (宮本武蔵遺蹟顕彰会), Miyamoto Musashi, 金港堂. The earliest printed witness the National Diet Library's full-text search finds, and the form every later print follows. The biography opens with a character sketch and quotes the articles inside it: この人嘗て獨行道と稱し、自戒の文十九條を自署して云く, this man once wrote out under his own hand nineteen articles of self-admonition he called the Way Walked Alone, and among them 我事に於て後悔せず [5]. It counts nineteen where the sheet has twenty-one, because its list drops two of the sheet's articles, 身をあさく思ひ世をふかく思ふ and 身を捨てても名利はすてず, and puts the second and third the other way about; it numbers this article (五), plainly, on the leaf. What it makes of the list: 然れどもこの自戒の文を味はゞ、その心いかに潔く、いかに强く、いかに名利を厭ひ、いかに貪慾を惡みしかを知るべし, taste these articles and you will know how clean his heart was, how strong, how he shunned fame and profit and hated greed [5].
1915 to the 1940s. The books on the sword, on Zen and on the soldier. From the memorial society's biography the line spreads through the Taishō and early Shōwa literature: Zen Talks for Swordsmen (剣客禅話, 1916), The Secret of the Martial Way (武道極意, 1925), Small Lessons for Soldiers (軍人小訓, 1927) and the rest, thirty-five books in the sweep, every one in the 於て spelling. Three books of 1926 to 1939 spell the particle out, 我事において後悔せず; none writes 於いて [6].
The dictionaries today. No dictionary carries the line as a headword; the twenty-one articles are a text, not a proverb, and the Japanese reader meets them in editions of Musashi.
What is not a source. The 1909 biography and the thirty-four books after it are one printed tradition descending from one sheet, not thirty-five witnesses to the text. The English lists of Musashi's twenty-one precepts that circulate on martial-arts and quotation sites are one witness however many pages repeat them, and none names its translator. The received story of Musashi's death a week after the sheet is given here as received, not as sourced.
The text in English
1974. Victor Harris, A Book of Five Rings, Overlook. Contains no 独行道: the translation covers the Gorin no sho only, not the twenty-one articles [7].
2004. William Scott Wilson, The Lone Samurai, Kodansha International. Gives the sheet as twenty-one maxims written when Musashi picked up the brush for the last time, the sixth as Do not regret things about your own personal life [8].
2004. Kenji Tokitsu, Miyamoto Musashi: His Life and Writings, translated by Sherab Chödzin Kohn, Shambhala. Gives 6. Do not regret what you have done, and in his commentary reads the line waga koto ni oite kokai o sezu, noting that the characters can also be read ware koto, with ware as subject, and the meaning is approximately the same [9].
2018. Alexander Bennett, The Complete Musashi, Tuttle. Renders the sixth I held no regrets for past deeds, and says why: I chose to translate the content as Musashi's self-reflective statements rather than as a formula for others to follow [10].
The circulating list. 6. Do not regret what you have done. Twenty-one lines in the imperative, on a martial-arts site with no translator credited, and the same twenty-one on every other page here: Accept everything just the way it is; Never be jealous [11]. Every one of the twenty-one first-person vows becomes a command in this list, which is Tokitsu's translation article for article, numbers and all, uncredited.
Today. The house title, Do Not Regret What You Have Done, is Tokitsu's sentence word for word, by way of the uncredited list. What it does to the Japanese is plain: it makes an imperative of a vow, and Tokitsu's list does the same to all twenty-one. Bennett's 2018 list keeps the first person throughout, and a rendering that kept the Japanese would too: In what I do, I do not regret, or more plainly I regret nothing I do.
A reading
The honest translation is a vow, and a reader who takes Do Not Regret What You Have Done as advice is taking what Tokitsu's English made of Musashi, not what he wrote; Bennett, translating fourteen years later, made the other choice and said so. The romaji carries one macron, kōkai; Tokitsu's waga koto is the same characters read the other way.
References
- 熊本県立美術館, catalogue record for 独行道, 日-書040. https://jmapps.ne.jp/kumabi/det.html?data_id=377
- 宮本武蔵『独行道』, autograph sheet, 1645, at Japanese Wikisource. https://ja.wikisource.org/wiki/獨行道
- 熊本県教育委員会, 「獨行道（どっこうどう）」, the designation text for the 県指定重要文化財（書跡）of 2003, at the Internet Archive's capture of the prefecture's site. https://web.archive.org/web/20081218202853/http://www.pref.kumamoto.jp/education/hinokuni/isan/siteijoukyou/2003.9.12/dokoudou.html
- 紫藤誠也「宮本武蔵の『独行道』」, 語文研究 24, 九州大学国語国文学会, 1967, pp. 21–41. https://doi.org/10.15017/12239
- 宮本武蔵遺蹟顕彰会 編, 『宮本武蔵』, 金港堂書籍, 1909. National Diet Library pid 992019, scan 27. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/992019/1/27
- National Diet Library, NDL Lab full-text search, 「我事に於て後悔せず」and「我事において後悔せず」, thirty-eight books of 1915 to 1939, counted by decade. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/
- Victor Harris, translator, A Book of Five Rings, Overlook Press, Woodstock, 1974.
- William Scott Wilson, The Lone Samurai: The Life of Miyamoto Musashi, Kodansha International, Tokyo, 2004.
- Kenji Tokitsu, Miyamoto Musashi: His Life and Writings, translated by Sherab Chödzin Kohn, Shambhala, Boston, 2004.
- Alexander Bennett, translator, The Complete Musashi: The Book of Five Rings and Other Works, Tuttle Publishing, Rutland, 2018.
- "Written Works", harmonybudo.com, a twenty-one-precept English list, no translator credited. http://harmonybudo.com/harmony-budo-main-page/the-masters/miyamoto-musashi/writtenworks