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吾唯足知 ware tada taru o shiru I Know Only That I Have Enough

吾唯足知, four characters sharing one 口: this study follows the riddle from Edo seals, satires and crests to the stone basin at Ryōan-ji.

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Japanese Scroll of I Know Only That I Have Enough (ware tada taru o shiru) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
I Know Only That I Have Enough吾唯足知ware tada taru o shiru

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

吾唯足知 is a riddle in four characters: 五, 隹, 止 and 矢 set round the square hole of a coin, each completed by that one 口 into 吾, 唯, 足 and 知, I know only that I have enough, the first person of the old word 知足, knowing what is enough. A Chinese scholar of the eighteenth century saw a seal of it by the Ming carver He Zhen 何震 (died 1604) and wrote that the great masters do not use the form; in Japan it is reported in a lampoon of 1727, printed in a seal book of 1735 and read in a story of 1769. Through the Edo period it served two opposite uses, a jab at thrift imposed from above (the lampoon, and Santō Kyōden 山東京伝's picture book of 1790) and a discipline taken up by the one who wore it (the crest of Kanzawa Tokō 神沢杜口 (1710–1795), the seal of Tokugawa Nariaki 徳川斉昭 (1800–1860)), and in the nineteenth century it was a common legend for book-owners' seals. Its famous home today, the stone basin at Ryōan-ji 龍安寺 in Kyoto, enters Japanese print, as far as the National Diet Library's full text shows, in 1941, two centuries after the riddle.

Overview

The sense. No Japanese dictionary at kotobank heads the phrase in any of its three orders. Its sense is the sense of 知足, the word inside it, which the 精選版 日本国語大辞典 defines 足ることを知ること。自分の持ち分に満足し安んじて、欲張らないこと, knowing what is enough; being content and at ease with one's own share and not grasping for more [1], and whose native reading is 足るを知る, taru o shiru [2]. The phrase puts that knowing in the first person and narrows it with 唯, only. JMdict heads it as a phrase, 吾唯足知 or 吾唯足るを知る, read われただたるをしる, I am content with what I am (have); rich is the person who is content with what he is [3]: its first gloss gives the sense, and its second, rich is the person who is content, is the old saying about the word, the 老子's and the sutra's, not the four characters' words. The word's own history, from the 老子 and the Buddhist canon into Japan, is told in the history of 知足 [4]; this one follows the riddle. Across its witnesses, Chinese and Japanese, from the Ming to today, it holds several senses side by side: a jab at thrift imposed from above, the measure that corrects excess in either direction, a discipline for oneself, a lord's seal legend and a collector's motto, a word game, a charm coin, a lesson in national morality, an artist's ideal, and a Zen saying on a temple's stone basin.

The words. 吾, I; 唯, only; 知, to know; 足, in this phrase not foot but 足る, to be enough, as in 知足 [1]. Written in the order of the sentence, the four are 吾唯知足, and a reader of Chinese marks the return, 知レ足, knows what is enough: the lampoon of 1727 and the coin of 1790 both carry that mark [5][6]. The device is in the drawing. Each of the four characters holds a 口: 五 over 口 is 吾, 口 beside 隹 is 唯, 口 over 止 is 足, 矢 beside 口 is 知. Set 五 above a square hole, 隹 to its right, 止 below and 矢 to its left, and the one hole is read four times. Every drawing read puts the parts in those places (in the 1921 typesetter's drawing of the lampoon the part below is 足 whole), so that the coin read clockwise from the top gives 吾唯足知, while the text beside the drawing most often writes the grammatical 吾唯知足, and the one Chinese text read writes 唯吾知足 [7]. All three orders are the witnesses' own. The reading JMdict gives is ware tada taru o shiru [3]; the Edo witnesses also give わし for 吾 (1769), ware tada taru koto … shiru (1850), and ware wa tada, with the particle は (read from a caret on the coin of 1790, and from a small reading-mark ハ in one manuscript of Kanzawa Tokō's book), each set out with its witness below.

The text in English. In print, the English begins with the basin. The earliest English printed in its own day giving the phrase a reading that the Internet Archive's full text returns is Martin Hürlimann's Kyoto of 1962, "Ware tada taru o shiru" means roughly: "The knowledge that …" [8]; Obata Chiura gives I know only satisfaction in 1968 [9], Peter Matthiessen I learn only to be contented in 1986 [10], Yoshikawa Isao 吉河功 I know only enough in 1989 [11], and Preston L. Houser Realizing what is enough in 1992 [12]. One English witness carries the motto apart from the basin, and it is older than all of them, though it was printed only in 2019: a letter of 1951 from the painter Hasegawa Saburō, WARE WA TADA TARU O SHIRU (I know only to satisfy) [13]. JMdict gives I am content with what I am (have) [3]. No English book read tells the riddle's Edo life.

The historical record

Before 1604, a seal by He Zhen, as Ruan Kuisheng 阮葵生 (1727–1789) reports it in his notes 茶餘客話 Chayu kehua. A Qing scholar's notes [14], in a passage on the seal carvers of his dynasty's first years, judging the shortcut of writing a repeated element as two dots:

往見雪漁刻努力加餐飯五字凡重字作兩點又唯吾知足四字以一口應四邊雖古有此體而大家不爲

I once saw 雪漁's cutting of the five characters 努力加餐飯, every repeated element made as two dots, and of the four characters 唯吾知足, one 口 answering the four sides: though the form is old, the great masters do not use it [7]. The repeated element, as I read it with the sentence that follows, is the 力 of 努, 力 and 加; the passage goes on: 大約疊字不妨作兩點，若僅偏旁一角，似未可省筆, a doubled character may well be written as two dots, but where it is only one part of a character, the strokes should not, it seems, be cut [7]. 雪漁 is He Zhen, as the seventeenth-century lives of the seal carvers by Zhou Lianggong 周亮工 give him: 何主臣震，一字長卿，亦稱雪漁 [15]; he was the pupil of the Ming master 文彭 and the founder of a school of his own, and died in 1604 [16]. The passage is the one Chinese text read that describes the device, and it describes it as old and says the great masters do not use it. It writes the Chinese order, 唯吾知足.

1727, reported: a lampoon on the shogun's thrift, in the notes of Mujaku Dōchū 無著道忠 (1653–1744). Kawakami Kozan 川上孤山's history of the Zen temple Myōshin-ji 妙心寺, 妙心寺史 Myōshinji shi (1921), quotes from 和歌拾穗, a book of verse and lampoons collected by the Myōshin-ji scholar Mujaku [5][17][18][19], an anonymous lampoon of the autumn of 1727, when the shogun's pilgrimage to Nikkō the next year was announced with severe economies:

享保十二年の秋明年日光御社參のさたありけるに儉約甚しき事、むかしの社參りもかはりければ (落文)「日光御社參の御物入はいかほどぞ」

In the autumn of Kyōhō 12, when the Nikkō pilgrimage of the coming year was announced and the economies were so severe that it was nothing like the pilgrimages of old (a lampoon): "What will the Nikkō pilgrimage cost?" The answer comes in two parts: 江戸日本橋・倒に讀めて(しはんぼにさえ), Edo's Nihonbashi, read backwards, a pun this history leaves unresolved; and a coin, 日光御社參御用錢, the coin for the Nikkō pilgrimage, drawn with two faces: the riddle, with 五 above, 隹 to the right, 足 below and 矢 to the left of the 口, and a second face, 文 over 口, the character 吝, stingy. The legend reads 判云吾唯知レ足吝レ錢, the inscription says: I only know enough; I begrudge the coin [5]. The second face is the joke that turns the first against the government's thrift. The lampoon is known from this quotation of 1921, and the drawing is the typesetter's; if the report holds, it is the earliest dated use of the riddle in Japan among the witnesses read, and it is satire.

1735, Ikenaga Dōun 池永道雲 (1665–1737), 一刀万象 Ittō banshō, a book of seals. The work of an Edo calligrapher and seal carver [20], printed in two collections, the second dated 1735 by the national catalogue of premodern books [21]. On the leaf of the second collection foliated 地之八, a round seal, 五 above, 隹 to the right, 止 below and 矢 to the left of a shared 口, captioned 吾唯知足, beside a seal of the carver's own name, 道雲之印 [22]. The earliest dated print of the riddle among the witnesses read, and the use the nineteenth century kept: a seal.

1769, Fukugūken Asei 福隅軒蛙井, 一角仙人四季桜 Ikkaku sennin fudanzakura, a 浮世草子, fiction for the town reader. [23] In its third book a man is handed Urashima's box and reads its lid; the leaf draws the coin in the line, after 泥にて, in metallic paint, and goes on:

鳥目の形ち四つに割るゝ文字の片々。中なる角穴を用ひ是を讀ば。吾唯足知。ハテ面白しと。

A coin's shape, the pieces of characters split four ways; use the square hole in the middle and read it: 吾唯足知. "Well, how clever." The ruby beside the four reads わし たゞ たる … しる, washi tada taru … shiru, with the colloquial わし for 吾 [24]. In the fifth book the box appears again, and under the coin stand two lines:

雖冨不知足則是貧也 雖貧知者足則是冨也

Though rich, if one does not know enough, that is poverty; though poor, if one knows enough, that is wealth [24]. The print's second line has 者 where its parallel wants 知足; the ruby reads it as 知足. The couplet recasts the Buddhist sutra of the Buddha's last teaching, the 遺教経: 不知足者雖富而貧，知足之人雖貧而富 [25]. Among the witnesses read, the earliest dated reading of the riddle in kana and its earliest use in fiction, and the earliest joining of the riddle to the sutra's rich and poor, which the temple's account of its basin repeats more than two centuries later.

About 1771 to 1791, Kanzawa Tokō, 翁草 Okinagusa, book fifty-nine: his own crest. Tokō was a 与力, an officer of the Kyoto magistrate's office, who left office past the age of forty, and his miscellany 翁草 has a preface of 1776 and was finished in 1791 [26][27]; book fifty-nine tells events of 1771 as past. On keeping one's guard, he writes of himself that there are two things he does not let slip, then draws a round crest, 五 above, 隹 to the right, 矢 to the left and the foot of 足 under the 口, and writes in the manuscript of Hokkaido University:

此紋を付て心を戒む吾唯知足の四字也

I wear this crest to keep my heart in check: the four characters 吾唯知足 [28]. The edition of 1905–1906 prints the passage whole: 今も油斷せぬ事二ツあり … 此紋を付て心を戒む吾は唯知足の四字也、又罷官誠君恩、此句を聯にして、常に佛壇に向ふごとくに拜むなり、是二ツを克己の道具とす, there are two things I do not let slip even now … I wear this crest to keep my heart in check, the four characters 吾唯知足; and the line 罷官誠君恩, "my dismissal from office is truly my lord's kindness", I have made into a hanging couplet and bow to it always, as to the Buddhist altar; these two are my tools for mastering myself [29]. The earliest witness read in which a person says, in his own voice, what the riddle is for. The manuscript of Osaka Metropolitan University writes 吾ハ唯知足乃四字也, with a small ハ beside 吾 at the size of its reading marks, where the edition of 1905–1906 sets は in the line [30][29].

1786 and 1799, the Kyoto gazetteers: Ryōan-ji without the basin. 都名所図会 Miyako meisho zue, in its printing of 1786, describes Ryōan-ji to its last words, 龍安寺の鴛鴦とて名に高し, the mandarin ducks of Ryōan-ji are famous, with no basin and no four characters [31]. 都林泉名勝図会 Miyako rinsen meishō zue (1799), a book of gardens that names the basins of other temples, describes the rock garden, then the subtemple 西源院, and then: 此院の林泉又風流にして、上段の地に茶室あり、額藏六と書す、正法山桂南の筆なり, the garden of this cloister too is refined; on the upper ground stands a tea room, its plaque reading 藏六, in the hand of 桂南 of Myōshin-ji; it says nothing of a basin [32]. Silence in two books is not evidence that the stone was absent; it is the state of the printed record before 1941.

1790, Santō Kyōden, 玉磨青砥銭 Tama migaku Aoto ga zeni, a 黄表紙, a picture book for adults, drawn by Kitagawa Utamaro 喜多川歌麿. [33] A satire on the politics of its own day [34], set in an old Kamakura whose thrift government has gone too far: thrift is pushed until nothing is left idle, the courtesans set to making salt and foxes made courtesans in their place, until the official Aoto 青砥 judges the zeal folly, orders 此上は芝居も角力も女郎もありきたりの通り致すべし, from now on, theater, wrestling and the courtesans shall be as they always were, and gives the people one thing to remember [35]. The edition of 1909 sets the close, with the ruby in parentheses:

心には此一ッの錢を忘るゝなとなめし皮のはやみちから一文の錢を取出し見せ給へば吾唯(われはたゞ)知レ足(たることをしる)と口といふ字を錢の穴と見て四字に用ひたるも無益のなき世の中なり鎌倉の萬民調度よいかげんの量見となり

"But in your hearts, do not forget this one coin," and he drew a one-mon coin from his leather purse and showed it: 吾唯知足, the character 口 taken to be the hole of the coin and used in four characters, so that even that is not wasted, in a world where nothing is wasted; and all the people of Kamakura came to a just-right measure of mind [35]. In the print of 1790 the coin fills the book's last page, 五 above, 隹 to the right, 止 below and 矢 to the left, and the caption beneath it cuts 吾唯 and 知レ足 with kana ruby; the ruby on 吾唯 carries a syllable between われ and たゞ, which the 1909 edition reads は [36][6][37]. A paper of 1971 on satirical prints summarizes the story: これによって鎌倉の万民を適度に導いたという趣向, the conceit is that with this he led all the people of Kamakura to the right measure [34]. Here the riddle is the measure against reform pushed past sense, and the device is the moral: one 口, borrowed four times, wasted nowhere.

The 1840s, Mito: Tokugawa Nariaki's ration biscuit and his seal. Nariaki, lord of the Mito domain from 1829 [38], wrote out in 1840 a recipe for a field-ration biscuit to be pressed into a mold, 形ニ入レ [39]. His retainer Fujita Tōko 藤田東湖 [40] records in his diary for 1841 a biscuit of the lord's own devising:

此御菓子は近ごろ御みづから御かうがへにていでき形は大なる錢の如く緒を貫て持つへきやうにこしらへ三軍通寶と書きたるものにて兵粮の代りにもなるべきためとぞ

This sweet was lately made to the lord's own design: shaped like a large coin, made to be strung on a cord and carried, and written 三軍通寶, so that it might serve in place of rations [41][42]. The diary names only the face 三軍通寶. A Mito antiquarian, 阿部愿, writing when the domain was gone (旧水戸藩主, the former lord of Mito), describes the biscuit's molds, held in his day by the houses that had sold it, and their reverse: 裏面には、隸書にて、吾唯知足とあり、但し口字兼用とみゆ、こは公の印文なり, on the reverse, in clerical script, 吾唯知足, the character 口, it seems, serving all four; this was the lord's seal legend [43]. The domain's printed history, compiled on an order of 1888 from the Imperial Household Minister [39], draws four faces after the recipe, one captioned (吾唯知足) with 五 above, 隹 to the right, 止 below and 矢 to the left of the 口 [39]. The haiku poet Kawahigashi Hekigotō 河東碧梧桐, in the journal of his travels printed in 1910, a guest in Hakodate on 29 April, saw a coin-shaped carving in burnt cedar hung in his host's guest room (客間の承塵に … 吊り掛けてある): 吾唯知足といふ景山公の石印を模したものであるさうな, said to copy Lord Keizan's stone seal reading 吾唯知足; Keizan is Nariaki [44]. A history of Western confectionery of 1960, which describes the domain's field ration with 三軍通宝 and 水府新製 and no riddle, says that the sweet the lord later had merchants make carried 常州水戸製·三軍通宝 on its face and 吾唯知足·君子以和 on its reverse [45]. The diary of Nariaki's own day names only 三軍通寶; every witness read that gives the 吾唯知足 face was written after his death, and none dates it; that the riddle was Nariaki's seal legend rests on two reports, both made after his death.

1841, Sone Sunsai 曽根寸斎, 古今印例 Kokon inrei, a manual of seal forms. Its preface is dated 1841 and it was printed in 1842. Under the head 錯綜假借, interlaced and borrowed forms, the round seal, 五 above, 隹 to the right, 止 below and 矢 to the left, captioned 吾唯知足 and 明 徐君重. The manual's own rule for its captions is 一印下。署其人名及引書以證之, under each seal is written the person's name, and the book it is drawn from, as evidence; and goes on 如真蹟單署其名已, for a seal from an original, the name alone; so it gives the seal to Xu Junzhong 徐君重, a man of the Ming, and names no book, which by that rule marks the seal as taken from an original [46]. The manual does not say who he was, and the sources read do not identify him.

1850, Nishizawa Ippō 西沢一鳳, 皇都午睡 Kōto gosui, a miscellany. [47] Under the head 字にて画を書く, drawing pictures with characters, after a word-picture he likens to the 野馬臺詩, Ippō adds, in the manuscript of Waseda University:

錢の容を書中央の孔を口と見て吾唯足知といへるも共ニ浮屠氏の書る之

and drawing the shape of a coin, taking the hole in the center for 口, and reading it 吾唯足知: these too are things Buddhist monks wrote [48]. The manuscript of the Nakanoshima Library glosses the four ワレ タダ タルコト … シル, ware tada taru koto … shiru [49]. The earliest witness read that calls the riddle a monk's.

The nineteenth century: a book-owner's seal. Library catalogues record the riddle on the seals stamped in books printed in the Edo period: the red seal 吾唯知足 of a publisher, 桃花庵, on a chronological table revised in 1857 [50]; 吾唯足知 among the seals on a copy of a book printed in 1809, listed after four the record gives to the collector 関場忠武 [51]; 吾唯知足 in an owner's set of motto seals beside 克己, 内省不疚, 不動如山 and 不飲盗泉水 [52]; and the seal 藤紫楼蔵 / 吾唯知足 of the owner 藤紫楼, which one catalogue reads 吾唯知足 [53] and another, on a calendar of 1865, 吾唯足知 [54]. On that calendar the seal is a round coin with the parts in the places the seal book of 1735 gives them [54]. Stamped by different owners, the riddle had become a stock legend, the use the seal book of 1735 was made for.

1888 to 1916: a charm coin, a word game and a legend. A collector's coin catalogue of 1888 lists 吾唯知足 among 空鏤錢, openwork charm coins [55]. A book of word games of 1909 prints it under 集合文字, gathered characters: これは「吾唯知レ足」と讀むので、口の字を中心として、四方から取り卷いて居る, this is read 吾唯知足: the character 口 at the center, and the others wound round it from four sides [56]. A book of 1916, in a chapter on the physician 永田徳本, gives the design to Kūkai 空海, Kōbō Daishi, as a story its writer had heard: 弘法大師は吾唯知足と四字を並べ一つの口を通用せしめて錢の形になし、歌を附して曰く「上と下左も右も口一つ守れば我唯足ことを知る」といふて、梵鐘を溶して錢を鑄りこれを天下に分つたといふ話を聞いたが、自分もその一個を秘藏して居る, I have heard the story that Kōbō Daishi set the four characters 吾唯知足 in a row, let one 口 serve all of them, made them into the shape of a coin and added a verse, "above and below, left and right, keep to one 口, and I only know enough", then melted a temple bell, cast the coins and gave them out to the land; I keep one of them myself [57]. That is a legend, and this is the earliest telling of it the National Diet Library's full text returns.

February 1936, Kawaguchi: a lecture on national morality, and a worker's wall. The Ministry of Education's report on its evening courses for workers lists, at the 隣保館 of Kawaguchi in Saitama, five evening lectures on 國民道德, national morality, by 中原英壽, Saitama prefecture's social-education officer, on 9, 12, 14, 18 and 24 February, in a course that opened on Saturday 8 February, beside talks on national defense, on 日本精神 and on casting [58]. Among the students' impressions (the course's table counts its students by trade, 金屬工業, 機械器具製造業 and 其他, and notes 女子ナシ, no women), two:

第二夜ノ中原先生ノ吾唯足知實際ニヨイ話デシタ。家ニ歸ツテ半紙二枚ニカキ壁ニハツテ毎日ソノ意味ヲ味ツテオリマス

Mr. Nakahara's 吾唯足知 on the second night was a really good talk. I went home, wrote it on two sheets of hanshi, pasted them on the wall, and every day I savor its meaning; and a second: 中原先生ノ「吾唯足知」トイフ言葉ガトテモ意味深ク思ツタ特ニ忘レナイ様ニ日常モツテヰル手帳ニカイテ置イタ, Mr. Nakahara's words 「吾唯足知」 struck me as very deep; so as not to forget them especially, I wrote them in the notebook I always carry [58]. The talk itself is not printed. The course's second night was Sunday 9 February, his first lecture; 第二夜 could also mean his own second, on 12 February. The motto was taught from above, in a state course on national morality, and taken up below, by a man who wrote it out himself and pasted it up.

1941, Matsumiya Tanzan 松宮淡山, 日本精神十五講 Nihon seishin jūgokō: the Ryōan-ji basin. In a run of Japanese buildings that teach humility, after the tea room's crawl-in door and the three monkeys at Nikkō: 京都龍安寺には、『吾唯知足』の四字を文錢の形に刻した石を手水鉢に配してある, at Ryōan-ji in Kyoto, a stone carved with the four characters 吾唯知足 in the shape of a coin is set as the water basin [59]. The earliest Japanese print joining the four characters to the basin that the National Diet Library's full text returns; the sentence names no donor and gives the stone no date.

1942 and 1943: rejected. Two books of wartime moral instruction by one author, 中野八十八, reject the motto as 小乘的, small-vehicle, and 個人主義的自己滿足, individualist self-satisfaction [60][61]: six years after the Kawaguchi lecture, wartime moral writing turned it away.

Before December 1949, Hasegawa Saburō: reliefs made in a village. The artist, who spent five years during and after the war in a village on the shore of Lake Biwa and left it in December 1949, wrote to Isamu Noguchi on 18 January 1951, after NICHI NICHI KORE KOJITSU (Every day is a good day): But, I like this word as did our ancestors. WARE WA TADA TARU O SHIRU (I know only to satisfy) KOKKI (Conquer over one's self) You have seen and made TAKUHON prints of these calligraphic reliefs at my home. I made them in the village in my struggle to attain the ideal [13]. The motto as an artist's discipline, beside KOKKI, conquering oneself, and in the reading with は. The letter does not print the characters, so the order he gave the four is not known.

1948 and 1953: the basin as a type. A book on tea houses and gardens of 1948 mentions coin-shaped basins that 中心の口を活かして吾唯知足といふ四文字を彫つたりしたものもある, make use of the 口 at the center to carve the four characters 吾唯知足 [62]; a book on farmhouse gardens of 1953 says of the same type これなどはいささか惡趣味めいてあまり感心できない, this sort of thing is rather in poor taste and not much to admire [63]. The Qing scholar had judged the form no better: the great masters do not use it [7].

1989 and 2002: the basin in the specialist's book and in the temple's words. Yoshikawa Isao's study of stone basins makes Ryōan-ji's the original of the type, 「龍安寺形」の本歌として特に著名であり、模刻も多い, especially famous as the original of the "Ryōan-ji type", with many copies, and names no donor [11]. The temple's site in 2002: 中心の口を共有すれば、『吾れ唯足ることを知る』と成り、知足のものは貧しといえども富めり、不知足のものは富めりといえども貧し、という禅の格言を謎解きに図案化された無言の悟道である。このつくばいは水戸光圀公の寄進によるものと伝えられている, sharing the 口 at the center, it reads "I only know enough"; it is a silent enlightenment, the Zen maxim that one who knows enough is rich though poor and one who does not is poor though rich, made into a riddle; this basin is said to have been given by Lord Mitsukuni of Mito [64]. Tokugawa Mitsukuni 徳川光圀 was a lord of Mito; the temple states the gift as tradition, and the sources read know no document for it. The basin's record in Japanese and English is told at length in the history of 知足 [4].

What is not a source. Searches of SAT and CBETA find the riddle in no text of the Taishō canon or the CBETA collections, in any of its three orders [65]: the 1850 things Buddhist monks wrote and the temple's Zen maxim are attributions, and the 遺教経 carries the word 知足 and the rich and poor that the 1769 couplet and the temple quote, not the four characters [25]; the dictionaries give the word's own source as the 老子 [1]. Kūkai's authorship is a legend, first told, in the National Diet Library's full text, in 1916 [57]. Tokugawa Mitsukuni's gift of the basin is the temple's tradition [64]. The riddle is older by two centuries than any tie to the temple the sources read show [22][59].

The phrase in English

18 January 1951, Hasegawa Saburō, a letter to Isamu Noguchi, printed in The Saburo Hasegawa Reader, 2019. WARE WA TADA TARU O SHIRU (I know only to satisfy) [13]. The oldest English of the motto known to the sources read, and one that carries it apart from the basin. To satisfy keeps the verb's shape and loses its object, the enough that is known.

1959, David H. Engel, Japanese Gardens for Today. The basin as designed to resemble the face of an old Japanese coin. (Ryoan-ji, Kyoto.) [66]. The earliest English mention of the basin known from the Internet Archive's full text; its caption, as that full text gives it, names neither the characters nor a reading.

1962, Martin Hürlimann, Kyoto. The inscription "Ware tada taru o shiru" means roughly: "The knowledge that …" [8]. The earliest English printed in its own day giving the characters their Japanese reading that the Internet Archive's full text returns; Hasegawa's letter, older, was printed in 2019.

1968, Obata Chiura, Through Japan with Brush and Ink. Engraved on the basin is a four character motto: Ware tada taru-o shiru, meaning: "I know only satisfaction" [9]. The object becomes a feeling, and the knowing of a limit goes.

1986, Peter Matthiessen, Nine-Headed Dragon River. The basin's legend "I learn only to be contented." [10]. Learn for 知 makes the knowing a course of study rather than a thing known.

1989, Yoshikawa Isao, Chōzubachi, the English captions. The four characters can read "Ware tada taru o shiru," or "I know only enough." The basic design was known in ancient China and was eventually brought to Japan, where it came to be used for chozubachi [11]. I know only enough is the closest of the renderings to the words. The design was known in China by the late Ming, and a Qing scholar called it old [7]; ancient is the caption's word.

1992, Preston L. Houser, The Tea Garden. Realizing what is enough (ware tada taru o shiru) [12]. It keeps the knowing and drops both I and only.

Today. JMdict gives I am content with what I am (have) [3]. The house title is I know only that I have enough, the first person of 知足; word for word the four characters say I only know enough, and the house title spells out what the knowing is of. A rendering should keep the knowing, which Yoshikawa and Houser keep and satisfaction and contented lose.

A reading

The riddle has had two lives in Japan, and they run side by side. In one it is a jab at thrift imposed from above: the lampoon of 1727 puts it on a coin with 吝, stingy, and charges the shogun's pilgrimage to it [5]. In the other it is a discipline a person takes up for himself: Kanzawa Tokō wears it as his crest to keep my heart in check and bows to it beside the line that called his dismissal a kindness [28][29], a lord, by two reports made after his death, makes it his seal [43][44], an owner stamps it among his motto seals [52], a worker at an evening course pastes it on his wall [58], and a painter makes it in relief in a village in my struggle to attain the ideal [13]. The same four characters could serve a satire on the government and a crest of self-command because they are a device before they are a motto, and a device can be pointed either way.

I read Santō Kyōden's coin of 1790 as the place where the two lives meet, and as the best account of the riddle. His Kamakura has taken thrift so far that nothing may stand idle; his answer is not more thrift and not its abandonment but the coin itself, the 口 taken for the hole of the coin and used in four characters, so that even that is not wasted, which brings the people to 調度よいかげんの量見, a just-right measure of mind [35]. The riddle is clever, and its cleverness is the point: one square hole, borrowed four times and wasted nowhere, is what knowing enough looks like, and so the device says what it is. That is why it outlived the Qing scholar's verdict [7] and the 1953 garden writer's scorn [63], and why it could be a lampoon in 1727 and a crest by 1791 without changing a stroke.

A buyer is likelier to come to it by Tokō's road than by Kyōden's, as a discipline for oneself, and that reading is as old as Kyōden's satire and as well attested [28]. I hold the two together: the four characters say I know only that I have enough to whoever wears them, and they have been said, in the same breath, to the people who preach thrift to others.

Notes

Japanese Scrolls by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

Japanese Scroll of I Know Only That I Have Enough (ware tada taru o shiru) in a block font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
吾唯足知VB5JBlock
Japanese Scroll of I Know Only That I Have Enough (ware tada taru o shiru) in a cursive font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
吾唯足知VC5JCursive
Japanese Scroll of I Know Only That I Have Enough (ware tada taru o shiru) in Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase's own style (jiun)
吾唯足知VD5JJiun
Japanese Scroll of I Know Only That I Have Enough (ware tada taru o shiru) in a semi-cursive font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
吾唯足知VS5JSemi-Cursive

Sources not seen

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

References

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  67. 「蔵六庵」, 日本歴史地名大系, at kotobank: 円覚寺 蔵六庵, 二世大休正念塔所. https://kotobank.jp/word/%E8%94%B5%E5%85%AD%E5%BA%B5-3046148

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 吾唯足知 (ware tada taru o shiru)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/ware-tada-taru-o-shiru.