油断大敵 yudan taiteki Carelessness is one's greatest enemy
This is a philological study of the Japanese proverb 油断大敵 (yudan taiteki). It spans four centuries, from the older verb form in the first Japanese proverb collection of 1638 to a Confucian scholar's chapter of 1732 that dignifies it with a Zhou king's own maxim, and examines the two etymologies the dictionaries still print for the word 油断 itself.
Abstract
油断大敵, carelessness is a great enemy, is a Japanese proverb in print by 1638, in the older verb form 油断、强敵トナル. Muro Kyūsō 室鳩巣, in 1732, built a whole chapter of his 駿台雑話 on it, telling how the elder statesman Ii Naotaka 井伊直孝 gave it as his one-phrase transmission to a rising young minister, and setting it, a rustic proverb, beside a Zhou king's own maxim, the Red Book's four lines on care and negligence. The word 油断 itself has no settled origin: the dictionaries print two theories, a sutra's spilled oil and a worn-down native word, as theories only.
Overview
The sense. The sense has not moved: a warning against the relaxed guard. What the witnesses add is a scale. In the puppet play it is a commander's regret after an ambush; in Kyūsō it is the whole of a statesman's counsel, dignified by a Zhou king's maxim; on the children's card it is a kitchen fire; in the modern dictionaries it is the everyday word for don't get complacent. The one variant, 油断強敵, carelessness becomes a strong enemy, is older than the four-character form and says the same thing with a verb; the dictionaries list it as a synonym. Kyūsō's reading is the hard one, and the 1894 editor made it a title: no other enemy counts.
The words. 油断, yudan, is the moment of a dropped guard: 気をゆるすこと、たかをくくって注意をおこたること, letting the mind relax, underrating a thing and neglecting attention. It is not habitual sloppiness, which is why carelessness, unpreparedness and complacency are each about as near as the other. The word is Japanese and its origin is not known; the 精選版日本国語大辞典 marks it 語源未詳 and dates it from a 1309 manuscript of the Tale of the Heike, where it appears once, in the form ゆたむ, while the other recensions of the same passage use other words, so it was not yet common in the fourteenth century [1]. Two stories are told about where it comes from, and both dictionaries print them as 説, theories. One is a sutra: デジタル大辞泉's note cites the 北本涅槃経, chapter 22, where a king orders a courtier to carry a bowl of oil through a crowd and forfeit his life if a drop spills, and reads 油断 as the oil cut off, the spilled drop. The other is a native word, ゆたに, at ease, slack, worn down by sound change. Neither is more than a theory, and the sutra is the story people tell. 大敵, taiteki, is a great enemy, a formidable foe, and the proverb is a predicate: carelessness is a great enemy. 断 is written 斷 in every witness before 1946; the modern form is the one now used.
The proverb in English. Daniel Crump Buchanan's Japanese Proverbs and Sayings renders it Carelessness is a great enemy in 1965, and the rendering is the house title's ancestor [2]. The proverb is not in Galef's, Zona's or Trimnell's paperbacks.
The historical record
1638, printed 1645. 毛吹草, the first Japanese proverb collection, by Matsue Shigeyori 松江重頼. 油斷、强敵トナル, carelessness becomes a strong enemy: the same thought with a verb, before the four-character form [3].
1668. The puppet play 源平敵討遺恨并頼光北国, act four. なむ三ぼう、かやうにないがまへを、してをきたりしを、しらずして、ゆだんたいてきとなしたる事の口をしやと, Buddha help us: not to have known they had made ready like this, and to have let carelessness be our great enemy, how bitter. This is the line the 精選版日本国語大辞典 gives as the first attestation of the four-character form, still with となす, to make into [4].
1718. やふにまくは, a joke-book. 六月夜に釜ぬかるゝ油断強敵猫の額の飯粒ねらふ鼠あり, the kettle stolen on a June night: carelessness is a strong enemy; there is a mouse that eyes the grain of rice on a cat's forehead. The older form, still alive seventy years after the four-character one [5].
1732, printed 1750. Muro Kyūsō, 駿台雑話, book four. The Confucian scholar builds a chapter on the proverb, and heads it with the four characters and their reading, ゆだんたいてき. In the Kan'ei years Nagai Naomasa 永井尚政, young and rising fast in the shogun's favor, met the old Ii Naotaka, the elder statesman of the age, and asked him for anything from his long experience that a young man in high office should keep. Naotaka said he had one thing, too important to say in passing, and named a day; Nagai came in formal dress to his house, and after the greetings Naotaka said: 世話に油断大敵といふ事定て御覚へあるべし、某が伝授外にはなく候、此一言にて候ぞ、必御忘れあるな, you will know the common saying yudan taiteki. That is my whole transmission; there is nothing else. This one phrase. Never forget it. Kyūsō then tells the story of King Wu of Zhou, newly enthroned, asking Taikōbō 太公望 for a rule brief enough to keep and lasting enough to hand down, and receiving the four lines of the 丹書, the Red Book: 敬勝怠者吉、怠勝敬者滅、義勝欲者従、欲勝義者凶, where care conquers negligence, good fortune; where negligence conquers care, ruin; where right conquers desire, obedience; where desire conquers right, disaster. And he concludes: 今油断大敵の語、鄙諺なれども丹書の戒に叶へり, the phrase yudan taiteki is a rustic proverb, but it agrees with the warning of the Red Book. Everyone knows carelessness is bad, he adds, and everyone hears the proverb without stopping at it, which is why they fail; Naotaka's distinction was that he never let it near him [6]. The 1894 typeset edition heads the chapter 大敵外になし, there is no enemy but this one [7].
Edo. The Edo いろはかるた. The card for ゆ is 油断大敵, and the catch-phrase children shouted with it was 火がぼうぼう, and the fire roars: the proverb's domestic scene, an unwatched lamp or hearth [4].
1910. Fujii Otoo 藤井乙男, 諺語大辞典. Four headwords in a row. 【油斷、强敵トナル】 pointing to the next, with 毛吹草 as its source; 【油斷大敵】 with Kyūsō's chapter compressed, his 鄙諺 become 俗話, then the Chinese classical company of the thought, 通俗編, 説苑, the 後漢書 on 患生于所忽、禍起于細微, trouble is born where it is neglected, disaster starts from small things, the 荀子 on 百事之成也、必在敬之、其敗也必在慢之, every undertaking succeeds by care and fails by neglect, and the 耳談続纂 on 慣熟之斧、乃傷厥跗, the familiar axe is the one that cuts your foot; then, unusually for this dictionary, two European proverbs, Delays are dangerous, marked Italian, and Danger comes soonest when it is despised, marked Latin; 【油斷ハ怪我ノ基】, carelessness is the root of injury, from the play 世継曽我; and 【油斷モスキモナラヌ】 [3].
The dictionaries today. デジタル大辞泉: 油断は失敗のもとであるから、大敵である。油断して失敗を招くのを戒めた言葉. 精選版日本国語大辞典: 油断は失敗のもとであるから、恐ろしい敵であるということ. ことわざを知る辞典: 油断は大敵と思っていましめよ。大丈夫だろうと気をゆるめて注意を怠ると、思いもよらない危険を招くことになる; 四字熟語を知る辞典 adds two uses, Dazai Osamu 太宰治 in 1933, たけは、油断大敵でせえ、と言っただけで, and Ishikawa Jun 石川淳 in 1949. The public-domain corpus of the National Diet Library returns two thousand one hundred and eighty books for the four characters, three hundred and fifty-nine for the reading in kana, and thirty-two for the older 油断強敵 [4][8].
What is not a source. The proverb is Japanese, and the Chinese lines the 1910 dictionary sets beside it, the 丹書's 敬勝怠者吉, the 荀子's 必在敬之, the 説苑's 患生于所忽, are the classical company of the thought, given in the dictionary's habit, not its source. Kyūsō himself said so: a rustic proverb that happens to agree with the Red Book. The sutra's oil bowl is a story about the word 油断, told by the dictionaries as one theory of its origin, and a page may tell it as a story so long as it says so. Of Fujii's two European proverbs, the Latin one, Danger comes soonest when it is despised, is a fair match and the Italian, Delays are dangerous, is a different proverb.
The proverb in English
1965. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, page 42. Yudan taiteki: "Carelessness is a great enemy." The Japanese word "yudan" translated "carelessness" or "incaution," literally means "without oil." Hence, it can be appropriately applied to the five foolish virgins in the New Testament narrative. See Matthew 25:1-13. The rendering is exact. The etymology is not: 油断 does not literally mean without oil, the dictionaries mark its origin unknown and print the sutra's oil bowl as one theory among two, and the parable of the virgins is Buchanan's own bridge from a folk etymology to a Christian text [2].
The proverb is not in David Galef's Even Monkeys Fall from Trees (Tuttle, 1987), Even a Stone Buddha Can Talk (Tuttle, 2000) or Japanese Proverbs (Tuttle, 2012), Guy Zona's Even Withered Trees Give Prosperity to the Mountain (1996) or Edward Trimnell's Tigers, Devils, and Fools (2004); Trimnell uses the word carelessness only under even monkeys fall from trees.
Today. The house title, Carelessness is one's greatest enemy, is Buchanan's line with greatest for great, and the legacy record's three glosses, Unpreparedness is one's greatest enemy; He that is too secure is not safe; Overconfidence can be dangerous, cover the ground between them: the literal shape, the nearest English proverb, and the everyday paraphrase. What a rendering must keep: the enemy, because the proverb's whole force is that an inward lapse is treated as an outward foe; and a word for 油断 that means a dropped guard rather than a bad habit.
A reading
The proverb is a warning and not a creed: it is the martial-arts maxim of the family, and Kyūsō's chapter is why. Ii Naotaka's one-phrase transmission is short, quotable and true to a named source. The sutra's oil bowl is a legend of the word, and can be told as one.
References
- 「油断」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/油断-651959
- Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1965, p. 42.
- 藤井乙男『諺語大辞典』, 有朋堂, 1910 — 【油斷、强敵トナル】〔毛吹草〕 and 【油斷大敵】, National Diet Library pid 862766, scan 537. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/862766/1/537
- 「油断大敵」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版 日本国語大辞典・ことわざを知る辞典・四字熟語を知る辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/油断大敵-651960
- 『やふにまくは』, 1718, National Diet Library pid 2568482, scan 10. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2568482/1/10
- 室鳩巣『駿台雑話』巻四, written 1732, printed 1750, National Diet Library pid 2559323, scan 62. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2559323/1/62
- 室鳩巣『駿台雑話』巻四, the 1894 typeset edition, National Diet Library pid 754747, scan 109. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/754747/1/109
- National Diet Library Digital Collections, next-generation full-text search: 油断大敵 (2,180 books), ゆだんたいてき (359), 油断強敵 (32). https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/api/book/search?searchfield=contentonly