油断大敵 yudan taiteki Carelessness is one's greatest enemy
Abstract
油断大敵, carelessness is a great enemy, is a Japanese proverb. Its older form, 油斷强敵, carelessness is a strong enemy, is already cited as a saying in the 甲陽軍鑑, a military chronicle compiled by 1621; the 毛吹草 of 1638 lists it with a verb, and the form with 大 is in a puppet play of 1668. 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: one dictionary prints two stories, a sutra's spilled oil and a worn-down native word, and the other marks it unknown.
Overview
The sense. The sense has not moved: a warning against the relaxed guard. What the witnesses add is a scale. In the military chronicle it is a camp that posted no watch; in the puppet play it is a regret at not having known how the other side had prepared; 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 house on fire; in the modern dictionaries it is the everyday word for don't get complacent. The one variant, 油断強敵, carelessness is a strong enemy, is older than the form with 大: the chronicle writes it as four characters, the 毛吹草 with a verb, becomes a strong enemy, and 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。ぬかりがあること。不注意, letting the mind relax; underrating a thing and neglecting attention; a slip; inattention. In this sense, the 日国's first and the one the proverb uses, it is a lapse rather than habitual sloppiness (the dictionary's second sense, 怠けおこたること, is wider), 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 manuscript of 1309–10 of the Tale of the Heike, where it appears once, in the form ゆたむ. Of the other recensions of the same passage, the 長門本 has the word and the 屋代本 and the 源平盛衰記 use other words, and the dictionary finds it nowhere else in that manuscript, nor in the 保元, the 平治 or the 覚一本 Heike, and considers that it was not then in common use [1]. Two stories are told about where it comes from, and デジタル大辞泉's note prints both, the first as it is said, the second as one theory. One is a sutra, the 北本涅槃経, chapter 22, where a king orders a courtier to carry a bowl of oil without tipping it: もし一滴を棄せば、まさに汝の命を断つべし, in the dictionary's Japanese reading, if you spill one drop, your life shall be cut off. The story joins 油, oil, to 断, cut off. The other is a native word, ゆたに, at ease, slack, worn down by sound change. Neither is more than a theory. 大敵, taiteki, is a great enemy, a formidable foe, and the proverb is a predicate: carelessness is a great enemy. The older form's 强敵, the old shape of 強敵, is the word the 精選版日本国語大辞典 reads ごうてき in this proverb, 強い敵。手ごわい敵, a strong enemy, a formidable one [1]. 断 is written 斷 in the typeset books before 1946, and the Edo prints write the word in a running hand; the modern form is the one now used.
The proverb in English. It has been in English since James Curtis Hepburn's dictionary of 1867, as negligence is a great enemy [2], the form Hepburn's later editions and the Meiji language primers kept. Carelessness is a great enemy is in print by 1889, in a London commentary on the Book of Proverbs [3], and carelessness is the greatest enemy, the house title's nearest ancestor, in Gordon Prange's account of Pearl Harbor in 1963 [4]. The proverb is not in Galef's, Zona's or Trimnell's paperbacks.
The historical record
By 1621, printed 1656. 甲陽軍鑑, the military chronicle of the Takeda house, chapter 23. The chronicle is ascribed to Kōsaka Masanobu 高坂昌信, put in order, as the dictionaries report, by Obata Kagenori 小幡景憲 before 1621; its oldest surviving print is of 1656 [5]. Of the Murakami commanders facing the young Takeda Harunobu, it says that they judged the enemy general green, and then: 少人數といひ旁以て油斷强敵といふことを忘れ味方よりはり番をも一人出さず, his force being small too, for all these reasons they forgot the saying carelessness is a strong enemy and sent out not one man of their own to keep watch. The chronicle cites the saying by name, as one the commanders should have kept in mind, and the lapse it names is a camp's. The passage is read here in the typeset edition of 1892–93, not in a manuscript or the print of 1656 [6].
1638, printed 1645. 毛吹草, by Matsue Shigeyori 松江重頼, which Fujii Otoo called the earliest collection of proverbs of the Edo period. The book's list of sayings, 世話付古語, has ゆだん强敵となる, carelessness becomes a strong enemy, near 猫の額なる物を鼠がねらふ, the mouse eyes what is on the cat's forehead: two entries after it in Fujii's 1929 reproduction of the list, with 蟷螂が斧を取て龍車に向ふ between, and directly after it in the 1943 edition's text; the 1910 dictionary gives it as 【油斷、强敵トナル】 [7][8]. A verse later in the same book already uses the four characters without the verb: とく見ぬや油斷强敵花の風, hurry and look: carelessness is a strong enemy, the wind in the blossoms [8].
1654. 楠正成一巻書, a book of tactics under Kusunoki Masashige's name. A military manual whose preface presents it as the teaching of the fourteenth-century general Kusunoki Masashige 楠木正成 (楠公ノ遺訓) and says it had long been kept in the writer's house (久シク余カ家ニ藏ム); the preface is dated 承應三歲甲午, 1654, and signed 山鹿甚五左衛門平貞直, whom the editors of its reprint of 1917 take for the military scholar Yamaga Sokō 山鹿素行 [9]. Under its heading 用心ノ事, on vigilance, it warns that an army that relaxes after a victory is beaten by a surprise attack a few days later, and ends: 亦居城ヲ出ルト敵ノ不意ニ來ン事ヲ思可シ。人皆善ヲバ學ズ侈ヲバ眞似スルナリ。是ヨリ油斷强敵ト云ナラン, and when you leave your castle, think that the enemy may come upon you unawares. People do not learn what is good; they imitate excess (侈, read をごり: extravagance, or pride). It is from this, perhaps, that the saying carelessness is a strong enemy comes [9]. It is the earliest known account of where the saying comes from, in the National Diet Library's full-text hits for 油斷强敵 read oldest first by the date of each printed item, the first twenty of 233 opened by name; that ranking dates the 1917 reprint, and the preface is the book's earliest date. Its preface is dated a generation after the chronicle and sixteen years after the 毛吹草, both of which already cite the saying, though the book itself may be older than its preface.
1660. わらんべ草, a treatise on kyōgen by Ōkura Toraaki 大蔵虎明. かならずめやすき所にけがあり。油断がうてきなり, the slip always comes where it looks easy: carelessness is a strong enemy. The 精選版日本国語大辞典's first example of 油断強敵 in a dated work, read ごうてき [10].
1668. The puppet play 源平敵討遺恨并頼光北国, part four (四). 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, Heavens: 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 form with 大, still with となす, to make into [11].
1718. やふにまくは, a joke-book. 月夜に釜ぬかるゝ油断強敵猫の額の飯粒ねらふ鼠あり, item 六, the kettle stolen on a moonlit 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 fifty years after the form with 大, and set beside the mouse and the cat's forehead that stand near it in the 毛吹草's list [12].
1732, printed 1750. Muro Kyūsō, 駿台雑話, book four. The Confucian scholar builds a chapter on the proverb, and the 1750 print gives the four characters, in Naotaka's words below, the 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 (voicing marks supplied), 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 [13]. The 1894 typeset edition heads the chapter 大敵外になし, there is no great enemy but this one [14].
Edo. The Edo いろはかるた. The proverb was used on the Edo いろはかるた, on the ゆ card by its first kana, and players added the tag 火がぼうぼう, and the fire roars [11]. Okada in 1958 reads the tag as if you do not look out, you may find your house on fire [15].
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】 [7].
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 National Diet Library's full-text index holds twenty-three thousand eight hundred and seven items for the four characters, one thousand eight hundred and thirty-seven of them dated 1912 or earlier; one thousand eight hundred and one for the reading in kana; and two hundred and forty-four for the older 油断強敵 [11][16].
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; neither the Chinese Buddhist canon at CBETA nor Chinese Wikisource has the proverb when searched for it in either form, in September 2026. Kyūsō himself treated it so: a rustic proverb that agrees with the Red Book. The 楠正成一巻書, with its preface of 1654, offers one of its own precepts as the saying's source, under a fourteenth-century general's name; the chronicle compiled by 1621 already cites the saying, so that is a story about the saying, not its origin [9][6]. The sutra's oil bowl is a story about the word 油断, told by one dictionary as the origin some give, 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
1867. James Curtis Hepburn, A Japanese and English Dictionary, page 544. Under YU-DAN, negligence, inattention, slothfulness, heedlessness, carelessness, remissness, the sub-entry — tai-teki, negligence is a great enemy, (prov.). The earliest known English print, in the Internet Archive's full text, and exact [2].
1889. Solomon Caesar Malan, Original Notes on the Book of Proverbs, volume two, page 611. On Proverbs 19:16, after a Telugu proverb on advice that does not keep: To which the Japanese add: "Carelessness is a great enemy." The footnote reads only Jap. pr. The rendering Buchanan printed seventy-six years later [3].
1896. Clay MacCauley, An Introductory Course in Japanese, pages 206 and 461. The thirty-ninth of the book's proverbs, ゆだんたいてき, glossed word by word, Negligence great enemy, then Negligence is a great enemy, and later a whole conversation built on it [17].
1896. F. Brinkley, F. Nanjō and Y. Iwasaki, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary, page 1420. Under Taiteki, marked as a proverb and as literal: Yudan taiteki … negligence is a powerful enemy [18].
1915. Saitō Hidesaburō 斎藤秀三郎, Saito's Idiomological English-Japanese Dictionary, page 1166. Under Security: Security is the greatest enemy, 油断大敵. The English-Japanese side meets the proverb with an English line of its own, and Kenkyūsha's New English-Japanese Dictionary of 1980 gives the same line under security, with 油断大敵 and cf. Shak., Macbeth III.v.32–33, where the line is security / Is mortals' chiefest enemy [19][20].
1940. The appendix to Huzii's Japanese Proverbs, Tourist Library 33, page 110. 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): Yudan taiteki. Incautiousness is a great enemy. Danger comes sooner when despised [21]. Incautiousness is the appendix's word alone among the renderings read. Which of the appendix's lines are Akiyama's is not settled here. The romanization is the book's own.
1958. Rokuo Okada, Japanese Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, page 182. Yudan taiteki. Negligence is a great foe, with the karuta's tag, hi ga bōbō (on fire, in flames), meaning that if you do not look out, you may find your house on fire, and the English There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip [15].
1963. Gordon W. Prange, Tora, Tora, Tora!, condensed in The Reader's Digest, November 1963. Of Admiral Nagumo turning his fleet for home after the attack on Pearl Harbor: Like Yamamoto he had a ready supply of Japanese maxims and proverbs. "Yudan taiteki," he said now. ("Carelessness is the greatest enemy.") The earliest rendering of the proverb with carelessness and the greatest that the Internet Archive's full text finds; the superlative is the translator's, since 大敵 is a great enemy [4].
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, and in the same words as Malan's. The etymology is not: 油断 does not literally mean without oil, the 精選版日本国語大辞典 marks its origin unknown and デジタル大辞泉 prints the sutra's oil bowl as one of two stories, and the parable of the virgins is Buchanan's own bridge from a folk etymology to a Christian text [22].
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 Prange's line of 1963 with one's for the; the gloss:, Carelessness is a great enemy, is the Japanese word for word, and Malan's and Buchanan's. The two differ in one word: greatest reads 大 as a superlative, where the Japanese says a great enemy. 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, an English proverb Thomas Fuller printed in 1732 [23], 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, and it has always belonged as much to the soldier as to the householder: the chronicle tells it of a camp that posted no watch, Kyūsō of a statesman, Prange of an admiral sailing home, and the Edo card of a house on fire. 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.
Japanese Scrolls by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase
Sources not seen
- The 毛吹草 in an Edo print at the page: its list of sayings is read here in Fujii's 1929 reproduction and the 1943 edition's excerpts, its verse in those excerpts only, and the 1645 print held at Waseda has not been read leaf by leaf in its running hand.
- The 甲陽軍鑑 in its 1621 manuscript or its 1656 print; the passage is read in the typeset edition of 1892–93.
- Prange's Tora, Tora, Tora! at its page in the November 1963 Reader's Digest; the passage is read in the Internet Archive's full-text excerpt of that issue and whole in the Indian edition of February 1964.
- We Japanese (Yamaguchi Shōzō, 1936), which the Internet Archive's full-text excerpt shows glossing the proverb Incautiousness is a great enemy; lending only.
A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.
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; 「強敵」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典 (ごうてき, sense 1), at kotobank (https://kotobank.jp/word/強敵).
- James Curtis Hepburn, A Japanese and English Dictionary, American Presbyterian Mission Press, Shanghai, 1867, p. 544, s.v. YU-DAN. Internet Archive japaneseenglishd00hepb, leaf n561. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishd00hepb/page/n561/mode/1up
- Solomon Caesar Malan, Original Notes on the Book of Proverbs, vol. 2, Williams and Norgate, London, 1889, p. 611, on Proverbs 19:16. Internet Archive originalnotesonb02mala. https://archive.org/details/originalnotesonb02mala
- Gordon W. Prange, Tora, Tora, Tora!, condensed in The Reader's Digest, November 1963 (the second of two instalments). Internet Archive sim_readers-digest_1963-11_83_499 (lending). https://archive.org/details/sim_readers-digest_1963-11_83_499 · the same text in the Indian edition, February 1964, p. 184, Internet Archive in.ernet.dli.2015.100916, leaf n378. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.100916/page/n378
- 「甲陽軍鑑」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版 日本国語大辞典・改訂新版 世界大百科事典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/甲陽軍鑑-63301
- 『甲陽軍鑑』品第二十三, 甲陽叢書, 温故堂, 1892–93, National Diet Library pid 899828, scan 78. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/899828/1/78
- 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 · 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). National Diet Library pid 1452761, scan 127 · the same book's reproduction of the 毛吹草's 世話付古語, pp. 296–297 (ゆだん强敵となる on p. 297), scan 155. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1452761/1/127 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1452761/1/155
- 松江重頼『毛吹草』, 岩波文庫, 1943, National Diet Library pid 1128297, scans 55 and 196 (excerpts only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1128297/1/55 · the print of 1645, Waseda University Library 文庫18 00042. https://www.wul.waseda.ac.jp/kotenseki/html/bunko18/bunko18_00042/index.html
- 『楠正成一巻書』, with a preface dated 承應三歲甲午 (1654) and signed 山鹿甚五左衛門平貞直, the 1917 reduced reprint, 大日本國光宣揚會, Tokyo, scans 19 (the preface's date and signature) and 51 (p. 48, 用心ノ事). National Diet Library pid 906128. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/906128/1/51
- 「油断強敵」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, and 「わらんべ草」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/油断強敵-2090485 · https://kotobank.jp/word/わらんべ草-154339
- 「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 · 「駿台雑話」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版 日本国語大辞典 (享保一七年（一七三二）成立。寛延三年…), at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/駿台雑話-85423
- 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
- Rokuo Okada, Japanese Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, Japan Travel Bureau, Tokyo, 1958, p. 182, s.v. Yudan taiteki.
- National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text index, oldest first: 油断大敵 (23,807 items), ゆだんたいてき (1,801), 油断強敵 (244). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=油断大敵&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC
- Clay MacCauley, An Introductory Course in Japanese, Kelly and Walsh, Yokohama, 1896, pp. 206 and 461, the thirty-ninth proverb. Internet Archive introductorycour00macc. https://archive.org/details/introductorycour00macc/page/206 · the second edition, 1906, pp. 214 and 469, Internet Archive anintroductoryc00maccgoog. https://archive.org/details/anintroductoryc00maccgoog/page/n238
- F. Brinkley, F. Nanjō and Y. Iwasaki, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary, Sanseidō, Tokyo, 1896, p. 1420, s.v. Taiteki. Internet Archive cu31924082117288, leaf n1451. https://archive.org/details/cu31924082117288/page/n1451
- 斎藤秀三郎, Saito's Idiomological English-Japanese Dictionary (熟語本位英和中辞典), S.E.G. Publishing Department, Tokyo, 1915, p. 1166, s.v. Security. The 1915 page is seen in a text layer only (HathiTrust hvd.32044086539269), not as an image. The same entry in the revised edition of 1918, p. 1166, National Diet Library pid 1681530, scan 591. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1681530/1/591
- Kenkyusha's New English-Japanese Dictionary, fifth edition, Kenkyūsha, Tokyo, 1980, s.v. security; the Macbeth line as Burton Stevenson, The Home Book of Quotations, fourth edition, 1944, prints it, s.v. Security.
- 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 110, 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#p110
- Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1965, p. 42.
- Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1732, no. 2195, as Burton Stevenson, The Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases, Macmillan, 1948, prints it.