The three wise monkeys

The three monkeys (in Japanese san saru, 三猿), also known as the "three wise monkeys" or "three mystical monkeys", are represented in a sculpture wooden statue by Hidari Jingorō (1594-1634), located above the sacred stables of the Toshogu Shrine (1636), built in honor of Ieyasu Tokugawa, in Nikko, north of Tokyo (Japan).

Meaning and origin

The Japanese names of the three monkeys—Mizaru (見猿), Kikazaru (聞か猿), Iwazaru (言わ猿)—mean “not seeing, not hearing, not saying,” without specifying what the monkeys do not see, they hear or say. Traditionally it has been understood as "See no Evil, hear no Evil and speak no Evil"; The saying had its origin in the translation of the Chinese moral code of santai, the philosophy that promulgated the use of the three senses in the close observation of the observable world.

Later this moral code was linked to the three monkeys; This association is attributed to Denkyō Daishi (also known as Saichō) (767-822), founder of the Tendaishū, the Japanese branch of the Tiantai Buddhist School during the Heian period (794-1185). This association comes from the homonymy between zaru (a negative case in Japanese), which appears three times in the moral code, and the Japanese word for monkey, saru, which becomes zaru when combined with certain words. The motif of the three monkeys became very popular among the Japanese people during the Kamakura period (1185-1392).

The meaning of the theme of the three monkeys is complex and diverse; Just as for the intellectual elite they were related to the aforementioned philosophical and moral code santai, among the people the meaning was to "surrender" to the system, a code of conduct that recommended the prudence of not seeing or hearing injustice, nor expressing one's own dissatisfaction, a meaning that persists today. An interpretation by the artist Andrés Hernández is the use of the senses as receptors and not as active functions of the being, understanding the monkey as the origin of man and which is the constitution of a society thinking in terms of the community as an organism and not of the being as an individual. Another interpretation indicates that originally the monkeys were spies sent by the gods to find out about the bad actions of men; The representation of the monkeys, blind, deaf and mute, must have emerged as a means of magical defense against said espionage. It has also been pointed out that the three monkeys could be a representation of the three faces of the ancient Japanese deity Vajra.

A fourth monkey

Also, in some other countries, there is a folklore of the four monkeys, adding a fourth monkey to not do evil (this monkey covers itself under the belly with its hands), and it is mentioned up to a fifth monkey does not smell evil (this monkey covers its nose with its hands).