修行会

118「大御神七十五声を生みなして世の経綸をさづけ給へり。」- 植芝盛平

Original Waka¹

大御神
七十五声を
生みなして
世の経綸を
さづけ給へり

植芝盛平 (Ueshiba, 1977)

Translation

“The Great Deity, having brought forth the seventy‑five sounds, bestowed the ordering / weaving (keirin) of the world.” – Morihei Ueshiba

Waka Translation

Great Ōmikami—
seventy-five voices born,
bringing them to be;

weaving the world’s warp and weft,
kindly bestowed on the world.

Morihei Ueshiba

歴史的仮名遣い（語構成を明示）²

大御神（おほみかみ）
七十五聲（しちじふごこゑ）
生み成して（うみなして）
世の經綸を（よのけいりんを）
さづけ給へり（さづけたまへり）

植芝盛平

Bungo Romanization

ōmikami
shichijūgo-sei o
umi nashite
yo no keirin o
sazuke tamaeri

Ueshiba Morihei

Notes

¹ As written, line 2 scans 8 mora (し/ち/じ/ふ/ご/こ/ゑ/を). I show a classical (bungo) tanka reading that regularizes the meter using a well‑attested waka license (accusative particle omission).

² The particle omission is legitimate in waka: Old Japanese and classical verse frequently allow 無助詞 (zero‑marked NPs) for case roles—including the accusative—especially before ren’yō forms; see work on 無助詞名詞句 and case marking drift in older Japanese (cf. Takeuchi, 2012).

Translation, Notes, Commentary, and Research by Latex G. N. R. Space-Coyote

Ueshiba, M. (2025). 植芝盛平道歌–118: Seventy-five sounds weaving (L. G. N. R. Space-Coyote, Trans.; OpenAI ChatGPT-5 Pro, Ed.). Shugyokai.org. (Original work published 1977) https://shugyokai.org/afw4

大（お; ō）— great.

御（み; mi）— honorific prefix; in historical grammar it functions as a bound morpheme marking reverence toward the referent. NINJAL’s (2017) historical corpus treats ミ（御） as a prefixal element with numerous sacred exemplars (御子, 御言, 御手洗, etc.); indexes sacred dignity. In Shintō vocabulary mi‑ marks kami and imperial referents (mi‑koto, mi‑tama), a usage of Shimazu (n.d.) treats as an honorific title / prefix for divine persons and attributes.

神（かみ; kami）— divine; deity; god(s).

大御神（おほみかみ; ōmikami）— subject (honorific “Great August Deity”); a high honorific for “the Great August Deity,” in Ueshiba’s dōka often aligned with the Ōmoto / Shintō cosmology that informed his thought.

声（こゑ; koe） — voice.

七十五声 / 七十五聲（しちじふごこゑ; shichijūgo koe） — direct object (poetically zero-marked in bungo translation); “seventy‑five sounds”; refers to the classic kotodama (“word‑spirit”) schema that expands the fifty basic syllables with twenty voiced and five semi‑voiced sounds (50 + 20 + 5 = 75). This numeration is attested in early modern kotodama theory and remains central in Shintō‑derived discourse later drawn upon by Ueshiba. Kotodama—the belief that spiritual power resides in sounds/words—frames Ueshiba’s use of “voices/sounds” as cosmogonic forces rather than mere phonetics. (see 國學院大學, n.d.b).

生みなして / 生み成して（うみなして; uminashite） — verb phrase “bringing forth and accomplishing”; classical compound ‘to bring into being and make complete’; 連用形 + 接続助詞 て links to the bestowed result to “having brought forth / after bringing forth”; The 〜て form links the creative act (generating the sounds) to the next line’s bestowal of cosmic order: a sequence “creates X; then grants Y based on X.”

世（よ; yo） — generation, many spanning generations, era, period, time, epoch, dynasty, regime, year, age, world, earth, people (atemporal) (three leaves on a branch).

の（no） — genitive.

経（けい; kei） — “ordering / governance; grand plan”, originally “warp-and-weft order” then by extension, in this context “governing and arranging the state / the world”.

綸（りん; rin） — twine; fishing line; be sure to check Chinese variations (interesting).

世の経綸（よのけいりん; yo no keirin） — “world’s keirin”; “people’s keirin”, “age’s kerin” etc.; literally evokes warp‑and‑weft imagery; keirin denotes the grand ordering or governance of a realm (e.g., statecraft)—hence my translation “the world’s weaving / the plan of cosmic order.” A standard dictionary gloss defines 経綸 as “ordering and governing a state; its plan/policy”.

を（o） — accusative.

世の經綸を（よのけいりんを; yo no keirin o） — object “the ordering / weaving of the world”.

さづけ（sazuke）— (連用形) + 給ふ (tamahu, respectful auxiliary to the subject) → 給へ (連用形); さづく（sazuku） — modern さずける) “to bestow, grant”.

給へり（たまへり; tamaeri） — 給ふ (auxiliary honorific, yodan) in ren’yōkei 給ひ + perfective り → conventional spelling 給へり; 完了助動詞 りattaches to yodan 已然形/サ変未然形 (phonologically yielding -e‑ + り).

さづけ給へり（さづけたまへり; sazuke tamaeri） — auxiliary honorific + perfective “has graciously bestowed / did graciously bestow”; “has graciously bestowed (upon [us / the world]),” classical honorific + perfective aspect; the line attributes the world‑ordering as a bestowal of the deity.

Historical kana & kyūjitai. I use ゑ (we) in 聲（こゑ） and kyūjitai characters (經綸／聲)—standard for bungo representations.

Honorific & aspect stacking. 授け＋給ふ＋り ⇒ さづけ給へり shows classical auxiliary layering (尊敬補助動詞＋完了) typical of bungo syntax.

Case‑marker omission in verse: The metrically regular reading omits the first を before a ren’yō clause—attested as 無助詞 in Old/Classical Japanese and routine in waka diction to satisfy 5/7 rhythm.

連用形 linking (～て). 生み成して uses ren’yōkei + て to chain events, a canonical connective in classical prose/poetry; “ren’yō‑chūshi”–type segmentations are ubiquitous in premodern style.

Diction & parallelism. The cosmological diction (七十五聲, 經綸) and the honorific 給へり match the elevated register of courtly waka and later didactic dōka; the imagery of weaving (經) aligns with classic Sino‑Japanese metaphors of ordering.

Semantic compression. Waka routinely condense theological / cosmological claims into compact images; Ueshiba’s kotodama‑inflected “voices → world’s weaving → gracious bestowal” maps cleanly onto this tradition. For tanka norms & translation practice, see overviews of waka poetics.

Kotodama & the 75 voices. Ueshiba’s religious language draws on Ōmoto and broader Shintōist kotodama theory in which vowel / consonant matrices generate and sustain phenomena. Secondary sources on Ueshiba repeatedly note his insistence that the universe unfolds through the 75 sounds of kotodama.

Ōmoto and Ueshiba’s theology. Scholarship on Ōmoto (Deguchi Onisaburō) documents the movement’s kotodamasemiotics and its influence on Ueshiba’s idiom and practice; this background clarifies why “seventy‑five voices” and “world ordering” appear together in his verse.

“Keirin” as cosmic ordering. The phrase 世の経綸 invokes a long Sino‑Japanese trope of “weaving / governing the world,” here re‑read through kotodama as the deity’s gracious cosmogonic governance. 

Anthropology/Religious‑studies critiques. Studies of kotodama and modern Shintō note how language ideology and nationalism entwined in the 19th–20th c.; reading Ueshiba’s line with that context helps avoid anachronism while understanding its doctrinal ambition.