How to Read “Even if you have seven children, never trust your heart to a woman”
Shichinin no ko wa nasu tomo onna ni kokoro yurusu na
Meaning of “Even if you have seven children, never trust your heart to a woman”
This proverb teaches that no matter how close a relationship is, you should not share important secrets with women.
Even with a wife you’ve lived with long enough to have seven children together, you should keep truly important secrets to yourself. This is an extremely strict warning.
People used this saying when warning about managing secrets and handling sensitive information.
It was especially used to advise caution about family or organizational matters and confidential information, even with the most trusted person.
From a modern perspective, this proverb doesn’t fit our times regarding trust and equality between men and women.
However, the essential message was universal: “Even with those closest to you, you need boundaries about what secrets to keep.”
This represents the strict wisdom of our ancestors about balancing trust and caution in human relationships.
Origin and Etymology
The exact source of this proverb has several theories. Similar expressions appear in moral instruction books from the Edo period.
It likely spread as family teachings among samurai households and merchant families.
The first part, “even if you have seven children,” means a deep relationship like marriage or family.
Having seven children was not unusual at the time. It showed many years spent together. This expression symbolically represents a deep bond shared throughout life.
The second part, “never trust your heart to a woman,” strongly reflects the social background of that era.
In samurai society, family secrets or strategies leaking out could threaten the clan’s survival. For merchant families, business secrets reaching competitors was a life-or-death matter.
Women married in from other families. They typically maintained connections with their birth families.
Therefore, a warning emerged that even the most trustworthy wife should not be told important secrets.
This proverb was practical wisdom born from the harsh social environment of the time. It taught the balance between trust and vigilance.
Usage Examples
- I follow the spirit of “Even if you have seven children, never trust your heart to a woman” with company secrets, not even telling my family
- Old people said “Even if you have seven children, never trust your heart to a woman,” but saying that today would cause big problems
Universal Wisdom
This proverb has been passed down through generations because it contains deep insight into fundamental human nature.
It addresses “the eternal tension between intimacy and keeping secrets,” which is a timeless essence of human relationships.
The closer people become, the more they want to open their hearts and share everything.
The desire to hide nothing from loved ones and share everything is a natural human wish.
However, people living in society also have secrets they must absolutely keep to protect individuals or groups. People have always struggled between these two conflicting demands.
This proverb shows the conflict between emotion and reason.
Our ancestors learned from experience that secrets can unintentionally spread through even the most loved and trusted person.
Everyone, without malice or even with good intentions, can pass along what they’ve heard to others in casual conversation.
This teaching feels harsh because it touches on the contradiction between “the longing for complete trust” and “the imperfection of reality.”
There’s the ideal of building a perfectly trusting relationship. But in reality, information management is necessary. This tension itself represents the complexity of human society.
When AI Hears This
Human emotions exist in a complex information space of hundreds of dimensions. But language can only express a few dozen dimensions at most.
When you try to convey information in your heart through words, massive amounts of information are inevitably lost.
This is exactly what information theory calls “channel capacity limits.” If you try to send 1000 bits of data through a line that can only transmit 100 bits per second, 90 percent of the information disappears.
This proverb points out an even more serious problem.
When the receiver has higher analytical ability than the sender, they risk inferring the whole picture from small information fragments.
Modern cybersecurity has a technique called “side-channel attacks.” Instead of the encrypted main content, it decodes secrets from secondary information like slight differences in processing time or power consumption changes.
People in the Edo period knew from experience that women had high ability to read information men didn’t intend to reveal.
They could pick it up from facial expressions, voice tone, word choices, and various other channels.
In other words, they intuitively understood the fundamental information security problem of information leakage that the sender cannot control.
This isn’t about gender. It’s a universal truth that when two parties have different information processing abilities, it’s structurally difficult for the less capable side to maintain information advantage.
Lessons for Today
This proverb teaches us about the eternal theme of balancing intimacy and boundaries in human relationships.
Of course, the expression targeting only women doesn’t fit modern times. But the essential lesson about “balancing trust and caution” remains timeless.
In modern society, we can share information more easily than ever through social media and messaging apps.
That’s why judging what to share and what to keep to yourself has become even more important.
Even with close friends and family, you need to handle carefully things involving others’ privacy, work confidentiality, and plans not yet public.
What’s important is not thinking that keeping secrets is dishonest.
Rather, having appropriate boundaries is a mature attitude that protects yourself and those around you.
Sharing everything isn’t proof of intimacy. Respecting others while fulfilling your responsibilities is what truly builds trust.
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