The Three Monkeys of Gandhi

A small figurine of three monkeys is linked with Gandhi. Each monkey covers a different sense.

Gandhi did not invent the image. It comes from a 17th-century Japanese shrine carving. This lesson covers where the symbol began and how it became tied to Gandhi’s philosophy.

1What are the three monkeys called?

Each monkey has a Japanese name. Each covers one sense.

• Mizaru covers its eyes. The message is “see no evil”.
• Kikazaru covers its ears. The message is “hear no evil”.
• Iwazaru covers its mouth. The message is “speak no evil”.
• The names come from a Japanese pun.
• The ending “-zaru” negates a verb. It also sounds like “saru”, the Japanese word for monkey.
• So the phrase began as wordplay, not as a moral teaching.
• The ethical meaning was added afterwards, as the image spread.
• The monkeys are Japanese macaques, a common species in Japan.
• Outside Japan, the names are sometimes written wrongly, as Mizaru, Mikazaru and Mazaru.

2Where did the image come from?

It came from a Japanese shrine, long before Gandhi was born.

• The Toshogu shrine at Nikko carved its famous monkey panel in 1636.
• The panel is one of a set of eight monkey carvings on a stable wall.
• The original meaning was narrower than Gandhi’s reading.
• It was mainly advice about raising a child well. It was not a general ethic for adults.
• Some scholars trace the idea further back.
• It may echo Buddhist teachings that reached Japan from China around the 8th century.
• Those teachings were themselves possibly rooted in older ideas from India.
• Exams use a trap here. Do not credit the three monkeys to ancient India or China. The carving Gandhi’s story rests on is from 17th-century Nikko.
• In Japan, the maxim is understood in a Buddhist way, as avoiding evil thoughts and deeds.
• In the West, it is often read differently. People use it for turning a blind eye.

3How did Gandhi get his figurine?

A Japanese monk is credited with the gift.

• In 1933, the Japanese monk Nichidatsu Fujii met Gandhi in Wardha.
• Fujii founded the Nipponzan-Myohoji Buddhist order.
• By the most widely repeated account, he gave Gandhi a small porcelain figurine of the three monkeys.
• No single museum record confirms this exact origin. Treat it as the usual account, not a settled fact.
• The figurine is associated with Gandhi’s few personal belongings, such as his glasses and sandals.
• Accounts differ on where it is kept today. Some name Sabarmati Ashram. Others name Sevagram Ashram near Wardha.
• Fujii’s order later built Peace Pagodas across India.
• One of them is at Rajgir in Bihar.

4How did Gandhi read the symbol?

He read it as advice on self-control.

• Gandhi treated the figurine as a personal symbol of his own philosophy.
• He read it as practical moral advice.
• Closing off the senses to harmful input helps stop corrupting thoughts and actions at the start.
• The symbol links to self-restraint and self-discipline.
• These values were central to his idea of satyagraha.
• They also tie into ahimsa, or non-violence.
• Gandhi wove this one small symbol into a far larger moral philosophy built on truth and non-violence.
• For that wider framework, see Gandhi’s Philosophy: From Hind Swaraj to Champaran.
• Hind Swaraj, his early treatise, appeared in 1909.
• Gandhi coined the word satyagraha in South Africa, years before he returned to India.
• Gandhi was assassinated on 30 January 1948 at Birla House in Delhi. Objects like this figurine became part of how people remember him.

5What does the borrowing teach us?

Gandhi took a foreign image and gave it his own meaning.

• Gandhi chose a Japanese folk image, not an Indian one, as a personal symbol.
• That shows how freely his moral philosophy borrowed across cultures.
• He judged ideas on their content, not their origin.
• He often took an existing word or image and filled it with new meaning.
• He did this with Sarvodaya, a word he coined in 1908 as the title of his Gujarati version of Ruskin’s Unto This Last.
• See Sarvodaya: Gandhi’s Word for Universal Welfare.
• A small, humble object outlasting grand monuments says something about legacies.
• People remember an object or gesture more easily than an idea stated in words.
• Sabarmati Ashram is also where the Salt March began on 12 March 1930. See Civil Disobedience and the Salt March.
• For the state that hosts Sabarmati, see Gujarat State Profile.