About

Nikkō, Japan. On the sacred stable at Tōshō-gū, three monkeys have held the same poses since the seventeenth century, one with his hands over his eyes, one over his ears, one over his mouth. 見ざる, 聞かざる, 言わざる. See not, hear not, speak not. Each name ends in zaru, and saru is Japanese for monkey, so the saying came with its own animals.

The three are older than the carving. They had reached Japan by the late thirteenth century, and in the 1640s Japan found them a job, as attendants of Kōshin, a night that believers stayed awake for every sixty days. Three monkeys turn up elsewhere too. Giving them that job was a purely Japanese idea.

In Buddhist teaching the saying is about evil thought and evil deed. In the West it tends to be taken as advice on looking away, which is a different thing altogether. Wise Monkey Wear keeps the first reading: what comes in, and what goes out, is a choice.

Wise Monkey is not one of the three, and he is not a fourth. The three are complete, and he has the manners not to interrupt.

What he does is watch humans. He has seen Rome, Babylon and the food court, and his report so far is that only the costume changes. He keeps a ledger. He does not preach. The lesson is left for whoever finds it.

The garments carry the three, one idea to a piece and nothing on it by accident. Each piece is made to order, in cloth chosen to last.

The scrolls are his notes. He writes them laughing.

En, 縁. Wise Monkey has never bought an ad, and has no plans to. Whoever turns up here was found by the work first, which is how it was meant to arrive.

What endures requires no performance.