Reading the Sima Fa · 01
When Does the Sima Fa Say War Must Stop?
A famous warning—“though a state be large, if it loves war it will perish”—comes after a much more concrete list. Mourning, bad harvests, winter, and summer all enter the argument before the sentence reaches its stark conclusion.
A fresh translation
Do not add to mourning; do not take advantage of calamity: this is how one cares for the other people.
Do not raise an army in winter or summer: this is how one extends care to the people alike.
Therefore, though a state be large, if it loves war it will surely perish; though All-under-Heaven be at peace, if it forgets war it will surely be endangered.
Original text
不加喪，不因凶，所以愛夫其民也；
冬夏不興師，所以兼愛民也。
故國雖大，好戰必亡；
天下雖安，忘戰必危。
Words and terms
- Sang (喪), mourning
A period of bereavement. “Do not add to mourning” treats an expedition as a further burden on a population already struck by loss. - Xiong (凶), calamity
Misfortune, including a bad year or disaster. The phrase forbids making another party’s distress an occasion for attack. - Xing shi (興師), raising an army
Mobilizing troops for an expedition. It is not simply a battle already underway. - Jian ai (兼愛), extending care alike
Care that does not stop at one’s own population. Here it belongs to the stated reason for seasonal restraint. - Hao zhan (好戰), loving war
Not the same as being prepared. The word names an inclination toward war.
The warning begins with occasions, not an abstraction
The last pair of clauses is easy to lift from the page. Large states perish if they love war. Peace becomes dangerous if war is forgotten. Their balanced rhythm makes them sound like a maxim detached from time and place.
The preceding clauses make that reading too thin. The writer names mourning, calamity, winter, and summer. None is a theory of war in the abstract. Each is a condition in which sending people away or pressing an advantage would impose a particular cost. The argument arrives at its general warning by way of a calendar and a population.
That order matters. The text does not first construct an ideal rule and then attach examples. It begins with situations in which people are vulnerable. Bereavement already takes people from households. Calamity already reduces what a community can bear. Seasonal campaigning can add illness and exhaustion. A ruler who notices none of this cannot plausibly claim to act from care.
“The other people” are inside the sentence
One phrase is especially demanding: “care for the other people.” The line does not say merely that a commander must preserve his own soldiers. It prohibits exploiting another community’s calamity. In the sentence’s own language, restraint is directed beyond the home side.
That should not be converted into a modern doctrine of pacifism. The surrounding chapter discusses war, punitive action, training, and the authority to mobilize. Nor does the passage erase conflict. It asks when military action burdens people who are already suffering, and it treats that question as part of military judgment.
Its grammar is spare. “Do not add.” “Do not take advantage.” The commands leave no long account of exceptions. Yet the reasons follow immediately: care for their people; care for people alike. The text ties a decision about timing to the condition of those who will carry its consequences.
Winter and summer are limits on mobilization
“Do not raise an army in winter or summer” may tempt a reader to look for a technical seasonal rule. The line itself gives a different emphasis. It explains the restraint with jian ai, care extended broadly. The season matters because people matter within the season.
Winter can mean cold, transport difficulties, and strain on provisions. Summer can mean heat and disease. Those practical associations are reasonable historical questions, but this four-clause quotation does not itemize them. What it does state is simpler: the army should not be raised then, and the stated reason is care.
That precision is worth keeping. A military classic can be read for logistics, but a reader should not quietly add logistics wherever the original gives an ethical reason. Here the wording joins the date of mobilization to a claim about responsibility. The sentence needs both halves.
Large is not the opposite of vulnerable
Only after those prohibitions does the text turn to the large state. “Though a state be large” does not promise security. Size may supply territory, people, stores, or prestige, but none cancels the danger of loving war. The verb is strong: the state will perish.
“Loving war” is more exact than merely fighting. A polity can prepare, train, and remember war without being described as loving it. Indeed, the very next movement of the chapter calls for exercises after peace. The contrast is not between any military capacity and innocence. It is between an appetite for war and a capacity that remains answerable to time and circumstance.
This is why the paired maxim cannot be reduced to “war is always wrong.” The text preserves a second danger. All-under-Heaven may be at peace, yet forgetting war brings peril. Preparedness is not annulled by the first warning. The reader is made to hold two risks at once.
Preparation is not enthusiasm
The two final clauses pull in opposite directions only if preparation and appetite are treated as the same thing. They are not. Forgetting war is dangerous because a peaceful order may lose the means to meet danger. Loving war is destructive because action becomes detached from necessity and from the people who pay for it.
The chapter’s continuation reinforces the distinction. Once peace has been achieved, it describes seasonal hunts and drills for the Son of Heaven and the regional lords. That following passage does not invite constant campaigns. It concerns the practice by which war is not forgotten.
The difference can be stated without importing a modern lesson: the text distinguishes maintaining a military capacity from delighting in its use. It also makes the distinction concrete. The restraint on mourning, calamity, and seasons comes before the proverb about national size. Memory of war follows after it. The order prevents either half from swallowing the other.
What these four clauses do not settle
They do not tell us every condition under which war may be undertaken. The chapter contains further material, and the four clauses do not supply a complete doctrine of just war.
They do not establish a precise agricultural or meteorological calendar. Winter and summer are named, but the quoted wording does not define dates, regions, or exceptions.
They do not prove that the received Sima Fa records the personal words of Sima Rangju. The work is connected with traditions about him, while its formation and transmission remain matters of scholarship.
They also do not let a reader choose one of the final maxims and ignore the other. “Love war” and “forget war” are deliberately paired. Removing either term changes the problem the passage poses.
A military text that asks who bears the season
The unusual feature of this passage is not that it speaks of victory or defeat. Many military texts do that. Here, before warning the large state, it asks what a campaign does to people in mourning, people struck by calamity, and people living through the hard parts of the year.
The answer is restraint, but not oblivion. A state must not make war its object of affection. It must also not lose the ability to remember war. Between those statements lies the difficult work that the brief quotation refuses to spell out for us: judging time, burden, and necessity without pretending that size alone makes a state safe.
Source
Sima Fa (司馬法), “Foundations of Benevolence” (仁本). The wording was checked against the text in the Chinese Text Project; that is a typeset transcription rather than a facsimile. A Japanese woodblock edition appears in Hyōdai Bukei Shichisho Zenbun, books 1–7, corrected by Wang Huan (Osaka: Bunkindō, 1846). The Sima Fa is book 7. Waseda University Library, call number イ13 00931.