Jaku Niku Kyo Shoku (The Jungle Law)

Today I will talk about the four-character idiom "jaku niku kyo shoku" (弱肉強食).

"Jaku" means "weak," "niku" means "meat," "kyo" means "strong," "shoku" means "eat," and this idiom means a world/society that weak ones become preys of strong ones -- the results depends directly on the differences in ability.

This idiom comes from "弱之肉、強之食," meaning "weak is the meat, strong eats it," written by a Chinese literati called Han Yu.

Before biology was developed, since people thought that carnivorous animals were strong and herbivorous animals were just preys, such an idiom was born by applying it to human society.

However, recently it has been cleared that predation is not easy in actual nature, and the number of herbivorous animals greatly affect the survival of carnivorous animals.

Therefore, it is said that "kyozon kyoei" (co-existence and co-prosperity) or "tekisha seizon" (survival of the fittest) is more appropriate than "jaku niku kyo shoku" as a term for describing the natural world (the jungle law).

弱肉強食

今日は「弱肉強食」という四字熟語を紹介します。

「弱肉強食」は漢字が意味するとおり、弱い者が強い者の餌食や犠牲になるような、実力の違いが結果を生む世界を表します。

この四字熟語は、韓愈の「韓愈・送浮屠文暢師序」にある、「弱之肉、強之食」（弱きの肉は、強きの食なり）から来ています。

生物学の発達していない近代以前では、肉食獣こそが強者、草食獣は捕食されるだけの弱者とみなし、これを人間社会にあてはめることで、この言葉が生まれました。

しかし現在では、実際の自然界では捕食は決して容易ではなく、草食獣の増減が肉食獣の生存に大きく影響を与えるなど、生態系のバランスが明らかになってきています。

このため、自然界においては「弱肉強食」ではなく「共存共栄」や「適者生存」という四字熟語のほうが適切だとも言われています。