Proverbs are short sayings that contain metaphors and moral lessons unique to the culture that uses them. Can two proverbs created by different cultures in different languages have the same meaning? This dissertation presents the results of an investigation comparing the core meanings of ten Japanese and English proverbs that certain proverb dictionaries define as being “equivalent” in meaning. Inspired by linguist Cliff Goddard’s research into Malay and English proverbs, the thesis compares Japanese proverbs chosen from iroha karuta, a proverb-based card game, with English “equivalents” listed in Japanese proverb dictionaries. The investigation uses data from the Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written Japanese, the British National Corpus and a corpus of internet blogs to develop “semantic explications”- Natural Semantic Metalanguage paraphrases that demonstrate the core meaning of each proverb. These explications reveal that many of the Japanese proverbs have different metaphors, offer different advice and index different real-world situations to their English “equivalents”. The results of this investigation demonstrate how proverbs reproduce folk wisdom, ritual and the differing ideologies of Japanese and English culture.