The is a
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
poem. Originally the poem was attributed to the founder of the
Shingon
file:Koyasan (Mount Koya) monks.jpg, Shingon monks at Mount Koya
is one of the major schools of Buddhism in Japan and one of the few surviving Vajrayana lineages in East Asia, originally spread from India to China through traveling monks suc ...
Esoteric sect of Buddhism in Japan,
Kūkai
Kūkai (; 27 July 774 – 22 April 835Kūkai was born in 774, the 5th year of the Hōki era; his exact date of birth was designated as the fifteenth day of the sixth month of the Japanese lunar calendar, some 400 years later, by the Shingon sec ...
, but more modern research has found the date of composition to be later in the
Heian period
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kanmu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means "peace" in Japanese. ...
(794–1179). The first record of its existence dates from 1079. It is famous because it is a perfect
pangram
A pangram or holoalphabetic sentence is a sentence using every letter of a given alphabet at least once. Pangrams have been used to display typefaces, test equipment, and develop skills in handwriting, calligraphy, and keyboarding.
Origins
The ...
, containing each character of the
Japanese syllabary exactly once. Because of this, it is also used as an
ordering
Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to:
* Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood
* Heterarchy, a system of organization wherein the elements have the potential to be ranked a number of d ...
for the syllabary, in the same way as the ''A'', ''B'', ''C'', ''D''... sequence of the Latin alphabet.
Text
The first appearance of the Iroha, in was in seven lines: six with seven
morae
A mora (plural ''morae'' or ''moras''; often symbolized μ) is a basic timing unit in the phonology of some spoken languages, equal to or shorter than a syllable. For example, a short syllable such as ''ba'' consists of one mora (''monomoraic'') ...
each, and one with five. It was also written in
man'yōgana
is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of this ...
.
以呂波耳本部止
千利奴流乎和加
餘多連曽津祢那
良牟有為能於久
耶万計不己衣天
阿佐伎喩女美之
恵比毛勢須
Structurally, however, the poem follows the standard 7–5 pattern of Japanese poetry (with one hypometric line), and in modern times it is generally written that way, in contexts where line breaks are used. The text of the poem in
hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''.
It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrast ...
(with archaic and but without voiced consonant marks) is:
Note that:
*Archaic,
obsolete
Obsolescence is the state of being which occurs when an object, service, or practice is no longer maintained or required even though it may still be in good working order. It usually happens when something that is more efficient or less risky r ...
, and
historical hiragana uses (historic Japanese ''wi'', modern ''i'') and (historic Japanese ''we'', modern ''e''), which are now only used in proper names and certain
Okinawan orthographies
An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation.
Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and mos ...
. Modern writing uses voiced consonant marks (with
dakuten
The , colloquially , is a diacritic most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced, for instance, on sounds that have undergone rendaku (sequential voicing).
The , co ...
). This is used as an indicator of
sound change
A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chang ...
s in the spoken Japanese language in the Heian era.
*The consonant in Japanese (a
voiceless glottal fricative
The voiceless glottal fricative, sometimes called voiceless glottal transition, and sometimes called the aspirate, is a type of sound used in some spoken languages that patterns like a fricative or approximant consonant ''phonologically'', but ...
) was historically pronounced as (a
voiceless bilabial fricative
The voiceless bilabial fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is .
Features
Features of the voiceless bilabial fricative:
Occ ...
) before the occurrence of the so-called ''hagyō tenko'' (“'H'-row (kana) sound shift”, ). Due to phonological changes over history, the pangram poem no longer matches today's pronunciation of modern kana.
*The syllable
e (spelt & ) and
ye had merged into in the 10th century, slightly before the poem was written down in 1079.
* Note 1: The verb form ("being intoxicated; intoxication") may be read in modern kana pronunciation as either ''ei'', the archaic pronunciation based on the original kana spelling (''wefi'' in Classical Japanese), or as ''yoi'', the modern reading after sound changes caused the base verb form ''eu'' to shift to ''you''. The difference in reading depends on the intention of the rendering: keeping closer to the original, or keeping closer to modern usage.
An English translation by Professor
Ryuichi Abe
is the Reischauer Institute Professor of Japanese Religions at Harvard University. Until May 2004, he was professor of Japanese religions in the departments of religion and East Asian languages and culture at Columbia University.
Abe, through his ...
reads as:
Komatsu Hideo has revealed that the last syllable of each line of the Man'yō-gana original (), when put together, reveals a hidden sentence, ''toka
toga
The toga (, ), a distinctive garment of ancient Rome, was a roughly semicircular cloth, between in length, draped over the shoulders and around the body. It was usually woven from white wool, and was worn over a tunic. In Roman historical tra ...
nakute shisu'' (), which means "to die without wrong-doing". It is thought that this might be a eulogy in praise of
Kūkai
Kūkai (; 27 July 774 – 22 April 835Kūkai was born in 774, the 5th year of the Hōki era; his exact date of birth was designated as the fifteenth day of the sixth month of the Japanese lunar calendar, some 400 years later, by the Shingon sec ...
, further supporting the notion that the Iroha was written after Kūkai's death.
Usage
The Iroha contains every kana only once, with the exception of (-''n''), which was not distinguished from ''mu'' in writing until the early 20th century (see
Japanese script reform
The Japanese script reform is the attempt to correlate standard spoken Japanese with the written word, which began during the Meiji period. This issue is known in Japan as the . The reforms led to the development of the modern Japanese written ...
). For this reason, the poem was frequently used as an ordering of the kana until the
Meiji era
The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912.
The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization b ...
reforms in the 19th century. Around 1890, with the publication of the ''Wakun no Shiori'' () and ''Genkai'' () dictionaries, the ''
gojūon
In the Japanese language, the is a traditional system ordering kana characters by their component phonemes, roughly analogous to alphabetical order
Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the ...
'' (, literally "fifty sounds") ordering system, which is based on Sanskrit, became more common. It begins with ''a'', ''i'', ''u'', ''e'', ''o'' then ''ka'', ''ki'', ''ku''... and so on for each kana used in Japanese. Although the earliest known copy of the ''gojūon'' predated the Iroha, ''gojūon'' was considered too scholarly and had not been widely used.
Even after widespread use of ''gojūon'' in education and dictionaries, the ''Iroha'' sequence was commonly used as a system of showing order, similarly to ''a'', ''b'', ''c''... in English. For example,
Imperial Japanese Navy submarines
Imperial Japanese Navy submarines originated with the purchase of five Holland type submarines from the United States in 1904. Japanese submarine forces progressively built up strength and expertise, becoming by the beginning of World War II one ...
during the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
had official designations beginning with ''I'' (displacement 1,000 tonnes or more), ''Ro'' (500 to 999 tonnes), and ''Ha'' (less than 500 tonnes). Also, Japanese tanks had official designations partly using ''Iroha'' ordering, such as ''
Chi-ha'' (''ha'' meaning the third model). Other examples include subsection ordering in documents, seat numbering in theaters, and showing
go moves in diagrams (
kifu
A board game record is a game record for a board game.
''Kifu'' (棋譜) is the Japanese term for an abstract strategy game record. In China, people named this kind of record "qipu" (. In Korea, people named this kind of record "Gibo" ({{zh, t= ...
).
Current uses
The ''Iroha'' sequence is still used today in many areas with long traditions. Most notably,
Japanese laws and regulations officially use ''Iroha'' for lower-level subsection ordering purposes, for example (Article 49, Section 2, Subsection 1-''ro''). In official translation to English, ''i'', ''ro'', ''ha''... are replaced by ''a'', ''b'', ''c''... as in ''49(2)(i)(b)''.
In music, the
note
Note, notes, or NOTE may refer to:
Music and entertainment
* Musical note, a pitched sound (or a symbol for a sound) in music
* ''Notes'' (album), a 1987 album by Paul Bley and Paul Motian
* ''Notes'', a common (yet unofficial) shortened version ...
s of an
octave
In music, an octave ( la, octavus: eighth) or perfect octave (sometimes called the diapason) is the interval between one musical pitch and another with double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been refer ...
are named ''i ro ha ni ho he to'', written in
katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...
.
''Iroha'' is also used in numbering the classes of the conventional train cars of
Japanese National Railways
The abbreviated JNR or , was the business entity that operated Japan's national railway network from 1949 to 1987.
Network Railways
As of June 1, 1949, the date of establishment of JNR, it operated of narrow gauge () railways in all 46 pref ...
(now known as
JR). ''I'' is first class (no longer used), ''Ro'' is second class (now "Green car") and ''Ha'' is third class (standard carriages).
Some Japanese expressions are only understandable when one has knowledge of the ''Iroha''. The word ''iroha'' (, often in katakana) itself can mean "the basics" in Japanese, comparable to the term "the ABCs" in English. Similarly, ''Iroha no i'' () means "the most basic element of all". ''I no ichiban'' (, "number one of ''i''") means "the very first".
''
Iroha karuta'', a traditional card game, is still sold as an educational toy.
''Irohazaka'' (), a one-way switchback mountain road in
Nikkō, Tochigi, is named for the poem because it has 48 corners. The route was popular with Buddhist pilgrims on their way to
Lake Chūzenji
, also called Sea of Happiness, is a scenic lake in Nikkō National Park in the city of Nikkō, Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. It was created 20,000 years ago when Mount Nantai (2484 m) erupted and blocked the river.
The lake has a surface area of 11. ...
, which is at the top of the forested hill that this road climbs. While the narrow road has been modernized over the years, care has been taken to keep the number of curves constant.
Origin
Authorship is traditionally ascribed to the Heian era Japanese
Buddhist
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
priest and scholar
Kūkai
Kūkai (; 27 July 774 – 22 April 835Kūkai was born in 774, the 5th year of the Hōki era; his exact date of birth was designated as the fifteenth day of the sixth month of the Japanese lunar calendar, some 400 years later, by the Shingon sec ...
() (774–835). However, this is unlikely as it is believed that in his time there were separate ''e'' sounds in the ''a'' and ''ya'' columns of the kana table. The (''e'') above would have been pronounced ''ye'', making the pangram incomplete.
It is said that the ''Iroha'' is a transformation of these verses in the ''
Nirvana Sutra
( , , ; sa, निर्वाण} ''nirvāṇa'' ; Pali: ''nibbāna''; Prakrit: ''ṇivvāṇa''; literally, "blown out", as in an oil lampRichard Gombrich, ''Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benāres to Modern Colombo.' ...
'':
諸行無常
是生滅法
生滅滅已
寂滅為楽
which translates into
The above in Japanese is read
''Shogyō mujō''
''Ze shōmeppō''
''Shōmetsu metsui''
''Jakumetsu iraku''
See also
* ''
Ametsuchi no Uta'' (an earlier pangram)
*
Japanese literature
Japanese literature throughout most of its history has been influenced by cultural contact with neighboring Asian literatures, most notably China and its literature. Early texts were often written in pure Classical Chinese or , a Chinese-Japanes ...
Other languages
*
Abecedarius
An abecedarius (also abecedary and abecedarian) is a special type of acrostic in which the first letter of every word, strophe or verse follows the order of the letters in the alphabet.
Etymology
"Abecedarius" (or "abecedarium") is a Medieval ...
*
Alphabet song
The alphabet song is any of various songs used to teach children an alphabet. Alphabet songs typically recite the names of all letters of the alphabet of a given language in order.
The ABC (Verse 1)
"The ABC Song", otherwise referred to as ...
* ''
Shiva Sutra
The Śiva·sūtras, technically akṣara·samāmnāya, variously called ', ''pratyāhāra·sūtrāṇi'', ''varṇa·samāmnāya'', etc., refer to a set of fourteen aphorisms devised as an arrangement of the sounds of Sanskrit for the purposes ...
'', Sanskrit poem with similar function
*
Hanacaraka
Hanacaraka is the native name for the following indigenous scripts used in Indonesia:
*The Balinese script
*The Javanese script
*The Sundanese script
Standard Sundanese script (''Aksara Sunda Baku'', ) is a writing system which is used by the ...
, the traditional arrangement of the letters of the Javanese alphabet
*
Thousand Character Classic
The ''Thousand Character Classic'' (), also known as the ''Thousand Character Text'', is a Chinese poem that has been used as a primer for teaching Chinese characters to children from the sixth century onward. It contains exactly one thousand c ...
, Chinese poem with similar function, especially used in Korea
Notes
References
*
{{Japanese poetry
Japanese poems
Japanese writing system
Collation
Articles containing Japanese poems
Constrained writing
Pangrams
Buddhist poetry