Online Aphorism Collection

English translation of the prose

AI-assisted English translation of the prose; quoted poems remain in Japanese. The Japanese original remains authoritative.

AI-assisted English translation. The Japanese original remains authoritative.

Originally published: 2020-04-19

Historical material: this collection contains aphorisms, commentaries and an invitation dated April 19 and 20, 2020. Its calls for submissions and references to social conditions are statements made at the time, not a current invitation.

This is a prose translation. Poetic and song quotations are retained in Japanese.

Submissions Invited: Online Aphorism Collection

The Online Manyoshu editorial office has decided to invite contributions from around the world for a collection of aphorisms under this name. Please take part. Every contribution selected will become a gift to future generations. How dismal that the current measures against coronavirus have not advanced a single step beyond the methods used against korori, or cholera, at the end of the Tokugawa period. The progress of civilization is hardly something to rely on. It is aphorisms that rouse the human heart.

Initiator: Seishu Hamano, President of this Society
Judges: the Society's directors
April 19, 2020

Examples

There is no hope, but there is light.

— A JR employee

Commentary. This seems to have been an answer to a question about available Shinkansen seats at a ticket counter, but as a philosophy of life it is superb.¹ It means: “The hope human beings desire may have been cut off. Yet wait for heaven's grace. Heaven will not abandon you.” 法然上人 says, 「月影の至らぬ里はなけれども眺むる人の心にぞ住む」. We are taught that only through believing in heaven's grace will our hope be fulfilled. It gives us courage too. It can also be read as telling us not to close our hearts over something like the present, poorly handled coronavirus commotion, but to await heaven's grace. Indeed, korori subsided rapidly thanks to antibodies.

むかしの光、今いずこ

土井晩翠

Commentary. A line from Kojo no Tsuki. When this castle flourished, cherry-blossom banquets must have been held here, yet now it lies in ruins. The sunlight that poured brilliantly into the cups has vanished—where has it gone? In autumn this became a battlefield. Moonlight would have poured onto a sword thrust into the burial mound of a warrior who died in bitter anger. Now neither sword nor mound remains. The moonlight that shone upon the planted sword has gone: that is, no one remains who knows of his valor. Such is the human world.

We could simply dismiss this as the impermanence of all things. But, people of this world, your own existence too will end, and no one will remain to remember you. What, then, should you accomplish in life?

At first glance this is not an aphorism but a poem of impermanence. Yet if you sing it on occasions from childhood onward, does it not make you feel that, even in defiance of this unshakable impermanence, you ought to accomplish something?

First, cleaning; second, diligence; third, learning.

— Teachers and staff, 上宮高校

Commentary. “High-school students should devote themselves to study, yet this school puts it third?” That would be too hasty a judgment. This too is one of 法然上人's teachings: first dispel the impure thoughts dwelling in your heart. If you cannot even put in order an environment full of miscellaneous clutter, you pursue learning without freeing yourself from trivial concerns, and it merely helps your impure thoughts. Nothing worthwhile will come of it. Diligence means not talking about the talents you were born with, but simply making an effort. Then you can become a better person than a talented idler. Believe that, and devote yourself to religious practice.

For laypeople, that practice is expressed as diligence. Seen from this perspective, the conduct of graduates from the many schools that specialize in university entrance preparation is deplorable. Lacking the first and second principles in their youth, even if they enter a highly selective university and become senior bureaucrats, they pursue promotion and private gain alone, then after retirement turn into migratory birds stealing tax money as they move from post to post. As a high-school maxim, this saying that begins with cleaning is wonderfully apt and has something sacred about it. The school also encourages filial devotion, I am told. That too is an excellent teaching connected to this philosophy.

Submissions Invited, No. 2 — April 20, 2020

Online Aphorism Collection

Initiator: Seishu Hamano, President of this Society
Judges: the Society's directors

An aphorism is not a charter that only those who have made a name for themselves may issue. It is an anguished message to be passed on, granted only to those who have suffered and struggled.

— Seishu Hamano

Commentary. Ordinary people are reluctant to leave their names and words in this world. They cannot approve of an arrogant way of life. So even when they produce a fine saying, they tear it up and throw it away. Had those lost sayings survived, people might have lived more wisely.

Leaving words with one's name attached may at first appear a restrained attitude, but it is usually regarded as an act of evading responsibility for what one writes.² Therefore, whenever you express your views, be sure to identify yourself. Never mind if people think you want attention. A good aphorism, carefully worked and reworked, encourages people and rescues them from the abyss.

Please send in your contributions.

Do not let the day called “today” manipulate you. It is a glittering villain that has kicked aside all the years of the past and appeared with an innocent face.

— Seishu Hamano

Commentary. This expresses exactly what I have often felt in my own life.

The span of time called today seems to shine more powerfully than any day in the past. Yet within those limited hours I accomplish little, and before I know it the sun is setting. I meet the night without much regret, hoping that, after all, there is tomorrow. In fact I have merely been completely toyed with by the monster called today, which appeared with the sunrise in this radiant guise.

I often notice this. Many people probably let the hours of today pass without noticing. People tell us to value today. They also tell us to forget the past and think of the future. A shining today, a shining future? Then did the days that have passed not shine? Is it no loss to throw them into the rubbish bin?

Because today has appeared, the today that existed yesterday turns its back and leaves, already half blurred. What of the day before yesterday? Its shadow is thinner still. Impressions, memories, everything has been shattered and left scattered.

What was I doing on this day a month ago? Without looking in my diary I cannot remember anything. What about this day last year? I take out the black leather diary, beginning to look old. The ballpoint writing has blurred beyond recognition. I met someone. That conversation came to nothing. Five years ago? I had not retired yet… I was shining! Was I really? No: I had no next workplace, and was already struggling in anguish, thinking 「憂しと見し世ぞ今は恋しき」.

To things and phenomena, time is an utterly wicked creature. Just look: five years ago, the legs that moved so firmly over the earth on the golf course now wobble. Look at my forehead. What is this white, withered grass emerging from skin that once grew hair as the earth does? What has been at work? The passing years, of course.

Let us face today as a “villain.” Do not let down your guard. Make clever use of it and work it hard. Stroke it, attack it, and go about branding this villain with the resolve to stamp your own bloody handprint again and again upon its forehead.

This aphorism has something of Bierce about it, but the idea came from the depths of my own being.

Please send in your contributions.

It is because I am alone that I can do good work.

— Seishu Hamano

Commentary. This too is an aphorism drawn from actual life, but it is not as twisted as the previous one. It is also a straightforward principle I have learned through experience as a guide to my own life.

Faculty meetings, committees, school information sessions, working over undergraduate theses, writing recommendations for graduate students: my working years were a succession of busy days. I was apt to lose even my sense of my own existence, and what I wanted most was time alone. For example, as soon as I finished at my main institution, Japan Women's University, at five in the evening, I would go straight to Aoyama Gakuin. In a special lecture course on American literature I spoke about nineteenth-century immigrants from Eastern Europe and labor conditions in New York City… writing one thing after another on the board, with the breadth of my knowledge put to the test. Dozens of staff from the embassies and consulates of various countries attended these lectures each evening, filling the classroom with more than 120 people. Then I finished and went home: ten at night. From there I began writing the 800 manuscript pages of 『日朝、もし戦えば』, a simulation novel commissioned by 中央公論社.

This solitary work gave me greater fulfillment than anything else. My daytime work was rewarding too, but when I wrote a long novel alone in my study, I was alone and yet became dozens of characters as I constructed the story. I loved it. Solitary work was precisely the time in which I could continue addressing the nation and the world through my own thoughts.

Please contribute an original personal motto of your own.

1. Translation note: the sentence plays on the train names Nozomi (“hope”) and Hikari (“light”).

2. Translation note: the source says 「名を付して」, “with one's name attached,” in this sentence. The wording has been retained even though it appears to conflict with the surrounding argument.