Iroha
Encyclopedia
The is a Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 poem, probably written in the Heian era
Heian period
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height...

 (AD
Anno Domini
and Before Christ are designations used to label or number years used with the Julian and Gregorian calendars....

 794–1179). Originally the poem was attributed to the founder of the Shingon Esoteric sect of Buddhism in Japan, Kūkai
Kukai
Kūkai , also known posthumously as , 774–835, was a Japanese monk, civil servant, scholar, poet, and artist, founder of the Shingon or "True Word" school of Buddhism. Shingon followers usually refer to him by the honorific titles of and ....

, but more modern research has found the date of composition to be later in the Heian Period
Heian period
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height...

. The first record of its existence dates from 1079. It is famous because it is a perfect pangram
Pangram
A pangram , or holoalphabetic sentence, is a sentence using every letter of the alphabet at least once. Pangrams have been used to display typefaces, test equipment, and develop skills in handwriting, calligraphy, and keyboarding...

, containing each character of the Japanese syllabary
Kana
Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...

 exactly once. Because of this, it is also used as an ordering
Collation
Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. One common type of collation is called alphabetization, though collation is not limited to ordering letters of the alphabet...

 for the syllabary.

Text

The first appearance of the Iroha, in , was in seven lines: six with seven morae each, and one with five. It was also written in man'yōgana.

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
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...

 (with archaic
Wi (kana)
ゐ, in hiragana, or ヰ in katakana, is a nearly obsolete Japanese kana, each of which represent one mora. It is presumed that ゐ represented and that ゐ and い indicated different pronunciations until somewhere between the Kamakura period and the Taishō period when they both came to be pronounced...

 and
We (kana)
ゑ, in hiragana, or ヱ in katakana, is a nearly obsolete Japanese kana.It is presumed that ゑ represented . It is thought that, after ゑ and え came to denote the same pronunciation as イェ in the Kamakura period, they came to be pronounced as the modern エ ; there is also the view that the pronunciation...

 but without voiced consonant marks) is:
Archaic | Modern | Ordering (see usage) Translation
hiragana
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...

 
transliteration kanji
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...

 and hiragana
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...

 
pronunciation numbers
いろはにほへと i ro ha ni ho he to 色は匂へど Iro wa nioedo 1 - 7 Even the blossoming flowers
ちりぬるを chi ri nu ru wo 散りぬるを Chirinuru o 8 - 12 Will eventually scatter
わかよたれそ wa ka yo ta re so 我が世誰ぞ Wa ga yo tare zo 13 - 18 Who in our world
つねならむ tsu ne na ra mu 常ならむ Tsune naramu 19 - 23 Is unchanging?
うゐのおくやま u wi no o ku ya ma 有為の奥山 Ui no okuyama 24 - 30 The deep mountains of vanity--
けふこえて ke fu ko e te 今日越えて Kyō koete 31 - 35 We cross them today
あさきゆめみし a sa ki yu me mi shi 浅き夢見じ Asaki yume miji 36 - 42 And we shall not see superficial dreams
ゑひもせす we hi mo se su 酔ひもせず Ei mo sezu. 43 - 47 Nor be deluded.


Notes:
  1. Archaic hiragana uses ゐ and ゑ, which are now only used in certain Okinawan
    Okinawan language
    Central Okinawan, or simply Okinawan , is a Northern Ryukyuan language spoken primarily in the southern half of the island of Okinawa, as well as in the surrounding islands of Kerama, Kumejima, Tonaki, Aguni, and a number of smaller peripheral islands...

     orthographies; modern writing uses voiced consonant marks (with dakuten
    Dakuten
    , colloquially ten-ten , is a diacritic sign most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced. Handakuten , colloquially maru , is a diacritic used with the kana for syllables starting with h to indicate that they should...

    .) This is used as an indicator of sound change
    Sound change
    Sound change includes any processes of language change that affect pronunciation or sound system structures...

    s in the spoken Japanese language in the Heian era.


An English translation by Professor Ryuichi Abe
Ryuichi Abe
Ryūichi 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....

 reads as:
Research by Komatsu Hideo has revealed that the last syllable of each line of the Man'yō-gana original (止加那久天之須), when put together, reveals a hidden sentence, toka [=toga] nakute shisu (咎無くて死す), which means "die without wrong-doing". It is thought that this might be eulogy in praise of Kūkai
Kukai
Kūkai , also known posthumously as , 774–835, was a Japanese monk, civil servant, scholar, poet, and artist, founder of the Shingon or "True Word" school of Buddhism. Shingon followers usually refer to him by the honorific titles of and ....

, further supporting the notion that the Iroha was written after Kūkai's death.

Usage

The iroha contains every kana once, with the exception of ん [-n], which was written む "mu" at the time. For this reason, the poem was frequently used as an ordering of the kana until the Meiji era reforms in the 19th century. Thereafter the gojūon
Gojuon
The is a Japanese ordering of kana.It is named for the 5×10 grid in which the characters are displayed, but the grid is not completely filled, and, further, there is an extra character added outside the grid at the end: with 5 gaps and 1 extra character, the current number of distinct kana in a...

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 iroha is often considered "old fashioned" the earliest known copy of the gojūon predates the iroha.

The iroha is still occasionally encountered in modern Japan. For example, it is used for seat numbering in theaters, and (from right to left) across the top of Go
Go (board game)
Go , is an ancient board game for two players that originated in China more than 2,000 years ago...

 game diagrams (kifu
Kifu
Kifu is the Japanese term for a game record for a game of Go or shogi. Kifu is traditionally used to record games on a grid diagram, marking the plays on the points by numbers....

), as in Yasunari Kawabata
Yasunari Kawabata
was a Japanese short story writer and novelist whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award...

's novel The Master of Go
The Master of Go
The Master of Go is a novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Japanese author Yasunari Kawabata, first published in serial form in 1951. Titled Meijin in its original Japanese, Kawabata considered it his finest work, although it is in contrast with his other works.-Plot introduction:It is a...

 (Meijin
Meijin
Meijin , literally translated, means "Brilliant Man." It is the name of the second most prestigious Japanese Go Tournament. It also refers to a traditional Japanese title given to the strongest player of the day during the Edo period.- The tournament :...

)
. Western go game diagrams use either letters or letters and numbers. In music, the note
Note
In music, the term note has two primary meanings:#A sign used in musical notation to represent the relative duration and pitch of a sound;#A pitched sound itself....

s of an octave
Octave
In music, an octave is the interval between one musical pitch and another with half or double its frequency. The octave relationship is a natural phenomenon that has been referred to as the "basic miracle of music", the use of which is "common in most musical systems"...

 are named i ro ha ni ho he to, written in katakana
Katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...

.
Musical Notes
English A B C D E F G
Japanese イ (i) ロ (ro) ハ (ha) ニ (ni) ホ (ho) ヘ (he) ト (to)


The word いろは (iroha) can also be used to mean "the basics" in Japanese, comparable to the term "the ABCs".

Although the Japanese employ the heavenly stems for rank order besides both the Chinese
Chinese numerals
Chinese numerals are characters for writing numbers in Chinese. Today speakers of Chinese use three numeral systems:the ubiquitous Arabic numerals and two indigenous systems....

 and Arabic numerals
Arabic numerals
Arabic numerals or Hindu numerals or Hindu-Arabic numerals or Indo-Arabic numerals are the ten digits . They are descended from the Hindu-Arabic numeral system developed by Indian mathematicians, in which a sequence of digits such as "975" is read as a numeral...

 as well as the Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...

, the iroha sequence was used to note the rank of submarines
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 of the world's most varied and powerful submarine...

 of the Imperial Japanese Navy
Imperial Japanese Navy
The Imperial Japanese Navy was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1869 until 1947, when it was dissolved following Japan's constitutional renunciation of the use of force as a means of settling international disputes...

 during the Second World War
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

. All long-range submarine
Submarine
A submarine is a watercraft capable of independent operation below the surface of the water. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability...

s had designations beginning with "I" (e.g., the largest submarine had "I400
I-400 class submarine
The Imperial Japanese Navy submarines were the largest submarines of World War II and remained the largest ever built until the construction of nuclear ballistic missile submarines in the 1960s. They were submarine aircraft carriers able to carry three Aichi M6A Seiran aircraft underwater to their...

" painted on its conning tower), coastal submarines began with "Ro", and training or marginally usable submarines had "Ha".

Japanese weapons made before 1945 were numbered in series with the original poem—refer to Military Rifles of Japan, 1897–1945 by Honeycutt and Anthony for examples of this practice. It is not known today if this was done out of respect for custom, or for reasons of military security or secrecy. Beginning with the second production of the Type 38 rifle
Type 38 rifle
The is a bolt-action rifle. For a time it was the standard rifle of the Japanese infantry. It was known also as the Type 38 Year Meiji Carbine in Japan. An earlier, similar weapon was the Type 30 Year Meiji Rifle, which was also used alongside it. Both of these weapons were also known as the...

, i.e.: after they produced the first 1,000,000 rifles, the Japanese Koishikawa Arsenal began with series "I" and continued until the Type 38 was replaced by the improved Type 99
Type 99 Rifle
The was a bolt-action rifle of the Arisaka design used by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.-History:During the Second Sino-Japanese War in the 1930s, the Japanese soon found that the 8×57mm IS cartridge the Chinese used was superior to the 6.5×50mm cartridge of the Type 38 rifle,...

 (in 1939). The rifles were made in blocks of 100,000 each, before changing the kana symbol to the next in order of the poem.

This practice apparently started after the great Tokyo earthquake
1923 Great Kanto earthquake
The struck the Kantō plain on the Japanese main island of Honshū at 11:58:44 am JST on September 1, 1923. Varied accounts hold that the duration of the earthquake was between 4 and 10 minutes...

 of 1923, when the Tokyo Arsenal was almost totally destroyed and production was moved to the Kokura and Nagoya Arsenals.

The weapons affected by this, among others, were the Type 38 rifle, the Type 38 carbine
Type 38 Cavalry Rifle
The Japanese was a short barreled version of the bolt-action Type 38 rifle, it was used by the Japanese cavalry, engineers and artillery troops during World War II. It entered service in 1905. The rifle was very accurate. The rifle barrel was 310 mm shorter than the standard rifle...

, the Type 44 carbine, and certain machine guns, all in 6.5×50mm Arisaka caliber. After 1939, when the caliber was increased to 7.7 mm, the weapons numbered with this system included the Type 99 long and short rifles
Type 99 Rifle
The was a bolt-action rifle of the Arisaka design used by the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II.-History:During the Second Sino-Japanese War in the 1930s, the Japanese soon found that the 8×57mm IS cartridge the Chinese used was superior to the 6.5×50mm cartridge of the Type 38 rifle,...

, and the Type 0 and Type 2 paratrooper rifles.
Handguns were made under a different system, involving subcontractors and private purchases by Japanese officers.

Iroha is also used in numbering the classes of train car for Japanese National Railways
Japanese National Railways
, abbreviated or "JNR", was the national railway network of Japan from 1949 to 1987.-History:The term Kokuyū Tetsudō "state-owned railway" originally referred to a network of railway lines operated by nationalized companies under the control of the Railway Institute following the nationalization...

 (now known as JR). I is first class, Ro is second class and Ha is third class.

Finally, iroha is frequently used as a design motif, as in the stencil-dyed works of the late Serizawa Keisuke.

Origin

Authorship is traditionally ascribed to the Heian era Japanese Buddhist
Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

 priest and scholar Kūkai
Kukai
Kūkai , also known posthumously as , 774–835, was a Japanese monk, civil servant, scholar, poet, and artist, founder of the Shingon or "True Word" school of Buddhism. Shingon followers usually refer to him by the honorific titles of and ....

  (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 え (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:


which translates into
All acts are impermanent
Impermanence
Impermanence is one of the essential doctrines or three marks of existence in Buddhism...

That's the law of creation and destruction.
When all creation and destruction are extinguished
That ultimate stillness (nirvana
Nirvana
Nirvāṇa ; ) is a central concept in Indian religions. In sramanic thought, it is the state of being free from suffering. In Hindu philosophy, it is the union with the Supreme being through moksha...

) is true bliss.


The above in Japanese is read
Shogyō mujō
Zeshō meppō
Shōmetsu metsui
Jakumetsu iraku .

Other languages

  • Alphabet song
    Alphabet song
    An alphabet song is any of various songs used to teach children an alphabet, used in kindergartens, pre-schools and homes around the world. Alphabet songs typically follow the alphabetic principle...

  • Shiva Sutra
    Shiva Sutra
    The Shiva Sutras or Māheshvara Sutras are fourteen verses that organize the phonemes of the Sanskrit language as referred to in the of , the foundational text of Sanskrit grammar...

    , Sanskrit poem with similar function
  • Thousand Character Classic
    Thousand Character Classic
    The Thousand Character Classic is a Chinese poem used as a primer for teaching Chinese characters to children. It contains exactly one thousand unique characters. It is said that Emperor Wu of the Liang Dynasty commissioned 周興嗣 to compose this poem for his prince to practice calligraphy...

    , Chinese poem with similar function, esp. used in Korea

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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