#japanese sayings

Japanese saying of the week!

闇夜に烏 （やみよにからす）
Indistinct, hard to make out

Literally “a crow on a dark night.”

• 闇夜（やみよ/yamiyo）  dark night, pitch-black night
  
• に (ni) in
  
• 烏（からす/karasu） crow, raven

(I’m guessing the Durarara episode is named this partly because Celty was talking about how there’s trouble brewing but no one really sees it yet, and partly because Vorona’s name means “crow” in Russian)

Also available in the longer form 闇夜に烏、雪に鷺　（やみよにからす、ゆきにさぎ） “a crow on a dark night, an egret in the snow”

Japanese saying of the week!

一寸先は闇（いっすんさきはやみ）
The future is a mystery

For situations when no one can even sort of predict what’s going to happen next.

• 一寸(いっすん/issun) one sun(old unit of measurement, about 3 cm)
• 先（さき/saki） just in front of
• は(wa) marks the topic of a sentence (this sentence is about the space just in front of us)
• 闇（やみ/yami） darkness

So literally “It’s dark one inch in front of us”

Japanese saying of the week!

人の踊るときは踊れ（ひとのおどるときはおどれ）
Go with the flow; when in Rome, do as the Romans do

Literally “When people are dancing, dance.”

• 人（ひと/hito） person, people
• の(no) …usually shows possession, but can sometimes act like a は or が when you use a whole sentence (like 人は踊る) to describe a noun (like とき). I guess you could think of it as the people’sdancing-time?
  
• 踊る（おどる/odoru） dance
• とき(toki) time (as in “at times when people dance…”)
• は(wa) marks the topic of the sentence (this sentence is about times when people are dancing, and what you should do about them)
  
• 踊れ（おどれ/odore) Dance! (as an informal command)
  

Japanese saying of the week!

和を以て尊しと成す
（わをもってとうとしとなす）
Treat harmony as the greatest virtue.

Okay this one is less of a saying and more of a historical quote. Story time!

See, back in the day (the day being about 600 A.D., when Japan was pretty new to the whole centralized government thing and there were a lot of small clans and lords vying for power) there was this guy Prince Shōtoku who was really important in the government. He sort of revamped Japan’s government to be like the Chinese system, and spread a lot of Buddhist and Confucian ideals through Japan. 

One of his contributions (though he may or may not have actually written it; the earliest copy is from after his time) was a moral/ethical code for Imperial court officials to follow. It’s called the Seventeen-Article Constitution and you can read it in English here and Japanese (both classical and modern) here. Hooray for the public domain!

The first line of Shōtoku’s constitution is 和を以て尊しと成す, which basically means “take harmony, make it respected”:

• 和（わ/wa） harmony
• ～を以て（をもって/wo motte） with ~, using ~, considering ~
• 尊し（とうとし/toutoshi） cherished, exalted (modern Japanese 尊い)
• ～と成す（となす/to nasu） make something ~, treat something as ~
  

The general idea is “hey guys I know we have all these factions but shut up for a second and quit arguing just to argue, cause if we get along we can cover for each others’ weaknesses come on we need a balanced adventuring party here.”

I believe you can still use it today to tell your students to quit fighting or whatever!