#prince shotoku

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!