The is a Japanese poem. Originally the poem was attributed to the founder of the Shingon Esoteric sect of Buddhism in Japan, Kūkai, 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 Japan ...

(794–1179). The first record of its existence dates from 1079. It is famous because it is a perfect pangram, 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 ...

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 thi ...

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 contras ...

(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obsolete Obsolescence is the state of being which occurs when an object, service, or practice is no longer maintained or required even though it may still be in good working order.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 ...

. 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 , ...

). 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 chan ...

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'', bu ...

) was historically pronounced as (a voiceless bilabial fricative) 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 hi ...

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, 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 ...

reforms in the 19th century. Around 1890, with the publication of the ''Wakun no Shiori'' () and ''Genkai'' () dictionaries, the '' gojūon'' (, 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 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 opposi ...

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 notes 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 f ...

. ''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 pre ...

(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, 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 () (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'':

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''

Notes

References

* {{Japanese poetry Japanese poems Japanese writing system Collation Articles containing Japanese poems Constrained writing Pangrams Buddhist poetry