ASAKUSA Underground > I-RO-HA, an old Japanese ABC
A modern-day Japanese equivalent to ABC is A-I-U-E-O, which is a set of 50 different vowel-consonant combinations. The first five are a-i-u-e-o. Then, you add consonant K to them, Ka-Ki-Ku-Ke-Ko. The third five are Sa-Si-Su-Se-So. The system is very well structured. The Japanese started using it a little more than a hundred years ago during the modernization of the country after the fall of Samurai / Shogun government.
Before that, another system called I-RO-HA was commonly used. For example, each team of firemen in Edo (old Tokyo) was named with a letter, like Team-I, Team-RO, Team-Ha, and so forth. There are some villages where they still use I-RO-HA instead of numbers.
I-RO-HA goes like this.
I ro ha ni ho he to chi ri nu ru wo
Wa ka yo ta re so tsu ne na ra mu
U i no o ku ya ma ke fu ko e te
A sa ki yu me mi shi yo hi mo se su
In terms of linguistic structure, this is not so good as A-I-U-E-O. However, it is in fact a poem while A-I-U-E-O does not mean anything more than ABC does. It is difficult enough to compose a poem, using each character only once. In addition, this poem explains you about how they look at reality in Buddhism. The Japanese look at this world as "a floating world - Ukiyo" and I-RO-HA reflects it.
Here is the translation.
The colourful flowers blossomed, but they are fallen.
Who in the world stays the same!
I have overcome heaps of illusions called "material world".
It was just an ephemeral dream. I am sober now.
[reference in Japanese]
http://www2.odn.ne.jp/~nihongodeasobo/konitan/iroha.htm
http://home.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/hirao/nyumon/iroha.htm
http://homepage1.nifty.com/forty-sixer/iroha.htm
[recommended sites]
・talk sushi
Learn Japanese and how to read Kanji
・Learn Japanese Language for real Communication
What do you think of this "floating world"? Please let us know it.
I-RO-HA, an old Japanese ABC
A modern-day Japanese equivalent to ABC is A-I-U-E-O, which is a set of 50 different vowel-consonant combinations. The first five are a-i-u-e-o. Then, you add consonant K to them, Ka-Ki-Ku-Ke-Ko. The third five are Sa-Si-Su-Se-So. The system is very well structured. The Japanese started using it a little more than a hundred years ago during the modernization of the country after the fall of Samurai / Shogun government.
Before that, another system called I-RO-HA was commonly used. For example, each team of firemen in Edo (old Tokyo) was named with a letter, like Team-I, Team-RO, Team-Ha, and so forth. There are some villages where they still use I-RO-HA instead of numbers.
I-RO-HA goes like this.
I ro ha ni ho he to chi ri nu ru wo
Wa ka yo ta re so tsu ne na ra mu
U i no o ku ya ma ke fu ko e te
A sa ki yu me mi shi yo hi mo se su
In terms of linguistic structure, this is not so good as A-I-U-E-O. However, it is in fact a poem while A-I-U-E-O does not mean anything more than ABC does. It is difficult enough to compose a poem, using each character only once. In addition, this poem explains you about how they look at reality in Buddhism. The Japanese look at this world as "a floating world - Ukiyo" and I-RO-HA reflects it.
Here is the translation.
The colourful flowers blossomed, but they are fallen.
Who in the world stays the same!
I have overcome heaps of illusions called "material world".
It was just an ephemeral dream. I am sober now.
[reference in Japanese]
http://www2.odn.ne.jp/~nihongodeasobo/konitan/iroha.htm
http://home.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/hirao/nyumon/iroha.htm
http://homepage1.nifty.com/forty-sixer/iroha.htm
[recommended sites]
・talk sushi
Learn Japanese and how to read Kanji
・Learn Japanese Language for real Communication
What do you think of this "floating world"? Please let us know it.