I recently came across the opening lines from, “The Tale of the Heike”, an epic poem of unclear authorship which is one of the cornerstones of classical Japanese literature.  I’d copied them into my notebook as follows (from what source I can’t be sure, but it may have been a book on Zen).

“The bell of the Gion Temple tolls into every man’s house to warn him that all is vanity and evanescence.  The faded flowers of the sala trees by the Buddha’s deathbed bear witness to the truth that all who flourish are destined to decay.”

Looking into this further, I became sidetracked by the astonishing variety of the few different translations I found.  Here is Helen Craig McCullough:

“The sound of the Gion Shoja bells echoes the impermanence of all things; the color of the sala flowers reveals the truth that the prosperous must decline.  The proud do not endure, they are like a dream on a spring night; the mighty fall at last, they are as dust before the wind.”

And here is Royall Tyler:

“ The Jetavana Temple bells

ring the passage of all things.

Twinned sal trees, white in full flower,

declare the great man’s certain fall.

The arrogant do not long endure.

They are like a dream one night in spring.

The bold and brave perish in the end:

They are as dust before the wind.”

And then Patrick O’Neill:

“The knell of the bells at the Gion temple

Echoes the impermanence of all things.

The colour of the flowers on its double-trunked tree

Reveals the truth that to flourish is to fall.

He who is proud is not so for long,

Like a passing dream on a night in spring.

He who is brave is finally destroyed,

To be no more than dust before the wind.”

This highlights the difficulties in translating Japanese to English, and they’re evidently magnified in the case of classical Japanese (on which I make no claim to any authority whatsoever; I know just enough to spot dodgy translations in subtitles of popular films). 

In any case, whichever translation one chooses, this sense of transience seems to me one key entry point into art and culture here.