Japanese

Japanese proverbs, at a glance

• Even a lie can be an expedient

  嘘も方便

  Uso mo hōben

  Literally: Even a lie is a means/expedient

  Japanese · Japan

  Set beside

  • Greek (Plato, Republic III) — the gennaion pseudos; a founding myth told by rulers for civic good
  • Arabic (hadith, Tirmidhi) — al-kidhb al-mubah; three situations in which a lie is explicitly permitted in Islamic jurisprudence
  • Sanskrit/Buddhist (Lotus Sutra ch.3) — the father calls his children out of a burning house with a false promise; the ancestor of hōben

• Every encounter happens only once — treat it as unrepeatable.

  一期一会

  Ichigo ichie

  Literally: One lifetime, one meeting

  Japanese · Japan

  Set beside

  • Latin (Horace) — the same vanishing now, seized for pleasure rather than honored in stillness
  • Persian — nothing lasts either; where the tea room says cherish the moment, this says loosen your grip on it
  • Greek (Heraclitus) — the metaphysics under the manners: you cannot step into the same river twice, so no moment can recur

• Good medicine is bitter to the mouth.

  良薬は口に苦し

  Ryōyaku wa kuchi ni nigashi

  Literally: Good medicine, to the mouth, [is] bitter

  Japanese · Japan

  Set beside

  • Mandarin (Han-era) — the source, paired with the line about loyal words that grate the ear
  • Russian — the same claim transposed from mouth to eye
  • English — the modern transactional cousin, written by the gym

• It's easier to give birth than to worry about it.

  案ずるより産むが易し

  Anzuru yori umu ga yasushi

  Literally: Than worrying, giving birth is easy

  Japanese · Japan

  Set beside

  • Russian — the same observation read through a folk-Orthodox icon panel; the painted devil is uglier than the actual one
  • Mandarin — same claim, sharpened into criticism; the foolish manufacture their own distress
  • Latin (Tacitus) — Roman epigram for the cognitive fact: what is unknown is taken for magnificent, fear inflates the unknown thing

• A moment's embarrassment beats a lifetime of not knowing

  聞くは一時の恥、聞かぬは一生の恥

  Kiku wa ittoki no haji, kikanu wa isshō no haji

  Literally: To ask is a moment's shame; to not ask is a lifetime's shame

  Japanese · Japan

  Set beside

  • Akan (Twi) — the same trade priced in distance instead of time: a moment of looking lost against actually being lost
  • Classical Chinese (Confucius, Analects 5.15) — the sting isn't not-knowing, it's asking someone beneath your own rank
  • Aramaic (Talmud, Berakhot 4a) — a small admission now against the much worse moment when a bluff is later caught

• The nail that sticks out gets hammered down

  出る杭は打たれる

  Deru kui wa utareru

  Literally: The stake that emerges is struck

  Japanese · Japan

  Set beside

  • Mandarin — same image-grammar (instrument + protruding object), violence sudden and individual where the Japanese is quiet and communal
  • Latin (Livy, Ab Urbe Condita I.54) — Tarquinius Superbus and his stick; the same observation routed through monarchic political theatre
  • Norwegian — Sandemose's 1933 satirical decalogue that Scandinavia absorbed as if it had always been a real proverb

• Patience and perseverance will transform even the most uncomfortable situation.

  石の上にも三年

  Ishi no ue ni mo sannen

  Literally: Even on a stone, three years

  Japanese · Japan

  Set beside

  • Latin — the drop hollows the stone; patience as slow erosion rather than endured warmth
  • Vietnamese — the heron waits motionless for the fish; patience as strategic stillness
  • Aesopic Greek — slow and steady wins the race; persistence as movement, not stillness

• Those who really can do it are the last to show it.

  能ある鷹は爪を隠す

  Nō aru taka wa tsume o kakusu

  Literally: The hawk that has ability hides its talons.

  Japanese · Japan

  Set beside

  • Mandarin — the same claim from the other end: nobody in it is hiding anything, and the half-filled bottle sloshes because it cannot help it
  • Classical Chinese (Shiji, Laozi to Confucius) — the hidden thing is stock in a storeroom, and the saying is handed to Confucius himself as a reason to put away his pride
  • Latin (Curtius Rufus) — the loud dog and the deep river said as a pair, to a drunken pretender about the quiet king already at his door

• The years' merit beats the turtle's shell.

  亀の甲より年の功

  Kame no kō yori toshi no kō

  Literally: Than turtle's shell, years' merit

  Japanese · Japan

  Set beside

  • Mongolian — same claim about age-as-knowing, anchored in steppe horsemanship rather than in homophone pun
  • Spanish — same observation, made through a Catholic theological joke instead of a Japanese kanji pun; both are quietly comic
  • Mandarin — same claim again, but routed through a sensory kitchen image; the proverb-with-a-pun versus the proverb-with-a-recipe
  • Japanese sibling — *furutake ni wakatake* (old bamboo, young bamboo); a same-language counter-figure that values fresh resilience over accumulated weathering