塵も積もれば山となる chiri mo tsumoreba yama to naru Even dust if piled can become a mountain

Many small things, kept up, come to something great. The image is older than the proverb: piled earth in a Chinese philosopher of the third century BC, a Tang poet's couplet, and the preface to the Kokinshū in 905, where it describes how poetry itself grew. As a Japanese proverb it is in a book of sayings printed in 1656 and on a karuta card since. The dust is many, and the piling is the act.

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