Try and You Will Succeed

為せば成る (naseba naru): do it and it gets done. 為す is the old verb to do, to bring about, and 為せば its conditional, if one does; 成る is to come about, to be accomplished. The line is the first of a thirty-one-syllable poem the whole country half-knows, なせばなる なさねばならぬ 何事も ならぬは人の なさぬなりけり: do it and it gets done, leave it and it does not; whatever it is, what stays undone is what nobody did. The scroll carries the first line alone because the reader supplies the rest, and the force of the poem is in its last line, which turns a failure into a choice. The poem is attributed to Uesugi Yōzan, the reforming lord of Yonezawa; his 1908 biography has him write it at the end of a wall-writing for his heir's attendants, and in print it stood without an author through the 1890s and became his in the schoolbooks of 1897. The dictionaries set beside it a line of the Chinese Book of Documents, without doing, what is done, as the same thought in an older book. Every design brushes the kanji form 為せば成る, the dictionary headword; the poem itself is usually written in kana. Try and You Will Succeed is the sense in English idiom; the literal line is do it and it gets done.

This beautiful art encourages initiative making 為せば成る a positive and inspirational gift for that person in your life that could use a little reminding.