Eri's Choice · VD5J
Eri's Choice is a design that does not keep strictly to one style; it is Master Takase's own artistic choice.
酒は礼に始まり乱に終わる
sake wa rei ni hajimari ran ni owaru
Drink Begins in Courtesy and Ends in Disorder
Drink begins in courtesy and ends in disorder: an old Japanese proverb of the drinking party.
by Master Eri Takase
Born and raised in Osaka, Japan, Eri Takase received the rank of Shihan, master, from two calligraphy societies, the Bokuteki-kai and Bunka-shodō, and won best-of-category awards in all-Japan national competitions. She has created calligraphy for people around the world for more than thirty years, and with your order she will be creating calligraphy for you.
In a ritual as old as calligraphy itself, Master Takase prepares the ink, meditatively rubbing the ink stick against the stone until it reaches the perfect consistency for the paper. Then, properly loading the brush with ink, she brushes your scroll. And only when the scroll is just right and meets her approval, she signs it and affixes her seal, completing your original scroll.
12 1/4" × 43" (31 × 109 cm) Japanese Scrolls
The scrolls have woven damask borders and special layered Japanese paper (washi), designed to last generations by a scroll maker in Gifu, Japan, with whom we have worked for over two decades.
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Explanation
酒 (read sake) is drink, here the drinking party. 礼 (read rei) is courtesy, the manners and forms of an occasion. 乱 (read ran) is disorder, the loss of order and of discernment. 始まり (hajimari) and 終わる (owaru) are to begin and to end, and wa and ni are the grammar the line writes in kana.
Two of the proverb dictionaries our history read enter it. The one of 1910 says it is said of banquets. The one of 1933 says all is quiet and solemn at the start, and at the end they dance in disorder, it is said.
In 1829 the novelist Kyokutei Bakin credited the proverb to Zhuang Zhou, the Chinese thinker Zhuangzi. The book under his name says those who drink by the rites begin in order and usually end in disorder. Where it has order, the proverb has courtesy.
Bakin set the proverb again in his novel Nansō Satomi Hakkenden, of soldiers drinking on into the night. There he called drink a mad medicine.
By a snippet in the National Diet Library's index, a book of 1887 calls it an old saying. A constables' manual of 1893 writes, under drinking, that drink begins in courtesy and ends in disorder, and that a proverb calls it mad water. A book of etiquette of 1901 calls it a proverb of Japan from of old.
Our history of the saying that begins and ends in courtesy searched the National Diet Library's full-text index. There, gatherings that kept their courtesy to the end are printed from 1884. By a snippet in that index, an article of 1899 in the Keiō Gijuku bulletin called the form that ends in disorder wrong. Drink, it said, must begin in courtesy and end in courtesy. That form, beginning and ending in courtesy, is the saying the martial arts now share.
By a snippet in the National Diet Library's index, a tea manual of 1915 set the drinker's form against the tea man's. To begin in courtesy and end in disorder is the drinker's habit, it says; the tea man begins and ends in courtesy.
Our history reads it as a Japanese proverb made on the Zhuangzi's line on drink. It keeps the disorder at the end and puts courtesy where the line has order. On that reading, the proverb says more sharply than the Chinese line that forms kept at the start do not hold at the end. The English title is our history's own rendering.
A proverb filed as a Japanese proverb in 1892, on my reading made on a line of the 莊子 (以禮飲酒者，始乎治，常卒乎亂); its earliest witness in the instruments read is Kyokutei Bakin's note closing the fifth part of 傾城水滸伝 (1828), and the same year his 松浦佐用媛石魂録 gives it as what the people of old said.
Learn More About These Words
We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 酒は礼に始まり乱に終わる.
