Block · kaisho 楷書 · VB5J
Block or kaisho (楷書) styles are the most common and recognizable styles. Block styles are easily read and are noted for their angular form and their vertical and horizontal lines.
轉禍爲福
wazawai o tenjite fuku to nasu
Turn Misfortune into Good Fortune
Turn misfortune into good fortune: when misfortune strikes, to turn it round to one's own use and arrange matters so as to end up happy.
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
轉 (read ten) is turn, and 転 is its modern form. 禍 (read wazawai) is misfortune. 爲 (read nasu) is make into, and 為 is its modern form. 福 (read fuku) is good fortune. Read in Japanese, the four characters become wazawai o tenjite fuku to nasu.
The Japanese dictionary Daijisen enters the phrase, takes it from the Zhanguo ce, and adds that writing change for turn is a mistake.
In the Zhanguo ce, the king of Qi has taken ten cities from Yan. The strategist Su Qin goes to him and argues that the cities have bought him the enmity of Qin. The sages, he says, turn misfortune into fortune and defeat into achievement. He closes on this is what is called turning misfortune into fortune, and making success out of defeat, and the king gives the cities back.
In Japan, our history found the phrase in an edict of amnesty of 790 in the Shoku Nihongi: to turn misfortune into fortune, virtuous rule comes first. It read the edict in three copies. Searching two typesets of the Nihon Shoki and two of the Kaifūsō in the National Diet Library's full-text index, it found no older use. The Shōsōin documents were not searched.
The edicts our history read, of 812, 832, 836 and 839, and a directive of 1017, set the phrase beside offerings or sutra-reading. The edict of 812 names plague and drought, that of 832 famine, plague, drought and fire, and the directive of 1017 locusts.
In 813 the monk Kūkai wrote a prayer for an ambassador who had crossed the sea to Tang China in 804. Among its wishes, the prayer asks that enemy and friend alike may bathe together in the turning of misfortune into fortune.
The Ming book of maxims Caigentan turns the phrase inward. A thought caught as it starts down the road of desire, and turned, is the turning point where misfortune is turned into fortune.
Our history reads the phrase as naming an act. In most of the settings it read, the turning is something done. A strategist does it by argument, a ruler by his rule and the rites he orders, a reader by catching a thought. In the prayer Kūkai wrote for the ambassador, it is wished for.
The close of 蘇秦's speech to the king of 齊 in the 戰國策, 燕策一 (所謂轉禍為福，因敗成功者也); in Japan, from 790, a formula of the court's edicts against calamity.
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 轉禍爲福.
