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.
少年老い易く学成り難し
shōnen oiyasuku, gaku narigatashi
Youth Grows Old Quickly, and Learning Is Hard to Win
Youth grows old easily, and learning is hard to complete, so study without wasting a moment.
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.
Gift-Ready
Your scroll arrives boxed, with a printed insert describing the words in detail.
Sending it as a gift? Add your message at checkout and we will include it with the insert.
Ships in 1-3 days from Washington State
Your scroll is brushed when you order it and completed within 1 to 3 business days.
Your scroll ships from Master Takase's studio in Washington State. Shipping is calculated at checkout. We ship worldwide.
30-day money-back guarantee
Every order is covered by our 30-day money-back guarantee. If your scroll arrives damaged, or we made an error, we replace it or refund you in full, including shipping.
Explanation
少年 here is a young person, man or woman. 老い易く is to grow old easily, and 成り難し is to be hard to complete. 学 is learning, the study itself.
The line opens a poem, which goes on, in the form the dictionaries give: a moment of time is not to be taken lightly; not yet woken from the dream of the spring grass by the pond, and the paulownia leaves before the steps already sound of autumn. The third line of the poem answers the poet Xie Lingyun's famous line spring grass grows by the pond, which he said came to him in a dream.
Saitō Hidesaburō's English-Japanese dictionary of 1915 set 少年老い易し beside Shakespeare's Youth's a stuff will not endure. Kenkyūsha's Japanese-English dictionary matched the line with Art is long and life is short in 1939, and in 1954 added a translation: Easily youth may pass into age, but learning is hard to acquire. Art is long sets the length of an art against the shortness of a life; the line sets how fast youth passes against how slow learning is.
A seven-character quatrain written for a scholar's study in a Zen monastery around 1400, which the poet's own collection gives to the monk Kanchū Chūtei and an anthology of 1623 to Ishō Tokugan; in Japan it was being called a poem of Zhu Xi by the first half of the nineteenth century, and schoolbooks printed it under his name as 偶成 from the first years of the twentieth.
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 少年老い易く学成り難し.
