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人生は短い jinsei wa mijikai Life is Short

This is a philological study of the Japanese sentence 人生は短い (jinsei wa mijikai), life is short. It spans the Hippocratic aphorism in Francis Adams's English of 1849, the Meiji moral books of the 1890s and a song of 1915, and examines how the English clause came into Japanese and what it was paired with when it did.

Japanese Scroll of Life is Short (jinsei wa mijikai) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Life is Short (jinsei wa mijikai)

Life is Short (jinsei wa mijikai) on a traditional Japanese Scroll by Master Eri Takase.

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Abstract

人生は短い, life is short, is a translation, and its history is the history of how the English clause came into Japanese. It is the first clause of the first Hippocratic aphorism, life is short, and art long, an English proverb since Chaucer and quoted here in Francis Adams's English of 1849; Longfellow's A Psalm of Life carried it to the schoolroom, and Meiji readers and moral books were writing 人生は短し by 1895. Japan's own life is short is a song of 1915 written for a stage adaptation of Turgenev, whose first line, いのち短し, is the sentence with 命 for 人生. The proverb 芸術は長く人生は短し keeps the aphorism's two halves, art first, and the Japanese-English dictionaries rendered life is short only as the English of an older idiom with 命, 長い月日に短い命, until Kenkyūsha's dictionary of 1942 set 人生は短く藝術は長し beside the Latin; the dictionaries of 1974 and 1983 carry the modern 人生は短い.

Overview

The sense. One sentence, three uses. The physician meant that the craft outlasts the life [1]. The Japanese proverb, with 芸術 put in front, means that the work outlasts the maker and the maker should get on with it [2]. The song means that youth is brief and love should not wait, and 吉井勇's first line is the aphorism's first clause with 命 for 人生 and a girl for a doctor, the line a moralist of 1917 was already calling the popular song of the day [3][4]. The Meiji moralists used it as a reason to do now what matters, and Emerson's Japanese translator used it to say the opposite [5][6]. The four words carry the clause every use shares and none of the second halves.

The words. Four words of plain modern Japanese. 人生, jinsei, is a human life, a life span; は marks it as the topic; 短い, mijikai, is short. The classical form of the adjective is 短し, mijikashi, and the proverb and the Meiji books use it, 人生は短し; the modern 短い is the same word, and the two are one line [6][7]. There is no pun, no season word, no variant to weigh: the line is a translation, and its history is the history of how life is short came into Japanese and what it was paired with when it did.

The proverb in English. The English is the original, and the Japanese is its rendering; the lineage runs the other way from most of this Library. The English proverb is older than the translation quoted here: Chaucer opens the Parliament of Fowls, about 1380, with The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne, and the proverb dictionaries carry Art is long, life short from 1552 [8][9]; Adams's English of 1849, Life is short, and Art long, is the aphorism's wording [1]. The Japanese-English dictionaries of the Meiji years render life is short only as the English of an older Japanese idiom with 命, and the modern Japanese wording stands beside its English in a Meiji English reader of 1899 [10][7]; Kenkyūsha's dictionaries carry the proverb from 1942 and the modern sentence from 1974 [11][12].

The historical record

1849. Hippocrates, Aphorisms, section I, aphorism 1, in Francis Adams's English. Life is short, and Art long; the crisis fleeting; experience perilous, and decision difficult. The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and externals cooperate [1]. The art is medicine, and the aphorism is a working doctor's complaint that the craft takes longer to learn than a life allows. Europe remembers it in the Latin Seneca gave it, vitam brevem esse, longam artem, turned into the tag ars longa, vita brevis [13][14], and the Japanese bilingual dictionaries set the Latin tag beside the proverb [11][12][15].

1902. Longfellow's A Psalm of Life, as a Japanese reader explains it. The English poem that carried the aphorism to every schoolroom turns it, Art is long, and Time is fleeting, and a Meiji annotated anthology of English and American verse, 山県五十雄's 英米詩歌集, glosses that line for Japanese students in the words 人生は短し: 13. Art is long, and Time is fleeting 學藝に達するには長き歲月を要するに反して人生は短しとの意, the sense that reaching mastery of an art takes long years, whereas life is short [16]. The next note explains the muffled drums as the drums of a funeral march, 人の心臟は猶ほ此太皷の如く其打つ每に人の生命は縮まり行くものにて, the human heart is like this drum; with every beat a life shortens [16].

1895 to 1908. The sentence in Meiji moral books and English readers. By the 1890s 人生は短し is a sentence Japanese moralists reach for. A translated book of precepts for young men of 1895 quotes Emerson against it: エモルソン曰く人生は短しとせず。利他の爲めの時間は、常に充分に存すと, Emerson says: I do not hold that life is short; there is always time enough for the sake of others [5]. An 1899 treatise on the character of teachers argues from it for order: 人生は短し、然かも數多の人は秩序規律を顧慮せずして自己に與へられたる業務の時間を更に短縮す, life is short, and yet many people, heedless of order and discipline, shorten still further the time given them for their work [6]. The same year 内村鑑三's English conversation reader renders Life is short, and Japanese Politics is no place for men who have immortal souls as 人生は短いものです、ソシテ日本の政治界は不滅の靈魂を有する人類の入るへき所では有りません, which is the modern wording exactly [7], and a 1901 bilingual joke book puts a pun on the four letters of life as 人生は短し唯四字而己 [17]. By 1908 a middle-school composition primer sets 人生は短し as exercise 13, an English sentence every pupil should be able to write [18].

1915. 吉井勇's ゴンドラの唄, written for the Geijutsuza's On the Eve, read in the printed play. Japan's own life is short is a song. 楠山正雄's stage adaptation of Turgenev's novel, printed in April 1915 for the 芸術座's April run, closes its preface by thanking the poet: 終りに、この脚本の第五幕のために、特に『ゴンドラの唄』を作して贈られた、吉井勇氏の厚意を謝する, finally, I thank Mr. 吉井勇 for his kindness in writing the Gondola Song especially for the fifth act of this script [3]. In act five Elena sings it: いのち短し、戀せよ、少女、／朱き唇褪せぬ間に／あつき血汐の冷えぬ間に／明日の月日のないものを, life is short; love, girl, while your red lips have not faded, while your hot blood has not cooled; for there is no tomorrow [3]. The stanza's first line is the Japanese sentence a century of listeners know, and it is the sentence with the classical adjective and 命 for 人生.

1915 to 1921. The song in the ear. The same year a Tokyo columnist writes of the gramophone shop bringing the new records, 松井須磨子吹込の「ゴンドラの唄」と「ローレライの唄」があつた, there were 松井須磨子's recordings of the Gondola Song and the Lorelei Song, and calls it 「命短し、戀せよ少女」のゴンドラの唄, the Gondola Song of "life is short, love, girl" [19]. A Buddhist moralist of 1917 quotes the line, 「命短し戀せよ少女、熱き血潮の冷えぬ間に」, against a life spent saving for old age [4], and elsewhere in the same book names it 當時の流行歌であつた, it was the popular song of the day, as an example of 「命短かし戀せよ乙女」といふやうな刹那的の快樂を追ふやうな歌, songs like "life is short, love, maiden" that chase the pleasure of the moment [4]. In 1921 a lecturer on the will pairs it with the Chinese schoolroom maxim: ゴンドラの歌に『生命短し戀せよ乙女』とある。これは全く此の心を歌へるものだ。少年易老學難成一寸光陰不可輕だ, the Gondola Song says "life is short, love, maiden"; that is exactly this mind sung; a boy grows old easily and learning is hard to complete, so do not make light of an inch of light and shade [20].

To 1946. The sentence in the digitized books. 人生は短い is in 158 digitized Japanese books to 1946 and 人生は短し in 117 [21]; the song's line 戀せよ乙女 in 28 and ゴンドラの唄 in 47 [22].

The dictionaries today. 芸術は長く人生は短し, art is long, life is short, is in the modern dictionaries as a proverb, and ことわざを知る辞典 gives its Japanese sense: 芸術は永遠であるが、人生は短い。人間の命は短いが、すぐれた芸術作品は作者が死んだのちも長く残る。だから芸道に精進しなければならない, art is eternal but life is short; a person's life is short, but a great work of art survives long after its maker's death, so one must devote oneself to the art, with 坂口安吾 as its example of use [2]. 精選版日本国語大辞典 says the proverb came to be used in that sense, which is the dictionary's own hint that the Greek meant something narrower [2]. The English proverb dictionaries say the same of the English: Fergusson 1983 writes that the original meaning was that life is too short to acquire skills or learning in any depth, and that the proverb is now frequently used to imply that painting and sculpture last longer than the brief span of a human life, and Speake 2015 dates that second sense to a quotation of 1958 [23][13]. Kenkyūsha's bilingual dictionaries have carried the proverb since 1942, in the forms 藝は長く命は短し, 人生は短く藝術は長し and 芸道は長く人生は短し, and the collegiate dictionary of 1983 prints it with the modern adjective, 芸術は長く人生は短い [11][15][24]. Keene reads the third-century Chinese claim that literature outlasts a life and its rank, known in Japan by the end of the eighth century, through the English formula art is long, life is short, and calls the Chinese opinion a Confucian justification of writing rather than a glorification of art [25].

Undated. A Japanese lecture on German historiography quotes it as a set phrase, 「藝術は長く人生は短し」の語, in a book whose catalogue date of 1800 cannot be right for a text naming Ranke and Lamprecht; it is not dated here [26].

What is not a source. The song is not the source of the sentence 人生は短い; it is the sentence's most famous Japanese setting, and a listener who hears いのち短し in 人生は短い is hearing that. Longfellow's poem is the English carrier of the aphorism, not its origin, and art is long is Hippocrates's. The proverb 芸術は長く人生は短し is a different text, with a different subject in front.

The proverb in English

About 1380 to 1630. The English proverb before its translators. The English had the aphorism as a proverb before it had a translation of Hippocrates. The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne opens Chaucer's Parliament of Fowls, and the proverb dictionaries carry it on through Life is short, crafte forsothe is long in a surgical treatise of about 1425, And although our life be short, yet the art of physick is long in Bullein's Government of Health of 1552, Life is short, and learning long in 1602, and the Latin tag Ars longa, vita breuis in 1630 [8][9][27][28]. Whiting, Tilley, the Oxford dictionary and Apperson trace the line to Hippocrates through Seneca, whose vitam brevem esse, longam artem is where the Latin word order that puts art first comes from [8][9][27][28][14].

1849. Francis Adams, The Genuine Works of Hippocrates, the Aphorisms, section I. Life is short, and Art long; the crisis fleeting; experience perilous, and decision difficult [1].

1896. Brinkley's dictionary, and a conversation textbook. The Japanese-English dictionaries of the Meiji years know life is short as the English of an older Japanese idiom. Brinkley, Nanjō and Iwasaki's Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary gives, under 命, Nagai tsukihi ni mijikai inochi, 長イ月日ニ短イ命, time is long but life is short; man is but short-lived, and under 末代 the proverb 人ハ一代名ハ末代, life is short, but fame is eternal [10]. The same year Clay MacCauley's conversation course has a Japanese speaker and an American compare the proverb 人間僅か五十年, Man's life is fifty years, with the Psalmist's threescore years and ten, and conclude in both languages that 人間の命は短いものである: Both proverbs, I suppose, are meant only to remind men that life is short [29]. In both books the word for life is 命, not 人生.

1899. 内村鑑三 ed., 英和時事会話, Tokyo, pages 18 and 19. Life is short, and Japanese Politics is no place for men who have immortal souls, glossed 人生は短いものです [7]. A Meiji English reader is where the modern wording first appears against its English.

1909 to 1920. Inouye and Rose-Innes. Inouye's dictionary carries the idiom twice, 長い月日に短かい命, Time is long, but life is short, under 命, and 長い浮世に短い命, The world is long, but life is short, under 短い, and no sentence with 人生 [30]; Rose-Innes's Conversational Japanese for Beginners of 1920 lists nagai tsuki-hi ni mijikai inochi in its vocabulary under inochi [31].

1942. Kenkyūsha's dictionary: the proverb in two forms, and the maxim of the schoolroom. The American edition of Kenkyūsha's New Japanese-English Dictionary is the first bilingual dictionary opened for this page that carries the aphorism in Japanese, and it carries it twice, with different nouns: under 藝, 藝は長く命は短し, Art is long and life is short, and under 短い, 人生は短く藝術は長し, Life is short; art is long, with the Latin Ars longa, vita brevis set beside it [11]. Under 少年 it renders the Chinese schoolroom maxim 少年老い易く學成り難し as Art is long and life is short, the pairing the lecturer of 1921 made from the other side [11][20]. Under 浮世 the older idiom stands, 永い浮世に短い命, Time is long, but life is short; under 人生 the dictionary has 人生蜉蝣の如し, Life is short (fleeting), and no 人生は短し [11].

1965. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, pages 148 and 169. Buchanan gives Art is long, life is short as the English parallel of 少年老い易く學成り難し, Youth easily grows old, yet becomes learned with difficulty, and lists the two 命 idioms, Nagai tsuki-hi ni mijikai inochi and Nagai ukiyo ni mijikai inochi, Time is long but life is short, under Pessimism [32].

1974 to 1983. The modern sentence in Kenkyūsha's dictionaries. The fourth edition of the Japanese-English dictionary, 1974, has the proverb under 芸術 as 芸術は長く人生は短し, Art is long; life is short, with the Latin marked 《羅》, and under 人生 both the proverb, 人生は短く芸術は長し, and the plain modern sentence, どう見ても人生は短い, Life is short at best [12]. The English-Japanese dictionary of 1980 glosses the Latin tag Ars longa, vita brevis as 芸道は長く人生は短し, with 芸道 for art, and notes it as the Latin translation of Hippocrates's epigram [15]. The collegiate dictionary of 1983 prints the proverb with the modern adjective, 芸術は長く人生は短い, Art is long, life is short [24].

Today. The house title, Life is Short, is the gloss, Life is short, in title case, and it is the English Kenkyūsha's dictionaries set under 人生は短い [12][24]. A rendering must keep the sentence whole and alone; the English idiom life is short already carries the Japanese sense, and adding and art is long would make it the other scroll.

A reading

Life is short is a complete thought, and in Japanese it has been one since the Meiji readers wrote it under English sentences. What I did not expect is that Japan has its own life is short, a song a poet wrote for a stage adaptation of Turgenev in 1915, which a great actress recorded that year and a moralist was already calling the popular song of the day by 1917; its first line, いのち短し恋せよ乙女, is the sentence in the old adjective, and it is the line a Japanese reader will hear behind these four words. The dictionaries show the sentence arriving in two steps: the Meiji lexicographers had life is short only as the English of the 命 idioms, and 人生 entered the proverb between Inouye's dictionary of 1909 and Kenkyūsha's of 1942.

References

  1. Hippocrates, Aphorisms, section I, aphorism 1, in Francis Adams, The Genuine Works of Hippocrates, 1849, at Wikisource. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Aphorisms
  2. 「芸術は長く人生は短し」, ことわざを知る辞典 · 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/芸術は長く人生は短し-488732
  3. 楠山正雄 脚色『その前夜』, 1915, National Diet Library pid 954167, scans 4 and 96 (pp. 3 and 180–181). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/954167/1/4
  4. 泉芳璟『力と命』, 1917, p. 24, National Diet Library pid 906510, scans 16 and 51. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/906510/1/16
  5. モキソム 著, 鹿州生 訳『青年規箴』, 1895, National Diet Library pid 757513, scan 64. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/757513/1/64
  6. 宗像逸郎『教育者之品性』, 1899, p. 106, National Diet Library pid 809721, scan 59. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/809721/1/59
  7. 内村鑑三 編『英和時事会話』, 東京独立雑誌社, 1899, pp. 18–19, National Diet Library pid 871357, scan 13. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/871357/1/13
  8. Bartlett Jere Whiting, Proverbs, Sentences, and Proverbial Phrases from English Writings Mainly before 1500, Belknap Press, Cambridge, 1968, p. 337, L245.
  9. Morris Palmer Tilley, A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1950, p. 19, A332.
  10. F. Brinkley, F. Nanjō and Y. Iwasaki, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary, Sanseidō, Tokyo, 1896, p. 439, s.v. Inochi, and p. 893, s.v. Matsudai (the shelved copy). https://archive.org/details/cu31924082117288
  11. 武信由太郎 ed., Kenkyūsha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, Kenkyūsha, Tokyo, 1942 (the Harvard University Press printing), p. 360, s.v. gei; p. 1224, s.v. mijikai; p. 1749, s.v. shōnen; p. 2094, s.v. ukiyo; p. 694, s.v. jinsei.
  12. 増田綱 ed., Kenkyūsha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, 4th ed., Kenkyūsha, Tokyo, 1974, p. 321, s.v. geijutsu, and p. 599, s.v. jinsei.
  13. Jennifer Speake, The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, Oxford University Press, 2015, s.v. ART is long and life is short (the shelved copy carries no page numbers).
  14. Burton Stevenson, The Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases, Macmillan, New York, 1948, p. 97, § Art.
  15. 小稲義男 ed., Kenkyūsha's New English-Japanese Dictionary, 5th ed., Kenkyūsha, Tokyo, 1980, p. 93, s.v. ars.
  16. 山県五十雄 訳註『英米詩歌集』, 1902, p. 40, National Diet Library pid 871168, scan 24. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/871168/1/24
  17. 『笑話集：英和対訳』, 1901, National Diet Library pid 871206, scan 70. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/871206/1/70
  18. 『中学英作文独習書』, 1908, National Diet Library pid 903073, a hit in the library's full-text search; no scan is given. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/903073
  19. 松崎天民『人間世間』, 1915, pp. 54–55, National Diet Library pid 954950, scan 39. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/954950/1/39
  20. 千葉命吉『一切衝動皆満足』, 1921, National Diet Library pid 961844, scan 155. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/961844/1/155
  21. National Diet Library Digital Collections, next-generation full-text search on 人生は短い (158 books) and 人生は短し (117 books). https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/
  22. National Diet Library Digital Collections, next-generation full-text search on 戀せよ乙女 (28 books) and ゴンドラの唄 (47 books). https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/
  23. Rosalind Fergusson, The Penguin Dictionary of Proverbs, Penguin, London, 1983, p. 107, § Life.
  24. 市川三喜 ed., Kenkyūsha's New Collegiate Japanese-English Dictionary, 3rd ed., Kenkyūsha, Tokyo, 1983, p. 368, s.v. けいじゅつ.
  25. Donald Keene, Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century, Henry Holt, New York, 1993, p. 188.
  26. 阿部秀助 述『近世獨逸史學史』, undated, National Diet Library pid 1082552, scan 45. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1082552/1/45
  27. F. P. Wilson, The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, 1970, p. 19, s.v. Art is long, life is short.
  28. G. L. Apperson, English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, Dent, London, 1929, p. 16, s.v. Art, no. 3.
  29. Clay MacCauley, An Introductory Course in Japanese, 1896, section III, conversation fourth, pp. 248–249 (the archive.org text layer). https://archive.org/details/anintroductoryc00maccgoog
  30. 井上十吉, Inouye's Japanese-English Dictionary, Sanseidō, Tokyo, 1909, p. 566, s.v. 命, and p. 1033, s.v. Mijikai (the shelved copy).
  31. Arthur Rose-Innes, Conversational Japanese for Beginners, 1920, the vocabulary s.v. inochi (line 26844 of the archive.org text layer). https://archive.org/details/conversationalja01roseiala
  32. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, 1965, pp. 148 and 169.

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1, Takase Studios LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · grok-4.6 (xAI), 2026-09-06, citations