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人生は短い jinsei wa mijikai Life is Short

人生は短い (jinsei wa mijikai), life is short, translates the first clause of the first Hippocratic aphorism. It is in Japanese print by 1888, in a translated university address and a senator's speech. This study follows how the clause came into Japanese, and Japan's own life is short, a song of 1915.

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

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Abstract

人生は短い, life is short, is a translation: 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. It is in Japanese print by 1888, in a translated university address and in a senator's speech in the Genrōin; a book of maxims of 1891 prints the whole aphorism with life in front, and Meiji readers and moral books wrote 人生は短し through the 1890s. 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 bilingual dictionaries set life is short beside an older idiom with 命 from 1896 and beside 人生 from 1909, carry the proverb 芸術は長く人生は短し, art first, with 人生 from 1911, and print the modern 人生は短い in 1974 and 1983.

Overview

The sense. One sentence, several 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]. A Meiji senator of 1888 set the life of a man against the long life of the state, to argue against laying a new law over the whole country at once [3]. 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 [4][5]. The Meiji moralists used it as a reason to do now what matters, and a Japanese translation of Philip Moxom quoted Emerson to say the opposite [6][7][8]. 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 [7][9]. 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 [10][11]; Adams's English of 1849, Life is short, and Art long, is the aphorism's wording [1]. The Japanese-English dictionary of 1896 renders life is short as the English of an older Japanese idiom with 命 [12], and the modern Japanese wording stands beside its English in a Meiji English reader of 1899 [9]. A dictionary of English idioms of 1909 sets life is short beside 人生, two dictionaries of 1911 carry the proverb with 人生, and 武信由太郎's Japanese-English dictionary for 研究社 carries it with 命 in 1918 [13][14][15][16]; Kenkyūsha's dictionaries carry the modern sentence from 1974 [17].

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 [18][19], and the Japanese bilingual dictionaries set the Latin tag beside the proverb [14][20][17][21].

1888 to 1891. The clause in a translated address, in the Genrōin, and in a book of maxims. The clause is in Japanese print by 1888. A translated address on the founding of universities, printed that year in 『現社会』, has 夫れ人生は短くして善事の爲すへき者甚多, for life is short, and the good things to be done are very many [22]. On 20 January 1888, at the second reading of the town and village code in the Genrōin, the senator 津田眞道 argues against bringing the new system in everywhere at once: 國家ノ生命ハ長シ人生ハ短シ斯ル制度ヲ一般ニ布カントスルハ大ナル間違ヒナリ, the life of the state is long, the life of a man is short; to try to spread such a system everywhere is a great mistake [3]. Tsuda had studied law at Leiden from 1862 to 1865 and had sat in the Genrōin since 1876 [23]. In 1891 渋江保's book of maxims, 『国民錦嚢』, prints the clause twice. Once it is Shakespeare's: 人生ハ短シ然レ𪜈之ヲ鄙野ノ事ニ費セバ長キニ過グ, life is short, yet spent on base things it is too long, which is Hotspur's O gentlemen, the time of life is short! To spend that shortness basely were too long [24][25]. Once it is Hippocrates's, the whole aphorism with life in front: 人生ハ短ク技術ハ長シ又機會ハ疾走シ實驗ハ失敗シ判斷ハ困難ナリ, life is short and art is long; opportunity runs past, experiment fails, judgment is difficult, and on through the physician's duty to his patients and their attendants [24].

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, Philip Moxom's in the Japanese of 鹿州生, 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 [6]. Emerson's English, in his essay Social Aims, is Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy, and Moxom's The Aim of Life of 1894 quotes it word for word; the Japanese renders courtesy as 利他の爲め, for the sake of others [8][26]. 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 [7]. 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 [9], 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 [27]. 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 [28].

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 [29]. 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 [29].

1901 to 1911. The proverb with art in it. In the same years the aphorism's second half comes back into Japanese prose. 上田敏, in a book of essays of 1901, writes of 藝は長く命は短しと羅甸の箴言を太田南畝が譯せしごとく, art is long and life is short, as 太田南畝 translated the Latin maxim: a report of an Edo translation, with 命 for life [30]. 坪内逍遥's lecture on Hamlet of 1908 sets 人生は短し藝術は命長し, life is short, art is long-lived, beside the great deeds of conquerors that leave only a dream behind, while a masterpiece of three hundred or eight hundred years ago still moves its readers [31]; in 1909 he writes 人生は短し、藝術は壽しと古人は言ひたり, the ancients said that life is short and art is long, and then doubts how much of the world's art and literature it fits [32]. By 1911 two dictionaries set the English proverb beside 人生 [14][15].

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 [4]. 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 [4]. 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" [33]. 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 [5], 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 [5]. 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 [34].

To 1946, and after. The sentence in the digitized books. In the National Diet Library's next-generation full-text search, which reaches its digitized books to 1946, 人生は短い is in 158 books and 人生は短し in 117 [35], and the song's line 戀せよ乙女 is in 28 and ゴンドラの唄 in 47 [36]. The library's own full-text index, which reaches its periodicals and its later books as well, returns 8,657 items for 人生は短い and 3,148 for 人生は短し [37].

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 [38][18]. Kenkyūsha's bilingual dictionaries have carried the proverb since 武信's of 1918, 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 [16][20][21][39]. 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 [40].

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 [41].

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 translation of the Latin maxim that 上田敏 gives to 太田南畝 is 上田's report of 1901, not a text of 南畝's, and no text of 南畝's carrying it is cited here [30].

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 [10][11][42][43]. 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 [10][11][42][43][19].

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 dictionary of 1896 knows 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 [12]. 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 [44]. 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 [9]. Of the books opened for this page, it is the first to set the modern wording against its English.

1909 to 1920. Eastlake, Inouye, the dictionaries of 1911, 武信 and Rose-Innes. Eastlake and 越山平三郎's English-Japanese dictionary of idioms, 1909, sets life is short beside 人生 under At best: Life is short, at the best, どう云ふても(いくら長壽でも)人生は短かいものだ, say what you will (however long one lives), life is a short thing [13]. Inouye's dictionary of the same year 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 [45]. In 1911 新渡戸稲造's dictionary of English idioms and sayings renders Art is long, but life is short as 學藝は長く人生は短し, and the Latin Ars longa, vita brevis as 技術は長く人生は短し；人生限ありて技術限りなし, marked as Hippocrates's maxim [14]; 野上豊一郎's dictionary for Japanese-English composition sets 美術は永久なり, 人生は短し beside Art is long, but life is short, under 美術 [15]. 武信由太郎's Japanese-English dictionary, published by 研究社 in 1918, has the proverb under 藝 with 命: 藝は長く命は短し, Art is long and life is short [16]. Rose-Innes's Conversational Japanese for Beginners of 1920 lists nagai tsuki-hi ni mijikai inochi in its vocabulary under inochi [46].

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, edited by 武信, carries the proverb twice, with different nouns: under 藝, the entry of 1918, 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 [20][16]. 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 [20][34]. 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 [20].

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 [47].

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 [17], the English Eastlake had given in 1909 [13]. 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 [21]. 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 [39].

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 [17][39]. 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 1880s, when a translator and a senator wrote it. 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 other thing the witnesses show is the shape the clause came in. 津田's 國家ノ生命ハ長シ人生ハ短シ of 1888 is the aphorism with the state where the physician had his art, and I read it as a jurist trained at Leiden using the aphorism's shape rather than its words: the thing that outlasts a life, set against it. The pairing is the one the proverb keeps, whether the long thing is medicine, the state, or, in 坪内's lecture on Hamlet, the masterpiece against the conqueror. The dictionaries show the Japanese sentence arriving beside the older idiom rather than in place of it, 長い月日に短い命 in 1896, 人生 under life is short in 1909, the proverb with 人生 in 1911 and with 命 in 1918. The four words on the scroll are the half every pairing shares.

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. 『元老院会議筆記』, 町村制 second reading, 20 January 1888, no. 559, p. 559, National Diet Library pid 1367172, scans 280 and 281. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1367172/1/281
  4. 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
  5. 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
  6. 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
  7. 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
  8. Ralph Waldo Emerson, Social Aims, in Letters and Social Aims, James R. Osgood, Boston, 1875, at Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/71393
  9. 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
  10. Bartlett Jere Whiting, Proverbs, Sentences, and Proverbial Phrases from English Writings Mainly before 1500, Belknap Press, Cambridge, 1968, p. 337, L245.
  11. 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.
  12. 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
  13. F. W. Eastlake and 越山平三郎 eds., 『英和例解熟語双解新辞典』, 金刺芳流堂, 1909, p. 51, s.v. At best, National Diet Library pid 870114, scan 32. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/870114/1/32
  14. 新渡戸稲造 et al. eds., 『英和俗語熟語故事大辞典』, 実業之日本社, 1911, s.v. Art is long and Ars longa, vita brevis, National Diet Library pid 902975, scans 791 and 848. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/902975/1/791
  15. 野上豊一郎 et al. eds., 『和英作文辞典』, 文成社, 1911, s.v. 美術, National Diet Library pid 870582, scan 111. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/870582/1/111
  16. 武信由太郎 ed., 『武信和英大辞典』, 研究社, 1918, s.v. 藝, National Diet Library pid 925665, scan 184. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/925665/1/184
  17. 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.
  18. 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).
  19. Burton Stevenson, The Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases, Macmillan, New York, 1948, p. 97, § Art.
  20. 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.
  21. 小稲義男 ed., Kenkyūsha's New English-Japanese Dictionary, 5th ed., Kenkyūsha, Tokyo, 1980, p. 93, s.v. ars.
  22. 『現社会』, 現社会発行所, 1888, National Diet Library pid 898256, scan 57. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/898256/1/57
  23. 「津田真道」, デジタル大辞泉 · 日本大百科全書 · ブリタニカ国際大百科事典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/津田真道-19166
  24. 渋江保 編『国民錦嚢』, 博文館, 1891, p. 228 (scan 126) and scan 252, National Diet Library pid 897507. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/897507/1/126
  25. William Shakespeare, King Henry IV, Part 1, act V, scene ii, at Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1516
  26. Philip S. Moxom, The Aim of Life: Plain Talks to Young Men and Women, 1894 (the archive.org text layer). https://archive.org/details/aimlifeplaintal00moxogoog
  27. 『笑話集：英和対訳』, 1901, National Diet Library pid 871206, scan 70. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/871206/1/70
  28. 今井信之『中学英作文独習書』, 1908, exercise 13, National Diet Library pid 903073, scan 48. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/903073/1/48
  29. 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
  30. 上田敏『文芸論集』, 春陽堂, 1901, National Diet Library pid 871782, scan 51. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/871782/1/51
  31. 坪内雄蔵「ハムレット講話」, in 文芸協会 編『最新思潮講話』, 隆文館, 1908, p. 225, National Diet Library pid 752793, scan 116. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/752793/1/116
  32. 坪内逍遥『作と評論』, 早稲田大学出版部, 1909, National Diet Library pid 889055, scan 135. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/889055/1/135
  33. 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
  34. 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
  35. 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/
  36. 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/
  37. National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text index on 人生は短い (8,657 items) and 人生は短し (3,148 items), all years. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/
  38. Rosalind Fergusson, The Penguin Dictionary of Proverbs, Penguin, London, 1983, p. 107, § Life.
  39. 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.
  40. Donald Keene, Seeds in the Heart: Japanese Literature from Earliest Times to the Late Sixteenth Century, Henry Holt, New York, 1993, p. 188.
  41. 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
  42. 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.
  43. G. L. Apperson, English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, Dent, London, 1929, p. 16, s.v. Art, no. 3.
  44. 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
  45. 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).
  46. 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
  47. 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

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 人生は短い (jinsei wa mijikai)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/jinsei-wa-mijikai.