Fine Japanese Calligraphy

The Art of Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase

0
Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, PayPal accepted
Home › Library › Philology › Try and You Will Succeed

為せば成る naseba naru Try and You Will Succeed

This is a philological study of the Japanese proverb 為せば成る (naseba naru). It spans a book of maxims of 1890 to the dictionaries of today, and examines the poem the line begins, the lord whose name was attached to it in print from 1897 and the other names it has carried, and how it is put into English.

Japanese Scroll of Try and You Will Succeed (naseba naru) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Try and You Will Succeed (naseba naru)

Try and You Will Succeed (naseba naru) on a traditional Japanese Scroll by Master Eri Takase.

View Scroll ›

Abstract

為せば成る, do it and it gets done, is the first line of a poem the whole country half-knows, なせばなる なさねばならぬ 何事も ならぬは人の なさぬなりけり, and in print the line stands without an author from 1890. The name of the Yonezawa lord Uesugi Yōzan 上杉鷹山 is attached to the poem from 1897, first in two teacher-training textbooks, and by 1908 a biography gives it a story, a wall-writing to the heir's attendants, that comes with two dates; the dictionaries report a variant ending under Takeda Shingen 武田信玄, and a self-help book of 1909 gives one to Motoori Norinaga 本居宣長. The attribution is received and widely known, not refuted and not proven at the letter. In English the line has no proverb book and no bilingual dictionary; its one dated English form is a 1993 encyclopedia's rendering of a 1964 bestseller's title, If There's a Will, There's a Way.

Overview

The sense. One sense, everywhere: the thing gets done by being done. What changes is the name on the poem. In the digitized record it is anonymous in 1890, 1896 (詠人不明), 1897, 1898 and 1902 (讀人しらず) [1][2][3][4][5]; it is Yōzan's in the teachers' textbooks of 1897, in the Yonezawa travel sketch of 1900, and in every biography after [6][7][8][9]; it is a Bingo work song for Rohan in 1908 [10]; and the variant ending that the dictionaries attach to Shingen is Norinaga's in a 1909 self-help book and nobody's in 1906 [11][12][13]. The Yōzan attribution comes with a story, a wall-writing to the heir's attendants, and the story comes with two dates [9][14]. That is the shape of a received attribution: not refuted, not proven at the letter, and carried by a tradition that had not settled on it as late as 1902.

The words. Five syllables, two verbs and a conditional. 為す (nasu) is the classical verb to do, to bring about, not the everyday する; 為せば is its conditional, if one does, or, as the rest of the poem makes it, when one does. 成る (naru) is to come into being, to be accomplished. The proverb is the first line of a thirty-one-syllable poem, and the line stands alone because everyone who knows it supplies the rest: なせばなる なさねばならぬ 何事も ならぬは人の なさぬなりけり, do it and it gets done; don't and it does not; whatever it is, what does not get done is what people did not do. The proverb is more often written in kana (なせばなる), and the dictionaries and the poem's quotations all write it so; the kanji form 為せば成る is the dictionary headword and nothing more than a spelling [11]. One trap: the third line of the poem circulates in two forms, 何事も (whatever it is) and 成るものを (a thing that would get done), and the witnesses below use both.

The proverb in English. No printed English book among those read carries the line as a proverb, and the bilingual dictionaries do not head it: Brinkley 1896, 井上 1909 and Kenkyūsha 1942, 1974 and 1983 each give 為す as a verb with its idioms, not that he cannot, but that he will not among them, and no なせばなる under it [15][16][17][18][19]; Hepburn 1872 has no entry for it [20]. Buchanan's Japanese Proverbs and Sayings (1965) gives Where there's a will there's a way as the parallel for a different proverb, 一心岩をも通す, and does not print this one [21]; Kenkyūsha 1974 sets the same English beside 念力岩をも通す [18]. So the English begins with the modern dictionaries, and with one book title: the 1964 bestseller なせば成る by the volleyball coach 大松博文, which the Kodansha encyclopedia of 1993 renders If There's a Will, There's a Way [22]. The English proverb the dictionaries reach for is Herbert's of 1640, To him that will, ways are not wanting, in its modern wording by 1849 [23].

The historical record

1890. 『金言万集』, a book of maxims for young men on the make (黒泉富三郎 ed., 日進舎). The line's oldest print known, and it stands unattributed in a list of stock sayings between a maxim on adversity and one on ambition: ○爲せば成る爲さざれば成らず成るものを成らぬといふは爲さざるなり, do it and it gets done; don't and it does not; to call a thing that would get done undoable is to not do it [1]. No poet, no lord.

1896. 『学生の良友』, a students' handbook (長沼梅仙 ed., 磊々堂), pp. 162–163. A page of poems by famous men, each with its author in large type: 眞木保臣, 高野長英, 有村治左衛門, 豐臣秀吉, then Shingen's 人は塀人は石垣人は堀 (with the furigana へい on 塀, where the poem is usually quoted with 城), and last, 爲せば成る爲さねば成らぬ成るものをならぬといふは爲さぬなりけり, credited 詠人不明, poet unknown [2]. Six years after the maxim book the line is a poem, it stands beside Shingen's, and the compiler does not know whose it is. The third line here is 成るものを, not 何事も.

1897. Two teacher-training textbooks from one publisher (槙山栄次『新説教育学』; 永瀬伊一郎『新編実用教授学』, both 金港堂). The earliest witnesses known that name the lord. Both print the poem as a lesson example with the name in parentheses after it: なせばなるなさねば成らぬ何事も成らぬは人のなさぬなりけり(上杉鷹山公), and the first tells the teacher what to do with it: 教師此ノ意味ヲ說明シ、二三ノ生徒ヲシテ之ヲ讀マシム, the teacher explains the meaning and has two or three pupils read it aloud [6][7]. The attribution enters the record as a schoolroom fact.

1897–1898. Two more anthologies, no name. A poetry manual, 津阪東陽『道の栞歌合』, prints the line as a specimen of resolve; a Buddhist book of precepts, 石堂慧猛『真俗訓言集』, sets it in a run of moral verses. Neither says who wrote it [3][4].

1900. 笹川臨風『雨糸風片』(博文館), a travel sketch of Yonezawa. 米澤は寂しき町なり … 偉なる哉、鷹山の遺業。彼れ曾て咏じて曰く、なせばなるなさねばならぬ何事もならぬは人のなさぬなりけりと。彼は是を體して能く藩政改革の實を擧げたり, Yonezawa is a lonely town … how great, the legacy of Yōzan. He once sang: … and, living by it, he carried through the reform of the domain [8]. The poem is now the lord's motto and the explanation of his reforms.

1902. 『富豪の面影』, a success manual (桑谷定逸, 実業之日本社), p. 178. A list of maxims with authors: 貝原益軒, a Chinese proverb, Seneca, 大高源吾, and then 爲せば成る爲さねばならず何事も成らぬといふは爲さざればなり(讀人しらず), author unknown, followed by Napoleon [5]. Five years after the textbooks named the lord, a popular compiler still does not.

1906–1909. The other ending, and a third name. A teachers' research bulletin from Shimane prints the poem as an example of the proverb form with a different last line: なせばなる、なさねばならぬ何事もならぬとすつる人のおろかさ, … the folly of the one who throws it away as undoable, and no author [13]. A 1909 self-help book, 井口丑二『日本自助論』, gives that same ending, 成る業を成らじと捨つる人のはかなき, and credits it to Norinaga, the philologist [12]. This is the form the modern dictionaries report, in hearsay, as Shingen's [11]. So by 1909 the poem is in print under three names and under none.

1908. 幸田露伴『普通文章論』(博文館), pp. 90–91. The novelist, arguing that old words come back into use, cites the line as a folk song: 然し備後の國の籾磨歌に「爲せば成る、爲さねば成らぬ、成るものをならぬ〳〵で世を渡る…」とあるのも一分の眞理には相違無い, but there is a grain of truth in what the rice-hulling song of Bingo says: do it and it gets done, don't and it does not, "it can't be done, it can't be done" is how a thing gets through the world, and two pages on calls it 爲せば成るの俚歌, the folk song "naseba naru" [10]. A rice-hulling song from Bingo, in a writer who had every chance to name the lord and did not. The leaf's closing syllables after 世を渡る are printed ゑ「し」.

1908. 秋山悟庵 ed.『上杉鷹山言行録』(内外出版協会). The first biography known that gives the poem a place in the lord's life. Its chapter 顯孝の近侍へ壁書, the wall-writing to the heir's attendants, says the heir 顯孝 was born 安永五年 (1776), was adopted as the successor in 天明二年 (1782) at eight, and on 寛政元年十一月廿八日 (1789), when he was named 世子 and moved from the inner to the outer palace, 父君より近侍輔導の士へ一篇の壁書を授け, his father gave the samurai attending and guiding him a wall-writing in one piece; the book lists its articles (the kinds of idle talk to keep from the boy) and closes: 而して最後に、なせばなるなさねばならぬ何事もならぬは人のなさぬなりけりと誠めたり, and at the end he admonished them with "naseba naru …". The heir died in 寛政六年 (1794) at nineteen [9].

1912. 相島亀三郎『尋常小学修身書例話原拠』(a sourcebook for the primary-school ethics reader), pp. 432–433. The same story with a different occasion: 御隱殿建築落成し餐霞館と號す。公及顯孝公御移りあらせらる … 又此折顯孝公の侍臣へ壁書一篇を御示しあり。其末に一首の和歌を書き添へらる。「爲せば成る爲さねば成らぬ何事も成らぬは人の爲さぬなりけり」, the retirement residence was completed and named Sankakan; the lord and the heir moved in … and on this occasion he showed the heir's attendants a wall-writing, and at its end added a poem: … [14]. The same book dates the lord's death to 文政五年 (1822) at seventy-two [14]. The 1908 biography ties the wall-writing to the heir's investiture in 1789; this one ties it to the move into the retirement house, which Japanese Wikipedia dates 1785 [24]. The poem's own date, then, is 1785 or 1789 by the two sources that give one.

1964. 大松博文『なせば成る』. The line as a book title: a bestseller of the Tokyo Olympics year by the coach who took the women's volleyball team to its gold medal, in a genre of sports books on fighting spirit; the Kodansha encyclopedia of 1993 lists it beside his Ore ni tsuite koi! of 1963 and renders the title If There's a Will, There's a Way [22]. The lord's motto, a coach's.

The dictionaries today. ことわざを知る辞典: 為せば成る どんなことでも、強い意志をもって実行すれば成就できる, anything can be accomplished if carried out with a strong will, and on the origin, 江戸時代、米沢藩主上杉鷹山の書状に見える歌 … が、一般には出典として広く知られています, the poem in a letter of Yōzan is widely known as the source; then two hedges, a line of the Chinese classic 書経 with the same idea, and 武田信玄にも同想の歌 … があるといいます, Shingen is also said to have a poem of the same thought. 故事成語を知る辞典 says the same and adds 似たような歌があるそうです for Shingen. Both quote the painter 上村松園's 1943 essay as their example of use [11]. ことわざを知る辞典 〔英語〕: Where there's a will, there's a way. The English proverb supplies a will the Japanese leaves unsaid [11]. EDRDG (JMdict): 為せば成る · なせばなる · if you have a mind to do something, you can do it, proverb, usually written in kana [25].

What is not a source. The dictionaries set beside the poem a line of the Book of Documents (書経 太甲下): 嗚呼！弗慮胡獲？弗為胡成？, without thought, what is gained? without doing, what is done?, and say it is the same idea in an older book, not the poem's source; it reads as quoted at the Chinese Text Project [26]. The Shingen poem and the Norinaga poem are the same words with another ending. Yōzan's famous 伝国之辞, the 1785 instruction to his successor on holding the domain in trust, is a different document; the dictionaries do not put the poem in it [27].

Today. The house title, Try and You Will Succeed, puts try where the Japanese says do and succeed where it says gets done; it is the sense in English idiom. The house explanation's second rendering, if you have a mind to do something, you can do it, is EDRDG's gloss word for word. A rendering must keep the two verbs facing each other, do and get done, and the poem's last line if it gives the poem at all: what is undone is what no one did.

A reading

The proverb is the first line of a poem the whole country half-knows; the reader supplies the rest, and the force of the line is in the last one, which turns a failure into a choice. On the author: the witnesses say the poem was anonymous in print through the 1890s, became the Yonezawa lord's in the schoolroom, and has stayed his, with a wall-writing and an heir to hang it on and two dates for the occasion. I keep the attribution as the dictionaries keep it, received and widely known; the lord's name belongs with the word attributed. On the words, 為せば成る is the headword form; the poem is in kana.

References

  1. 黒泉富三郎 編『金言万集：一読奮勉立志捷径』, 日進舎, 1890, National Diet Library pid 755179, scan 46. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/755179/1/46
  2. 長沼梅仙 編『学生の良友』, 磊々堂, 1896, pp. 162–163, National Diet Library pid 897477, scan 94. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/897477/1/94
  3. 津阪東陽『道の栞歌合』, 1897, National Diet Library pid 758345, scan 10. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/758345/1/10
  4. 石堂慧猛 編『真俗訓言集』, 伝燈会, 1898, National Diet Library pid 757384, scan 24. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/757384/1/24
  5. 桑谷定逸『富豪の面影：成功秘訣』, 実業之日本社, 1902, p. 178, National Diet Library pid 758220, scan 99. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/758220/1/99
  6. 槙山栄次『新説教育学』, 金港堂, 1897, National Diet Library pid 808377, scan 63. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/808377/1/63
  7. 永瀬伊一郎 編『新編実用教授学』, 金港堂, 1897, National Diet Library pid 810578, scan 50. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/810578/1/50
  8. 笹川臨風『雨糸風片』, 博文館, 1900, National Diet Library pid 898414, scan 145. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/898414/1/145
  9. 秋山悟庵 編『上杉鷹山言行録』, 内外出版協会, 1908, National Diet Library pid 781088, scans 87–88. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/781088/1/87
  10. 幸田露伴『普通文章論』, 博文館, 1908, pp. 90–91, National Diet Library pid 865279, scans 55 and 57. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/865279/1/55
  11. 「為せば成る」, ことわざを知る辞典 · 故事成語を知る辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/為せば成る-346849
  12. 井口丑二『日本自助論』, 1909, National Diet Library pid 758012, scan 134. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/758012/1/134
  13. 島根県師範学校附属小学校教育研究会『教育研究録』第1集, 1906, National Diet Library pid 808805, scan 5. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/808805/1/5
  14. 相島亀三郎『尋常小学修身書例話原拠』, 1912, pp. 432–433, National Diet Library pid 811278, scan 229. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/811278/1/229
  15. F. Brinkley, F. Nanjō and Y. Iwasaki, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary, Sanseidō, Tokyo, 1896, p. 1008, s.v. Nasu 爲 (the shelved copy). https://archive.org/details/cu31924082117288
  16. 井上十吉, Inouye's Japanese-English Dictionary, Sanseidō, Tokyo, 1909, p. 1122, s.v. Nasu 爲す (the shelved copy).
  17. Kenkyūsha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, American edition, Harvard University Press, 1942, p. 1340, s.v. nasu 爲す (the shelved copy).
  18. Kenkyūsha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, fourth edition, Kenkyūsha, Tokyo, 1974, pp. 1199–1200, s.v. nasu 為す, and p. 1212, s.v. nenriki 念力 (the shelved copy).
  19. Kenkyūsha's New Collegiate Japanese-English Dictionary, third edition, Kenkyūsha, Tokyo, 1983, p. 931, s.v. なす³ 為す (the shelved copy).
  20. Hepburn, dictionary of 1872, National Diet Library pid 993689. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/993689
  21. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, 1965, p. 253.
  22. Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, Kodansha, Tokyo, 1993, vol. 2, p. 1239, s.v. publishing (the shelved copy).
  23. G. L. Apperson, English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases: A Historical Dictionary, Dent, 1929, p. 703, Will 3 (the shelved copy).
  24. 「為せば成る」, Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/為せば成る
  25. EDRDG (JMdict), 為せば成る, at jisho.org. https://jisho.org/search/為せば成る
  26. 『書経』太甲下, at the Chinese Text Project. https://ctext.org/shang-shu/tai-jia-iii
  27. 「上杉鷹山」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/上杉鷹山-19206

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