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為せば成る naseba naru Try and You Will Succeed

為せば成る (naseba naru), do it and it gets done, opens a short poem that says failure comes only from not acting. Two records of the Yonezawa lord Uesugi Yōzan copy the poem in a wall-writing the domain dates 1789. This study follows the poem through the other names it carried, and finds his authorship received, not proven.

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

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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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 two records of the Yonezawa lord Uesugi Yōzan 上杉鷹山 copy the poem as the close of a wall-writing he gave his heir's attendants: an Owari compilation ordered in the Kansei era (1789–1801) and printed in 1891, and the domain's record 甘棠篇, which dates the wall-writing 1789. In popular print the poem ran on its own from 1880, as an old poem, as nobody's, as the Mito lord 源烈公's and later as Motoori Norinaga 本居宣長's, with the dictionaries reporting a variant under Takeda Shingen 武田信玄, while the wall-writing was printed under Yōzan's name from 1893 and the poem was his in the schoolroom from 1897. The wall-writing is the lord's on the evidence of the records; that he composed the poem is received, not proven. In English the line has no proverb book and no bilingual dictionary before the modern ones; a 1993 encyclopedia renders the title of a 1964 book If There's a Will, There's a Way, and a 2009 anthology of comic verse translates the whole poem.

Overview

The sense. One sense, everywhere: the thing gets done by being done. What changes is the name on the poem. Two records of the lord's rule copy it as the last lines of a wall-writing he gave the attendants of his heir: 深田正韶's 稽徳編, an Owari compilation ordered in the Kansei era and left in manuscript until 1891, and the Yonezawa record 甘棠篇, printed between 1893 and 1897, which dates the wall-writing 1789 [1][2]. In popular print the poem runs on its own: an old poem (古歌) in a Buddhist commentary of 1880, poet unknown in 1888 and 1896, a saying of the Mito lord 源烈公 in a political novel of 1889, and nobody's in 1890, 1897, 1898 and 1902 [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. From 1893 the wall-writing is in print under the lord's name, in a reader for soldiers and students and in a boys' life of the lord [11][12]; from 1897 the poem is his in the teachers' textbooks, in the Yonezawa travel sketch of 1900 and in the biographies after [13][14][15]; it is a Bingo work song for Rohan in 1908 [16]; and the variant ending that the dictionaries attach to Shingen is Norinaga's in a 1909 self-help book and nobody's in 1906 [17][18][19]. So the attribution rests on a document, as two records copy it, and not only on the dictionaries' hearsay; what neither record says is whether the lord wrote the poem or closed his instruction with one already in use.

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 two records and the dictionaries all write the poem so; the kanji form 為せば成る is the dictionary headword and nothing more than a spelling [17]. 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; both records have 何事も.

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 [20][21][22][23][24]; Hepburn 1872 has no entry for it [25]. 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 [26]; Kenkyūsha 1974 sets the same English beside 念力岩をも通す [23]. So the English begins with the modern dictionaries, and with one book title: the volleyball coach 大松博文's 『なせば成る!』 of 1964 [27], which the Kodansha encyclopedia of 1993 renders If There's a Will, There's a Way [28]. The whole poem is in English once among the books read: Robin D. Gill's Mad in Translation (2009), an anthology of comic verse, gives it among the didactic poems in its notes, with no author, and renders it three ways, the first What's done becomes, what isn't doesn't, & whatever doesn't / doesn't become because (who knew it!) someone doesn't do it [29]. 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 [30].

The historical record

The Kansei era (1789–1801), printed 1891. 深田正韶『稽徳編』 (観成社), vol. 30, p. 1112. An Owari compilation of the deeds of lords, which the afterword to the printing says was ordered in the Kansei era for the young lord of Owari: 寛政中、我尾藩、明公卽世、順公猶幼、野村昌武、爲公傅、盡心輔導、令深田正韶編此書, and which its postface says had not been printed (此書、未上木) before this edition; the afterword is dated 明治廿三年三月 [1]. The thirtieth volume is on the Yonezawa reforms, and it copies the lord's written instruction to his heir's attendants: the kinds of talk to bring to the boy and the kinds to keep from him, closing 思ひ出るまゝ是等の物語は遠慮あるへし / なせはなるなさねはならぬ何事も / ならぬはひとのなさぬなりけり, all such talk as comes to mind, hold back; do it and it gets done … [1]. This is the oldest witness known, and it is the poem inside the lord's document, not a poem on its own. The same postface says the manuscript copies were full of copyists' errors (傳寫所誤、帝虎魯魚、往々有之) and that the publisher corrected them before printing, so the wording is the 1891 edition's.

1880. 北条的門『西要鈔弁釈』 vol. 5 (北条泰門). A Shin Buddhist commentary, urging the reader to make the nembutsu a habit: 何事モ癖付マデガ劬勞ニテ。癖付バ煩トハナラザルナリ。古歌ニ成セバ成ル成サ子バ成ラヌ成ル事ヲ成サヌハ人ノ成サヌナリケリ, everything is labor until it is a habit, and once it is a habit it is no trouble; an old poem says … [3]. The oldest print of the poem on its own known, and it is already an old poem, with nobody's name on it.

1888. 西田北洲 ed.『言行彙鑒』 (河井源蔵). A collection of sayings and deeds prints 爲セハ成ル爲サ子ハ成ラヌ成ルモノヲナラヌト云フハ爲サヌナリケリ under 讀人不知, poet unknown [4].

1889. 二橋散士『霹靂一声』 (松成伊三郎). A political novel; a speaker urging young men to settle the southern islands says: 一國の富强は文學にあらずして實業的作用にあり源烈公謂はずや「成せば成る成さねばならずなるものを成ちぬと云ふは成さぬ故なり」と, a nation's strength lies not in letters but in practical work; did not 源烈公 say … [6]. 烈公 is the posthumous name of the Mito lord 徳川斉昭 [31]. A second lord's name on the poem, four years before the wall-writing was printed under Yōzan's.

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 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 [7]. No poet, no lord.

1893–1894. The wall-writing in print under the lord's name. 土田泰's reader for soldiers and students, 『振気編』 (目黒書房, April 1893), prints it under the heading 壁書 上杉治憲, the lord's personal name, and its list closes with the poem [11]. 渡部乙羽's boys' life 『上杉鷹山』 (少年文学 no. 23, 博文館, preface dated 明治癸巳十一月, November 1893) gives the occasion: 寛政元年十一月廿八日, the day the heir 顯孝 moved from the inner to the outer palace, a wall-writing 近侍の士へ賜ひたる, given to the samurai attending him, 文左の如し, which reads as follows, and the poem at its end [12]. The magazine 『明治文学』 (November 1894) prints it again as 上杉治憲公の壁書, given, it says, in 寛政五年 (1793) to the attendants of his son 顯孝, and it too ends with the poem [32].

Between 1893 and 1897. 甘棠篇, in 『史料通信叢誌』 第2編 (近藤瓶城 ed., 史料通信協会), pp. 11–13 of its 羽前 part. A society printing documents province by province copies, under the heading 上杉治憲の藩政改革, items from 甘棠篇, a Yonezawa record of the lord's reforms and of the years after, whose items run to 1814. The third is the wall-writing: 〔甘棠篇壁書三〕寛政元年十一月廿八日顯存公 … 御奥より御表へ御移住の節近侍の者へ是を賜ふ, on the twenty-eighth day of the eleventh month of Kansei 1 (1789), when the heir moved from the inner to the outer palace, this was given to his attendants; then the list, which ends おもひ出る儘是等の物語ぞ遠慮あるべき / なせハなるなさねハならぬ何事もならぬハ人のなさぬなりけり [2]. The leaf names the heir 顯存 where the other books have 顯孝. The catalogue dates the run, 1893 to 1897, not the part.

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 [5]. Three years after the wall-writing was printed under the lord's name, a compiler sets the poem beside Shingen's and 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). 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 [13][14]. The attribution enters the schoolroom.

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 [8][9].

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 [15]. 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 [10]. Nine years after the wall-writing was printed under the lord's name, a popular compiler still does not give it.

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 [19]. 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 [18]. This is the form the modern dictionaries report, in hearsay, as Shingen's [17]. So by 1909 the poem has been in print as Yōzan's, as Nariaki's and as Norinaga's, as a folk song, and as nobody's.

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" [16]. 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). A biography that gives the wall-writing the same day as 甘棠篇. 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 [33].

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: … [34]. The same book dates the lord's death to 文政五年 (1822) at seventy-two [34]. 甘棠篇, the boys' life of 1893 and the biography of 1908 give the heir's move in 1789; 『明治文学』 gives 1793; this book ties the wall-writing to the move into the retirement house, which Japanese Wikipedia dates 1785 [35]. The domain's record says 1789.

1964. 大松博文『なせば成る!』 (講談社). The line as a book title: 『なせば成る! 続・おれについてこい』, by the coach who took the women's volleyball team to its gold medal at the Tokyo Olympics, in the catalogue of the National Diet Library, which reads his name ダイマツ ヒロフミ, Daimatsu Hirofumi [27]. The Kodansha encyclopedia of 1993 names it with Ore ni tsuite koi! of 1963 as typical of a new best-selling genre of sports books on fighting spirit, and renders the title If There's a Will, There's a Way [28]. 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 [17]. 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 [17]. 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 [36].

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 [37]. 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 [38].

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 poem closes the wall-writing Yōzan gave his heir's attendants in both records that copy the document, one of them compiled on an order of the Kansei era, in the lord's lifetime, and the other the domain's own, with a day to it. That is a document, and the dictionaries' letter is a loose name for it. What neither record says is that he wrote the poem. A wall-writing may close on a verse its author did not compose, and in popular print the poem ran for decades as an old poem, as nobody's and under other names, before the schoolroom settled it on him. I read the wall-writing as the lord's and the poem as his by use, set at the end of his own instruction; as his composition it stays attributed. On the words, 為せば成る is the headword form; the poem is in kana, as both records write it.

References

  1. 深田正韶『稽徳編』, 観成社, 1891, vol. 30, p. 1112, and the preface and afterword on the next spread, National Diet Library pid 772759, scans 575–576. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/772759/1/575
  2. 近藤瓶城 編『史料通信叢誌』第2編, 史料通信協会, 1893–1897, the 羽前 part, pp. 11–13, 甘棠篇, National Diet Library pid 1151931, scans 208–209. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1151931/1/208
  3. 北条的門『西要鈔弁釈』巻5, 北条泰門, 1880, National Diet Library pid 820760, scan 55. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/820760/1/55
  4. 西田北洲 編『言行彙鑒』第1, 2編, 河井源蔵, 1888, National Diet Library pid 755276. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/755276
  5. 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
  6. 二橋散士『霹靂一声』, 松成伊三郎, 1889, National Diet Library pid 888144, scan 48. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/888144/1/48
  7. 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
  8. 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
  9. 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
  10. 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
  11. 土田泰 編『振気編：軍人学生』, 目黒書房, 1893, National Diet Library pid 757264. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/757264
  12. 渡部乙羽『上杉鷹山』, 少年文学 第23編, 博文館, 1893, National Diet Library pid 1919998. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1919998
  13. 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
  14. 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
  15. 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
  16. 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
  17. 「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
  18. 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
  19. 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
  20. 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
  21. 井上十吉, Inouye's Japanese-English Dictionary, Sanseidō, Tokyo, 1909, p. 1122, s.v. Nasu 爲す (the shelved copy).
  22. Kenkyūsha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, American edition, Harvard University Press, 1942, p. 1340, s.v. nasu 爲す (the shelved copy).
  23. 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).
  24. Kenkyūsha's New Collegiate Japanese-English Dictionary, third edition, Kenkyūsha, Tokyo, 1983, p. 931, s.v. なす³ 為す (the shelved copy).
  25. Hepburn, dictionary of 1872, National Diet Library pid 993689. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/993689
  26. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, 1965, p. 253.
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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 為せば成る (naseba naru)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/naseba-naru.