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鶴亀 tsurukame Crane and Tortoise

鶴亀 (tsurukame), crane and tortoise, is the long-lived pair of Japanese celebration, and its history runs from a Chinese sentence setting the crane's thousand years beside the mayfly's single day, through the poem of 905 that declined to cite them and the courtier of 1060 who called them worn out, to the Noh, the New Year beggar's patter, a poet who could not bear it, and a charm said twice against a bad dream.

Japanese Scroll of Crane and Tortoise (tsurukame) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Crane and Tortoise (tsurukame)

鶴亀 (tsurukame): the crane and the tortoise, a lucky pair used at celebrations and as a symbol of long life. A hand-brushed hanging scroll by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase on traditional Japanese paper.

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Abstract

鶴亀, tsurukame, is the crane and the tortoise, the pair that stands for long life at Japanese weddings, birthdays and the New Year, and its long life is Chinese: a book of the second century BC gives the crane a thousand years, and by the fourth century Chinese writers name the pair together as 龜鶴, tortoise first. Japanese reverses the order, and the word appears crane first in the preface to the 古今和歌集 (905–914), then in a Noh play, a fairy tale that explains the pair, the New Year patter of the beggars at the gate, and a charm said twice against a word of ill omen. The pair's history is also a history of doubt, from a Chinese book of about 317 that prints the objection that nobody has followed a tortoise or a crane long enough to know, through the 古今集's own poem on the pair, which declines to cite them, a courtier of 1060 who calls them worn with use, and a monk of 1463 who asks who has lived a hundred years, to Issa 一茶 in 1819, to whom the crane-and-tortoise greetings sound like an exorcist's patter. The word has outlasted every one of these objections because it was never a promise: it is a blessing given in full knowledge of its limit.

Overview

The sense. The デジタル大辞泉 gives the noun as the crane and the tortoise, 長寿でめでたいものとして、祝儀などに用いられる, long-lived and auspicious, and so used at celebrations, and the interjection as a word said to undo an ill omen, usually doubled, つるかめつるかめ [1]. The 精選版 日本国語大辞典 gives the word three uses [1]. As a noun it is the crane and the tortoise, いずれも寿命が長いとされるところから縁起をかついで祝儀に用い、また、長寿の象徴としても用いる, both said to live long, and so used at celebrations for good luck and as a symbol of long life, and by extension a pattern of the two carved or painted on a thing. As an interjection it is a charm, the same as つるかめつるかめ, said to undo an unlucky word [1][2]. As a title it is a Noh play, a 脇能 played by every school, which the 喜多 school calls 月宮殿 [1]. JMdict gives crane and tortoise (symbol of longevity, artistic motif) [3]. Neither English word is, by itself, a wish for long life, so the Japanese word brings a sense the English words lack. Crane and tortoise translates the characters, and the longevity has to be explained. The kin words name the same wish without the animals: 鶴寿, the crane's years, from the Chinese [4], and the proverb 鶴は千年亀は万年, the crane a thousand years, the tortoise ten thousand [5].

The words. 鶴 is the crane, read tsuru; the 万葉集 calls the bird たづ in poetry, and つる was the plain word [1]. 亀 is the tortoise or turtle, read kame, written 龜 in the older form; Meiji typesets print 龜, and the 1852 print of Issa's book and the Noh chant-books write 亀 (Notes). The compound is read tsurukame, two plain Japanese words joined, crane first. The Sino-Japanese word in the Chinese order, 亀鶴, is read kikaku and is a different word, used in Chinese prose [4].

The text in English. The Japanese-English dictionaries gave the pair as emblems from the first: Hepburn's of 1867 under the wedding stand 島台, his of 1872 with the crane's thousand years, his of 1886 under the Sino-Japanese 亀鶴, and Brinkley's of 1896 with the charm. English writers about Japan from 1870 made the crane a stork, and Mitford's Tales of Old Japan (1871) carried the stork into the general press, where it was still being repeated in a painter's handbook in 1911. Kenkyusha's large dictionary of 1974 gives crane and tortoise; well-wishing compliments and the charm as God forbid!. JMdict today gives crane and tortoise (symbol of longevity, artistic motif) [3].

The historical record

Second century BC. The 淮南子, compiled at the court of 劉安, chapter 說林訓. The sentence the Japanese dictionaries give as the source of the crane's thousand years [5]:

鶴壽千歲，以極其游；蜉蝣朝生而暮死，而盡其樂。

The crane lives a thousand years and roams to the end of its range; the mayfly is born at dawn and dies at dusk, and has all of its joy [6]. The sentence sets two spans side by side, each filled to its end. It praises the mayfly's day as much as the crane's thousand years, and wishes for neither.

First century BC. Sima Qian 司馬遷, the 史記, the chapter on tortoise divination, 龜策列傳. The historian's own comment: 余至江南，觀其行事，問其長老，云龜千歲乃遊蓮葉之上, I went to Jiangnan, watched what they did and asked their elders; they said that a tortoise at a thousand years roams on the lotus leaves, and 江傍家人常畜龜飲食之，以為能導引致氣，有益於助衰養老, people along the river keep tortoises and feed them, believing that they can guide the breath, which helps the old [7]. The tortoise has a thousand years here, the crane's number.

About 317. Ge Hong 葛洪, the 抱朴子, the inner chapters, 對俗. The two animals are already a pair, tortoise first: 知龜鶴之遐壽，故效其道引以增年, knowing the long life of the tortoise and the crane, they imitate their breathing to add to their years, and 諸蟲不能學龜鶴，是以短折耳, the other creatures cannot learn from the tortoise and the crane, and so they die young [8]. The book then prints an objection against itself:

或難曰：「龜鶴長壽，蓋世閒之空言耳，誰與二物終始相隨而得知之也。」

Someone objected: "The long life of the tortoise and the crane is surely just empty talk. Who has gone along with the two of them from beginning to end, to know it?" Ge Hong answers from older books: a tortoise of a thousand years has all five colors, a crane of a thousand years cries at the hours and can perch in trees [8]. In one of the pair's earliest appearances, the wish and the doubt appear together.

Fourth century. Guo Pu 郭璞, the 遊仙詩, Poems on Wandering Immortals, the third. 借問蜉蝣輩，寧知龜鶴年 [4]. Burton Watson's English: Let me ask those short-lived mayflies, / what could they know of the years of the tortoise and the crane? [9]. The mayfly of the 淮南子 is set against the pair, and the pair is written in the Chinese order.

Undated. The 述異記, a collection of marvels given to Ren Fang 任昉. 龜千年生毛，龜壽五千年謂之神龜，萬年曰靈龜, a tortoise at a thousand years grows hair; a tortoise of five thousand years is called a divine tortoise, and one of ten thousand a spirit tortoise [10]. This is the oldest text read here for the tortoise's ten thousand years, and for the hair that Japan draws as the long weed tail of the 蓑亀, the minogame.

797. Kūkai 空海, the 三教指帰, Indications of the Goals of the Three Teachings. In the second part, the Daoist recluse 虚亡隠士 promises his hearers 令汝得蜉蝣短齡與龜鶴相竸, I will let you, whose span is a mayfly's, compete with the tortoise and the crane [11]. Yoshito Hakeda's English: You, whose term of life is as short as that of the mayflies, will be able to live as long as a tortoise or a crane [12]. The book gives this promise to the Daoist so that the Buddhist mendicant of the third part can answer it [12]. In a Japanese book, the pair keeps the Chinese order and is set against the mayfly again.

Before 819. Liu Zongyuan 柳宗元 (773–819) [13], a memorial of thanks for robes given at the Duanwu festival. Written as a provincial governor: 被仙衣而鶴龜齊壽, clothed in robes of the immortals, to equal the crane and the tortoise in years [14]. In Chinese Wikisource's full text, this is the one Tang text that puts the crane first. In Chinese the rule is 龜鶴, and set phrases keep it: 龜鶴齊壽, equal in years to the tortoise and crane, is on a Daoist preface of 825 and a charm coin [15][16].

About 900. Sugawara no Michizane 菅原道真, the 菅家文草. 済々風猷、趁亀鶴以朝魏闕, in a Chinese poem for a banquet; the 日本国語大辞典's earliest citation for 亀鶴, in the Chinese order and in Chinese [4].

905–914. The 古今和歌集, the first imperial anthology of Japanese poetry, its kana preface by Ki no Tsurayuki 紀貫之. Among the things the anthology's poems do [17]:

それがなかに、むめをかざすよりはじめて、ほとゝぎすをきゝ、もみぢをゝり、ゆきをみるにいたるまで、又つるかめにつけてきみをおもひ、人をもいはひ、あきはぎなつくさをみてつまをこひ

Among them, from wearing plum in the hair, hearing the cuckoo, breaking off autumn leaves, to seeing the snow; and, by crane and tortoise, thinking of one's lord and blessing others; seeing autumn clover and summer grass, longing for a wife. The pair is written in kana in the received text, crane first, and it is the 日本国語大辞典's earliest citation for the word [1]. The earliest dated print opened here, of 1660, cuts it in kanji: 又鶴亀につけて君を思ひ人をも [18]. Motoori Norinaga 本居宣長, rendering the anthology into the spoken Japanese of his day in a book completed by 1793 and first printed in 1797, gives the clause, in a printing of 1875, as 又鶴亀ニツケテ君ノ御壽命ヲ長カレト云テ御祝ヒ申シタリ, and by crane and tortoise they wished their lord's life long and blessed it [19].

905–914. The 古今和歌集, the book of congratulations, poem 355, by Ariwara no Shigeharu 在原滋春 (some say Tokiharu 時春). The headnote: 藤原三善が六十賀によみける, composed for the sixtieth birthday of Fujiwara no Miyoshi. The poem [20]:

鶴亀もちとせののちはしらなくにあかぬ心にまかせはててむ

The 1660 print cuts 鶴亀も千年の後はしらなくにあかぬ心にまかせはてゝん, the pair and the thousand years both in kanji [21]. Even of the crane and the tortoise, what follows their thousand years we do not know; so let me leave your years entirely to my heart, which never has enough. Every Japanese commentary read here takes it so. Norinaga: 鶴亀ハ千年ノヨハヒヲタモツ物トレドソレモソノ千年ノ後ハドウアルヤラシラヌ, the crane and tortoise keep a life of a thousand years, but what becomes of them after the thousand years nobody knows [22]. Kagawa Kageki 香川景樹 says outright what the poem does with the pair: 其鶴龜も千歲へなん後はいかならんしらすさらはさる例なと引事はやめて我いつまても厭たらぬ心のまゝに君をは任せ果ん, what becomes of the crane and tortoise after their thousand years we do not know; so I will stop citing such examples and leave you to my heart, which will never have had enough [23]. Kaneko Motoomi 金子元臣 in 1902: それ故、例など引く事は罷めて, and so I will stop citing examples [24]. The poem names the pair to decline the comparison, and it does so in the book of congratulations, at a sixtieth birthday.

1028–1107. The 栄花物語, A Tale of Flowering Fortunes, the dates given for its two parts [25], the chapter けぶりの後. The ladies-in-waiting compete in their dress: すちをきつるかめまつたけ, gold thread, cranes and tortoises, pine and bamboo, in the print of 1691 [26]. The pair as a pattern on cloth, written in kana.

1060. The 康平記, the eleventh month of 康平3, the celebration at 白河院 of the ninetieth year of the archbishop Myōson 明尊. Fujiwara no Yorimichi 藤原頼通 holds the celebration, and Minamoto no Morofusa 源師房 writes the preface to its poems, which ends 爰感此希代之鶴齡。命彼佳會之鸚盞。其詞云, moved by this crane's age, rare in any generation, we call for the parrot cup of a fine gathering; the words run. The first poem follows, printed in the 1901 typeset as [27]:

鶴龜もためしに引ばめなれたりこうのいしとぞいふべかりける

The Edo block of the same collection prints it in cursive, つる亀もためしにひけばめなれたりこうのいしとぞいふべかりける, with 刧石, the kalpa stone, glossed small beside こうのいし [28]. Cite the crane and the tortoise as the example, and they are worn with use; we ought to have said the kalpa stone. The kalpa stone, 劫石, is the Buddhist figure for an age: in the 雜阿含經 a stone mountain a yojana on each side, brushed with fine cloth once in a hundred years, wears away before the kalpa ends [29]. It had measured a sovereign's years in Japan since 756, when the list of offerings to Tōdaiji wished the emperor a life that would not end when the kalpa stone did, 劫石尽而不尽 [29]. At a ninetieth birthday, the preface writer calls the pair a cliché and reaches for a longer measure. The poem stands below his preface with no other name above it, so the page gives it to him [28].

About 1113. Minamoto no Toshiyori 源俊頼, the 俊頼髄脳, a treatise on poetry. Among the stock figures of poetry he lists the custom to analogize the felicitous person to the pine or bamboo, or argue that he can easily compete with a crane or a tortoise in longevity, and he is, in Hiroaki Sato's account, more skeptical about accepted standards and practices than others [30]. Sato's English is the reading here; the Japanese is in the Sources not seen section.

Early twelfth century. Minamoto no Nakamasa 源仲正, a warrior and poet who died about 1140 [31], in the 夫木和歌抄, an anthology compiled about 1310 [32], book 36. つるかめのいのちくらへのかちまけをきみこそしらめ万代をへて, the contest of lives between crane and tortoise, who wins and who loses, you will know, having lived ten thousand ages [33]. The pair as a race, and the lord as the one who will outlive both to see it finished.

1254. The 古今著聞集, a collection of tales, book 5, on poetry. It praises a poem by a princess that wishes her lord not ten thousand years but buddhahood (よろづ代もいかでかはてのなかるべき佛に君は早くならなん), and says why [34]:

松竹にたとへ、鶴龜によせて、千年をいはひ、萬代を契りても、いかでかはてはなからん。まことに佛の道に入らんのみぞ、まめやかに盡きせぬ御祝なるべき。

To liken someone to the pine and the bamboo, to tie them to the crane and the tortoise, to wish them a thousand years and pledge ten thousand: how could it not end? Only to enter the Buddha's way is truly a blessing without end.

Thirteenth century. The 平家物語, The Tale of the Heike, book 1, the chapter on Giō 祇王. The dancer Hotoke 仏, sixteen, sings for Taira no Kiyomori 平清盛 at her first audience [35]:

君をはじめて見るをりは、千世も歴ぬべし姫小松、御前の池なる龜岡に、鶴こそ群れ居て遊ぶめれ。

When I first see you, my lord, I could live a thousand ages, a young pine; on the tortoise hill in the pond before you, cranes have gathered and play. The pair here is the tortoise hill of a garden pond, with cranes on it.

1444. The 下學集, a dictionary, the section on utensils. 龜鶴臺 燭臺也, the tortoise-and-crane stand: it is a candlestick, in the print of 1617 [36]. The altar candlestick of a crane standing on a tortoise has its name by this date, in the Chinese order.

1463. Shinkei 心敬, the ささめごと, on renga. Quoted in a later Buddhist collection [37]:

千代。萬世。鶴龜などいひあへらんこそうたて侍れ。かくいはひ侍るとて。いつれの人が百とせ。誰の人が千年をへむ。きのふは榮へ。けふはおとろへ。朝に見しも夕の煙となる。

To keep saying "a thousand ages," "ten thousand generations," "crane and tortoise" is distasteful. For all such blessing, who has lived a hundred years, who a thousand? Yesterday flourishing, today in decline; the one seen in the morning becomes the evening's smoke. Dennis Hirota's English of the passage: Where is the man who, proposing such felicitations, has lived out a hundred years? [38].

1475. The palace New Year. The diary of Sanjōnishi Sanetaka 三条西実隆 for the twelfth day of the first month of 文明7: 千秋萬歲、鶴龜等於庭上舞、催其興者也, the 千秋万歳 danced the crane-and-tortoise and other pieces in the garden, to great delight [39]. The 千秋万歳 were the New Year performers of blessings. Whether their dance was the Noh play or a dance of the same name the entry does not say.

1544. The Noh 鶴亀. The earliest performance in Nose Asaji 能勢朝次's record of performances is at 石山本願寺 on the sixteenth day of the first month of 天文13, in a New Year 松囃子 played by the temple's monks: 鶴龜・玉依姫・羅生門 [40]. Of the eight lists of Noh authors Nose prints, the play appears in one, under 作者未詳, author unknown [40]. Nose also prints a 風流 dance called 鶴龜, in which tortoise and crane appear to the 千歳 dancer with the play's own line [40]. The play is set at a Chinese court on New Year's day. At the 不老門, the Gate of No Age, the whole court bows to the emperor; the minister asks leave to have the crane and the tortoise dance 每年の嘉例の如く, as is the custom every year; and the chorus sings [41]:

龜は萬年の齡を經。鶴も千代をやかさぬらん。

The tortoise passes ten thousand years of age; the crane too, I suppose, piles up a thousand ages. The two dance and offer their years to the emperor, the emperor dances, and he returns to the 長生殿, the Hall of Long Life. The text never names him; the allusions (霓裳羽衣, 長生殿) point to the Tang emperor Xuanzong 玄宗, and a manuscript catalogue of the Genbun era (1736–41) gives 玄宗 as one of the play's names, which Maruoka Katsura 丸岡桂 doubts [42]. In this line the tortoise comes first and has ten thousand years.

Late Muromachi. The 御伽草子 浦島太郎, the tale of Urashima Tarō, in the 御伽文庫 print of the early eighteenth century. Urashima lets a tortoise go back to the sea and tells it why. The print, read at the leaf [43]:

つるは千ねん。かめは万年とて。いのちひさしき物なり

The crane, they say, has a thousand years and the tortoise ten thousand: it is a long-lived thing. The print writes the crane's years 千ねん, in kanji and kana, and the tortoise's 万年 in kanji. This is the 日本国語大辞典's earliest citation for the proverb [5]. At the end Urashima becomes a crane and the tortoise a god, and the tale explains the word itself, in the 1915 typeset [44]:

扨こそめでたきためしにも鶴龜をこそ申し候へ。只人には情あれ、情のある人は行末めでたき由申し傳へたり。

And that is why, among the happy examples, people say crane and tortoise. Be kind to others: it is handed down that the kind come to a happy end. The eighteenth-century print writes the pair つるかめ, in kana, where the 1915 typeset prints 鶴龜 [43][44]. The last picture in the print is a crane flying over a 蓑亀, the tortoise with its long trailing tail of weed, under pine and rock [43].

1611. A Noh drummer's book of oral teaching, 幸正能口傳書. An item opens 一亀ハ万年鶴ハ千年, the play's line, tortoise first [45].

1687 and after. The New Year exorcist at the gate. Ihara Saikaku 井原西鶴, 男色大鑑, the story 聲に色ある化物の一ふし: やあら目出たや鶴は千年龜は万年、東方朔は九千歳と、年越の夜の厄拂ひが高聲, "oh, how happy! the crane a thousand years, the tortoise ten thousand, Dongfang Shuo 東方朔 nine thousand," the loud voice of the exorcist on New Year's eve [46]. Chikamatsu 近松門左衛門's puppet plays have it the same way: あら目出度や。此方の御壽命申さば。鶴は千年。龜は萬年。浦島太郞が八千歲。東方朔が九千歲 [47]. A history of manners in 1895 describes the custom on the night of 節分: a beggar stood under the eaves crying 厄拂〳〵, exorcism, exorcism, and for a coin recited あらめでたや鶴は千年、龜は萬年、浦島太郞は八千歲、東方朔は九千歲 [48]. By the late seventeenth century the proverb was the beggar's New Year patter.

1819. Issa 一茶, おらが春, The Year of My Life, its New Year opening. Written in 1819 and first printed in 1852. Issa says that he is a little different: he lives buried in the world's dust, and, in the first print, read at the leaf [49]:

鶴亀にたぐへての祝盡しも厄拂ひの口上めきてそら〳〵しく思ふからに

since the whole round of congratulations likened to the crane and the tortoise sounds to me hollow, like the exorcist's patter. So, as a hovel that the dry wind could blow away should be, he sets up no New Year pine and sweeps no soot. Nobuyuki Yuasa's English: The words "crane" and "tortoise" ring hollow on my ear, like greetings on the Day of Exorcism [50]. The passage ends with his verse, which the 1925 typeset prints as 目出度さもちう位なりおらが春, my happiness, too, only middling: my spring; that typeset prints 鶴龜 for the print's 亀 [51].

1831–34. The charm. In a 人情本 novel of those years a speaker who has just said 往生, dying, takes the word back: アア鶴亀鶴亀, oh, crane-tortoise, crane-tortoise; the 日本国語大辞典's earliest citation for the word as an interjection [2]. Said twice after an unlucky word or a bad dream, it is the Japanese of touch wood.

1894. 鶴亀算, the crane-and-tortoise sum. The puzzle of heads and legs is Chinese: the 孫子算經 sets it as pheasants and rabbits in one cage, 今有雉、兔同籠，上有三十五頭，下有九十四足 [52]. An Edo arithmetic book, quoted in 1936, sets it the same way, きじうさぎおのおの何程づつと問, how many pheasants and how many rabbits? [53]. The earliest dated appearance of the name 鶴龜算 in the Diet Library's full text is in the 数学雑誌 of March 1894, whose pages are not served outside Japan; there, by the library's search snippet, the writer says he has given the problem a heading that anyone can remember, and sets it as a hundred cranes and tortoises in all, with two hundred and eighty legs [54]. From the next year the name is in the arithmetic manuals. The 日本国語大辞典's earliest citation for it is a story of 1932 [55].

What is not a source. The 淮南子's sentence is the source of the crane's thousand years, not of the pair and not of a wish: it praises the mayfly's day as much as the crane's span. The 孫子算經 is the source of the puzzle, not of the name. The Urashima tale explains the word, but the word is centuries older than the tale. Chinese does put the crane first, once in a Tang text in Chinese Wikisource's full text, so the claim that it never does is wrong; the reversal of the usual order is Japanese.

The pair in English

1867. James Curtis Hepburn, A Japanese and English Dictionary. No headword for the pair. Under SHIMADAI: A stand on which branches of bamboo, pine, and plum, together with figures of the crane tortoise, of an old man and woman are arranged, and set out on marriage occasions, being emblematic of virtue, happiness, and long life [56]. The earliest English notice of the pair in the Internet Archive's full text and on the shelf read for this history, at a wedding.

1870. Notes and Queries, 18 June, Bronze: Stork and Tortoise. A reader in Guernsey describes a pair of Japanese bronze candlesticks, the bird standing on a tortoise on a lotus leaf, beside the Italian candlestick of the stork and the serpent, and asks how comes it to be found in countries so far apart [57]. These are the altar candlesticks named in the 下學集 [36], seen through a European model, and the crane is already a stork.

1871. A. B. Mitford, Tales of Old Japan, vol. 2, pp. 264–265. On a boy's ceremony at four: a dress of ceremony, on which are embroidered storks and tortoises (emblems of longevity — the stork is said to live a thousand years, the tortoise ten thousand) [58]. The sentence was copied into English and American papers in the next years, and the stork went with it. The bird is a crane.

1872 and 1886. Hepburn again. In 1872 under YOWAI: Tsuru wa sen nen no —, the age of a crane is a thousand years [59]. In 1886 under KIKWAKU 亀鶴: (tsuru, kame) Crane and tortoise, emblems of long life [60].

1889. J. H. Gubbins, A Dictionary of Chinese-Japanese Words, under BAN-ZAI. The proverb tsuru wa sen-nen, kame wa ban-zai, the crane lives for a thousand years, the tortoise for ten thousand [61]. The proverb's 万歳 is read here as banzai.

1896. F. Brinkley and others, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary. Tsuru kame … crane and tortoise (a phrase very often repeated when one hears of anything unlucky), the entry marking the gloss as literal, and Minogame … An old turtle with its back overgrown by sea weeds; symbol of longevity [62]. The charm enters an English dictionary, and Brinkley still glosses tsuru as a crane, stork.

1908. Henri L. Joly, Legend in Japanese Art, no. 593, p. 226. MINOGAME: The tortoise (Kame) of a thousand years … the most common presentment of the sacred animal has a long tail, said to grow when it is over five hundred years old, which Joly explains as the growth on old pond tortoises, punned with the peasant's straw raincoat, the mino [63]. He gives the tortoise the 史記's thousand years, not the proverb's ten thousand.

1911. Henry P. Bowie, On the Laws of Japanese Painting, p. 84. Among New Year subjects: The stork and the tortoise, whose back is covered with seaweed, both typify long life, the ancient saying being that the stork lives for one thousand and the tortoise for ten thousand years (tsuru wa sen nen, kame wa man nen) [64]. Forty years after Mitford, the stork is in a handbook for painters, and the Japanese in the same sentence says tsuru, crane.

1974. Kō Masuda, editor, Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, fourth edition. tsuru-kame … crane and tortoise; well-wishing compliments, and for the doubled charm God forbid!; for the proverb, A crane lives a thousand and a tortoise (lives) ten thousand years. / May you live as long!; and tsurukame-zan, the puzzle [65].

1984. Laurel Rasplica Rodd with Mary Catherine Henkenius, Kokinshū. The preface: poems on wishing one's lord the lifespan of the crane and tortoise (p. 46). Poem 355: even the tortoise / and crane do not know what lies / beyond their thousand / year span let me whose heart shall / never be sated judge your years (pp. 147–148) [66]. The rendering makes the animals the ones who do not know. Every Japanese commentary read here makes the speaker the one who does not know, and reads the poem as declining the comparison [22][23][24]. Rodd's reading departs from all of them, and it loses the poem's turn.

1985. Helen Craig McCullough, Kokin Wakashū. The preface: poems in which masters were revered and friends congratulated with mentions of cranes and turtles [67].

Today: JMdict gives crane and tortoise (symbol of longevity, artistic motif) [3]. Crane and tortoise renders the two characters in their order. What a rendering must keep is that the order is Japanese, and that the bird is a crane, not a stork.

A reading

The crane and the tortoise were never only a wish. In one of their earliest appearances as a pair, Ge Hong prints the man who asks who has followed them long enough to know [8]. Before that, the 淮南子 gives the crane its thousand years in a sentence that gives the mayfly its single day, each filled to its end [6]. The Japanese tradition takes up the doubt in its first imperial anthology. Poem 355 of the 古今集 was composed for a sixtieth birthday, and it names the crane and the tortoise only to set them aside: their thousand years end too, so the poet stops citing examples and leaves the man's years to his own unsatisfied heart [20][23]. A century and a half later, at a ninetieth birthday, a courtier writes that the pair is worn out and should have been the kalpa stone [27][28]. The 古今著聞集 asks how a thousand years could fail to end [34]; Shinkei asks who that was wished a thousand years has lived a hundred [37]; and Issa, hearing the beggar's patter in every New Year greeting, writes that his happiness is middling [49]. I read this run of doubt not as a counter-tradition but as part of the word. The wish has always been known to be a wish. I doubt that anyone who said crane and tortoise at a sixtieth birthday believed the man would live a thousand years, and the best poets said so in the same breath as the blessing. That is why the word survived its own cliché: it was never a promise, and it never needed to be believed. What it carries is the speaker's 飽かぬ心, the heart that never has enough of the other's years, which 355 offers in place of the comparison. The Japanese order points the same way. Chinese put the tortoise first, the animal of divination and of breath held for long life; the 古今集 put the crane first, the bird in flight in the last picture of the Urashima tale [43], and the Japanese word has kept that order since. The kana つるかめ of the preface is a word for people, said by people to one another, and the charm つるかめつるかめ, said against an unlucky word, is that same wish turned to protection. I read 鶴亀 as a blessing given in full knowledge of its limit, the way 355 gives it, and that is a reading a sixtieth birthday can bear.

Notes

Sources not seen

源俊頼, 『俊頼髄脳』, in 橋本不美男 校注, 『歌論集 能楽論集』, 日本古典文学大系 65, 岩波書店, 1961, p. 104 (the page Hiroaki Sato gives for the passage, String of Beads, 1993, note 50); also printed as 「俊頼口伝」 in 『続々群書類従』 第十五 歌文部, 国書刊行会, 1907. It would settle Toshiyori's Japanese words for the custom of comparing a person's years to the crane and the tortoise, which this history quotes in Sato's English.

柴田敏明, 「「雉・兎算」から「鶴亀算」へ」, 『社会と人文』 20, 2023, pp. 63–70; National Diet Library bibliographic record 033076896. A study of how the Chinese puzzle of pheasants and rabbits became the Japanese crane-and-tortoise sum. It would settle whether the name 鶴亀算 is older than the arithmetic journal of 1894.

A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.

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Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5, Takase Studios LLC)

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

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