The Iroha is a Japanese poem. Originally the poem was attributed to the founder of the Shingon Esoteric sect of Buddhism in Japan, Kūkai, but more modern research has found the date of composition to be later in the Heian period. The first record of its existence dates from 1079. It is famous because it is a perfect pangram, containing each character of the Japanese syllabary exactly once. Because of this, it is also used as an ordering for the syllabary, in the same way as the A, B, C, D... sequence of the Latin alphabet.
Text
The first appearance of the Iroha, in Konkōmyōsaishōōkyō Ongi was in seven lines: six with seven morae each, and one with five. It was also written in man'yōgana.
Structurally, however, the poem follows the standard 7–5 pattern of Japanese poetry, and in modern times it is generally written that way, in contexts where line breaks are used. The text of the poem in hiragana and s in the spoken Japanese language in the Heian era. An English translation by Professor Ryuichi Abe reads as: Komatsu Hideo has revealed that the last syllable of each line of the Man'yō-gana original, when put together, reveals a hidden sentence, toka nakute shisu, which means "die without wrong-doing". It is thought that this might be eulogy in praise of Kūkai, further supporting the notion that the Iroha was written after Kūkai's death.
Usage
The iroha contains every kana only once, with the exception of ん, which was not distinguished from む mu in writing until the early 20th century. For this reason, the poem was frequently used as an ordering of the kana until the Meiji era reforms in the 19th century. Around 1890, with the publication of the Wakun no Shiori and Genkai dictionaries, the gojūon ordering system, which is based on Sanskrit, became more common. It begins with a, i, u, e, o then ka, ki, ku... and so on for each kana used in Japanese. Although the earliest known copy of the gojūon predated the iroha, gojūon was considered too scholarly and had not been widely used. Even after widespread use of gojūon in education and dictionaries, the iroha sequence was commonly used as a system of showing order, just like a, b, c... in English. For example, Imperial Japanese Navy submarines during the Second World War had official designations beginning with I, Ro, and Ha. Also, Japanese tanks had official designations partly using iroha, such as Chi-ha. Other examples include subsection ordering in documents, seat numbering in theaters, and showing go moves in diagrams.
Current uses
The iroha sequence is still used today in many areas with long traditions. Most notably, :ja:法令の基本形式#号|Japanese laws and regulations officially use iroha for lower-level subsection ordering purposes, for example 第四十九条第二項第一号ロ. In official translation to English, i, ro, ha... are replaced by a, b, c... as in 49. In music, the notes of an octave are named i ro ha ni ho he to, written in katakana.
English
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
Japanese
イ
ロ
ハ
ニ
ホ
ヘ
ト
Iroha is also used in numbering the classes of the conventional train cars of Japanese National Railways. I is first class, Ro is second class and Ha is third class. Some Japanese expressions need knowledge of iroha to understand. The word iroha itself can mean "the basics" in Japanese, comparable to the term "the ABCs" in English. Similarly, iroha no i means "the most basic element of all". I no ichiban means "the very first". Iroha karuta, a traditional card game, is still sold as an educational toy. Irohazaka, a one-way switchback mountain road at Nikkō, Tochigi, is named for the poem because it has 48 corners. The route was popular with Buddhist pilgrims on their way to Lake Chūzenji, which is at the top of the forested hill that this road climbs. While the narrow road has been modernized over the years, care has been taken to keep the number of curves constant. Iroha was used to replace certain images in a bonus mini-game inside of the 1994 game Sonic & Knuckles during development. The images can still be found in the game's files in the final release
Origin
Authorship is traditionally ascribed to the Heian era Japanese Buddhist priest and scholar Kūkai . However, this is unlikely as it is believed that in his time there were separate esounds in the a and ya columns of the kana table. The え above would have been pronounced ye, making the pangram incomplete. It is said that the iroha is a transformation of these verses in the Nirvana Sutra:
諸行無常 是生滅法 生滅滅已 寂滅為楽
which translates into The above in Japanese is read
