Irohaniwhat?
In case you've been wondering what on earth the last third of this anime's impossibly long title is, it's actually the first line of a poem!
That's right, and it's no ordinary poem, it's the Iroha poem, which has every single letter of the Japanese phonetic alphabet inside (except "n", which did not exist in the time it was created, believed to be the Heian era.)
In fact, it was used as an ordering all the way up till the Meiji era (so the first letter of the alphabet would be "i", then "ro", etc.).
At the same time, it's not a mere ABC, because the poem has a very deep and poetic meaning: it is said to refer to the Mahayana Buddhist Mahaparinirvana Sutra, which is about key concepts in Buddhism, namely the impermanence of all things and overcoming one's notion of Self. The first line means something along the lines of "Although flowers may be beautiful".
It can be read in two ways: the original reading without any voiced syllables, and the modern reading with voiced syllables that make more sense of course. So "Irohanihoheto" would become "Iro wa nioedo".
If you would like to know the details, do check up the Wikipedia entry on it. (Since it's really got everything in there.)
The key question is... Why use this in the title? We'll see. Expect this to be updated.
Return to Culture
In case you've been wondering what on earth the last third of this anime's impossibly long title is, it's actually the first line of a poem!
That's right, and it's no ordinary poem, it's the Iroha poem, which has every single letter of the Japanese phonetic alphabet inside (except "n", which did not exist in the time it was created, believed to be the Heian era.)
In fact, it was used as an ordering all the way up till the Meiji era (so the first letter of the alphabet would be "i", then "ro", etc.).
At the same time, it's not a mere ABC, because the poem has a very deep and poetic meaning: it is said to refer to the Mahayana Buddhist Mahaparinirvana Sutra, which is about key concepts in Buddhism, namely the impermanence of all things and overcoming one's notion of Self. The first line means something along the lines of "Although flowers may be beautiful".
It can be read in two ways: the original reading without any voiced syllables, and the modern reading with voiced syllables that make more sense of course. So "Irohanihoheto" would become "Iro wa nioedo".
If you would like to know the details, do check up the Wikipedia entry on it. (Since it's really got everything in there.)
The key question is... Why use this in the title? We'll see. Expect this to be updated.
Return to Culture
