中学受験 英文エッセイ 練習問題

 

Question: Explain two major interpretations of a Japanese proverb, “Nasake wa hito no tame narazu”, one correct and the other wrong, and provide at least one specific example for the correct interpretation.

 

The Japanese proverb, “Nasake wa hito no tame narazu” is notoriously confusing even for native speakers and many interpret it in a wrong way. The wrong version goes, “Mercy is not good for people,” reasoning that mercy spoils the recipients of mercy. This interpretation makes this proverb illegitimate because it discourages good will by taking an austerity point of view like the north wind in the Aesop tale, “The North Wind and the Sun”, in which the north wind loses due to its cold approach to a human. On the other hand, the correct version promotes a warm approach to people for a good will, as any word of wisdom does. It goes, “Mercy is not for others but for yourself,” meaning the good karma of having mercy to others will go around in society and come back to you in a positive way in the future. Indeed, this positive side of the saying, “What goes around comes around” can be seen in our daily lives. For instance, I once read a recollection of a journalist about a fruit shop owner who let the writer, then a school boy from an extremely poor family, steal an orange from the shop as he passed by every day. The writer, now a grown-up man with a fixed income, recounts that the shop owner obviously turned a blind eye to his theft, knowing that the little boy was starved. Now he feels a deep gratitude to the man who saved his life and writes the story on a national-level newspaper. The article conveys the kindness and generosity of a fruit shop owner nationwide and promotes the same kind of goodwill, which in the end can contribute to health and happiness of the fruit shop owner or his relatives. Kindness is never wasted.