中学受験 英文エッセイ 練習問題 改訂版

 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. 

 

There is a notoriously confusing proverb in Japan, which goes, “Nasake wa hito no tame narazu”, and many of the native Japanese speakers interpret it in a wrong way. The direct translation is that mercy is not for people. Many people mistakenly take the last word “people” as the recipient of mercy and so goes their wrong version, “Mercy is not good for the person,” 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 a match with the sun by taking a cold approach to a human. On the other hand, the correct interpretation promotes a warm approach for a good will, as any word of wisdom does. It goes, “Mercy is not for others but for yourself,” meaning that 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 schoolboy 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 the health and happiness of the fruit shop owner or his relatives. Kindness is never wasted.