Good luck on the JLPT!

For all those taking the JLPT this coming Sunday, best of luck to you!

I’d like to offer a poem by famous Confucian scholar-poet, Sugawara no Michizane, who was later deified in Japan as Tenjin, upon his successful completion of his exams in March of 870. The poem was a response to a congratulatory note from his Chinese teacher, Wang Tu:

In good times, passing the examination makes one’s name.
Treading in my father’s footsteps, I will not break with tradition.
Fortunately, I do not return home a failure to become a frustrated old man.
Unexpectedly, I am ranked among the clouds in the blue sky.
Your congratulatory note deeply touches me,
But I wipe my eyes when with dismay I look at the criticism of my essays.
Do not say I have succeeded and shall receive noble office.
I must apologize to my father for breaking off only a worm-eaten branch of the cassia.

(from Robert Borgen’s “Sugawara no Michizane and the Early Heian Court)

Michizane uses the popular Chinese metaphor at the time of breaking off a branch of the Cassia tree, to emphasize his success in passing the exams, but is also being humble in his accomplishments too.

Mina-san, ganbatte kudasai



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2 Comments on “Good luck on the JLPT!”

  1. zaciroth says:

    We’ll seeing that I bombed the JLPT just yesterday…..I dont know what else to say…

  2. Doug M says:

    Hello and welcome to the JLR! Did you bomb for sure or just not confident about your results? I saw a few people leave after the first section, so I imagine they were pretty overwhelmed too. :-/


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