Four-Character Idiom · Reflection & Mortality · Kyojuro Rengoku
Meaning
Everything born must pass — a foundational Buddhist statement on impermanence, framing mortality not as tragedy but as the order of things.
命ある者は必ず死を迎えるという、日本古来の美意識と仏教的な死生観。
The Kyojuro Rengoku line
Verbatim from the source article
「老いることも死ぬことも 人間という儚い生き物の美しさだ 老いるからこそ死ぬからこそ堪らなく愛おしく尊いのだ」
"GROWING OLD AND DYING... IS WHAT GIVES MEANING AND BEAUTY TO THE FLEETING SPAN OF A HUMAN LIFE. ITS PRECISELY BECAUSE WE AGE AND DIE THAT OUR LIVES HAVE VALUE"
Why it fits Kyojuro Rengoku
Rengoku's reply to Akaza's offer of immortality recasts ageing and death as the source of human beauty rather than its enemy. That move is shōja-hitsumetsu in its mature form — the Buddhist diagnosis carried all the way through to its aesthetic conclusion.
Cultural note
Origin in classical / Buddhist / Confucian tradition
Paired in classical Buddhism with 諸行無常 (shogyō-mujō, "all conditioned things are impermanent") — one of the four canonical marks of conditioned existence.
Sources
- デジタル大辞泉 — 生者必滅 (dictionary)
- 精選版 日本国語大辞典 — 生者必滅 (dictionary)