The twenty-second syllable in the iroha hiragana sequence is ra (ら), and both of my two iroha karuta sets illustrate it with the same proverb:
楽あれば苦あり
raku areba ku ari
The English dynamic equivalent is,
Life has its ups and downs.
Breaking Down the Expression
The proverb is quite straight forward and consists of four parts: raku / areba / ku / ari.
楽 = らく = raku
Raku means ease, comfort, or pleasure. In short, the good or carefree times.
あれば = areba = aru + ba
Areba is the "ba" form of "aru," which means “to exist” or “to be.” So "areba" is a conditional form which means "when there is" or "if there is."
苦= く = ku
Ku means hardship, pain, or suffering.
あり = ari
Ari is the literary or formal form of aru, “to exist” or “to be.”
A Literal Translation
The proverb can be literally translated as,
If there is ease, there is hardship.
Two Card Sets, Two Visual Interpretations
My two iroha karuta sets interpret the proverb visually, but once again, in completely different ways.
The Angel™ Deck
In the picture we see a wealthy merchant sitting on the floor of his counting house. Behind him is a great stack of money. I'm not sure if the blocks represent stacks of large banknotes or boxes of money or gold. Either way, we are given to understand that the merchant is wealthy.
However, he looks rather pensive as he sits there with his arms folded. In front of him there is an old Edo era ledger book. We know it is a ledger book because the legend on the cover reads,
大福帳
だいふくちょう = daifukuchō
大 = dai = great
福 = fuku = fortune
帳 = chō = notebook or ledger
So a "daifukuchō" was an account book used by merchants in the Edo period (1603 to 1868). The name literally combines 大福 (“great fortune”) and 帳 (“book” or “ledger”).
It turns out that while our wealthy merchant has an easy life thanks to his great wealth, he also has a hard time of it every day because he has to keep his accounts up to date. Why the old miser doesn't employ an accountant to do the daily hard graft I don't know, but then, if he were to hire an accountant and enjoy more ease, he would also suffer daily worries about whether the accountant was fleecing him or staying honest.
Here's how the notebook that comes with the Angel™ deck glosses the proverb:
楽あれば苦あり
楽をしていると、艱苦（かんく）せがきてあとで苦しまなければならない。今苦労しておけば先になって楽になる。対句（苦あれば楽あり）
When there is ease, there is hardship.
If you take things easy now, difficulties will come along later and you will have to suffer. If you work hard and endure hardship now, things will become easier for you in the future. (When there is hardship, there is ease.)
The gloss introduces a moralizing tone whereas the bare proverb itself seems to me simply to state a condition of life, that ease and hardship are often found together; that's just the way things are.
Okay, so how does the Daiso deck treat the proverb?
The Daiso Deck
The picture shows a boy delighting in freewheeling down a hill on his bicycle as the wind whistles through his hair. Who hasn't experienced the exhilaration of charging downhill on a bicycle? It's a wonderful feeling!
Ah, but look now. If the boy doesn't come a cropper on the sharp corner at the bottom of the hill, he will have to huff and puff his way up the big hill in the distance. Pleasure followed by pain!
At first glance, this treatment of the proverb seems to be a literal image of the English version of the proverb I mentioned earlier,
Life has its ups and downs.
However, whereas in the English proverb UP is associated with "ease" and DOWN is associated with "hardship," in the Daiso interpretation, freewheeling DOWN a hill is associated with "ease" and struggling UP the next hill is associated with "hardship," so the good and the bad are reversed.
My Translation
Okay, here we go...
楽あれば苦あり
Where there is pleasure, there is pain.
The Japanese kotowaza consists of nine syllables, which break into two clauses of five syllables and three syllables. I reproduced the syllable count and the two clauses of five and three syllables.
I sought to recreate an echo of the auditory quality of the original, so the two "ku" sounds, one in each clause, "raKU areba, KU ari" are mimicked by the repetition of the "p" sound in my translation. Also, the placing of "pleasure" echoes the "BA" sound at the end of the first clause. The Japanese "AREba ... ARI" pattern is imitated by my "there is... there is."
Chatgpt versus Google Translate
I decided to challenge Chatgpt without logging in so that it would not access any of my previous data on the topic of the Iroha karuta. I also instructed it to stick to the translation without any explanatary blather, and this is what it gave me:
Every pleasure has its pain
I like it. Very economical. Even more so than the Japanese.
Then I pasted the Japanese proverb into Google Translate, which gave me this:
Easy but bitter
Well, yes, it wins on the economy front, but is a mangled translation to say the least. There is no "but" in the original, which is more of an "if there is A there is B" structure. Okay, A and B happen to be opposites but there is no but in the original proverb.
So, without doubt, Chatgpt beats Google Translate into a cocked hat in this round.
Cheers!
DH