Kotowaza- The Bird Taking Flight Leaves the Water Undisturbed

One of the first "kotowaza" or parable expressions I can remember learning in Japan was the following:

立つ鳥跡を濁さず - "tatsu tori ato wo nigosazu"

"Tori" means bird, which in this case can be interpreted to apply specifically to waterfowl, likely a heron or egret. "Tatsu" usually means to stand up, like a person, or erect, like a building, but in this case, it refers to a bird taking flight. "ato" usually means footprints, but in this case, can be interpreted to mean the evidence that a bird was in the water, like ripples or turbidity. "Nigo(su)" means to muddy or corrupt. The "sazu" ending is an archaic way of stating the negative. So all together, the best interpretation I can come up with is "the residual of a bird taking flight leaves the water undisturbed."

The earliest record we can find of the progenitor of this expression is from the Azuchi-Momoyama period, which went from 1568 to 1600. In that period, the expression specifically used "鷺" which is the character for heron or egret, so we can see that they were not referring to ducks or geese, which muddy things up with their webbed feet. The Azuchi-Momoyama period was the end of Japan's warring states period, which started with the fall of the Ashikaga Shogunate in 1467. Japan had been experiencing over a century of war between the feudal states, and people would have treasured tranquility even more than today.

I believe I learned this expression when a teacher at the school where I was teaching as an AET was being transferred to another school. The teacher wanted to leave their current position in a strong state ready for the next teacher to transfer in. They did not want to leave a mess for the next person, nor leave their students and position in disarray. The sentiment was something I had obviously heard before, but never had I heard such a poetic expression. It is not just a statement of how the world is, it is a prescriptive guide for life. It can be seen today in the Japanese soccer/football fans who clean the stadium after cheering the Samurai Blue. In her 2004 biography of her famous film director father, Kazuko Kurosawa, wrote that her father made sure to return all of his filming locations to their original state, reminding his crew of this expression. Even the great director Akira Kurosawa considered leaving things exactly as you found them to be a vital part of his personal ethics. This expression is also cited frequently by pending retirees as their last desire for their jobs before they end their careers.

I am a skeptic of Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative. I think that life is far too complicated to have an overly simplistic rule of "act in such a way that your actions should become universal law." However, imagine how much better the world could be if more people followed this rule.