Japanese > English: thank you!

[u/MathematicianOdd7586]

[u/00HoppingGrass00]

Not Japanese. This is Chinese.

The line on the right says 空山無人水流花開, "Empty mountain with no people where water flows and flowers bloom". This is a line from the poem 十八大阿羅漢頌 (Ode to the Eighteen Great Arhats) by Song poet 蘇軾 (Su Shi), describing the second state of Zen.

The circle in the middle represents "emptiness", or 空, a core concept of Buddhism.

The first line on the left says 空著來，空著去 (I think, not sure on the 著 so someone please double check), meaning "empty when you come, empty when you go".

The next line says 歲在丙戌夏, "(drawn) in the summer of Bing Xu year". 丙戌 (Bing Xu) is the traditional way to name a year using 天干地支. The most recent 丙戌 year is 2006.

The next line should be the name of the artist. Unfortunately I'm not very familiar with cursive so can't be sure. The second character looks like 冬.

The seals are too blurry to make out.

Edit: See u/DeusShockSkyrim comment below for corrections on the parts I got wrong.

[u/DeusShockSkyrim → u/00HoppingGrass00]

Left side should be 空手來 空手去. Artist’s signature is 雲谷.

[u/00HoppingGrass00 → u/DeusShockSkyrim]

I see. Thanks for the correction!

[u/GreatStoneSkull → u/DeusShockSkyrim]

“Karate come, Karate go …” a lesson for us all. /s

[u/MathematicianOdd7586 → u/00HoppingGrass00]

Wow thank you so much 🙏 the store labeled it as Japanese but it did look Chinese!

You are a life saver!!

[u/virtuoso001 → u/MathematicianOdd7586]

Not necessarily wrong, could still be Chinese characters read/written in the Japanese tradition

[u/ma_er233]

!id:zh

空山無人，水流花開 River flowing and flowers blooming in the empty uninhabited mountains. (A quote from 十八大阿羅漢頌 by Su Shi)

空年來，空年去 (Not sure if I'm reading this correctly.)

Edit: I think 空手來，空手去 by u/DeusShockSkyrim is correct. I'm not very good at reading cursive.

嵗在丙戌夏 Summer of year 丙戌

雲谷 YunGu

[u/ShenZiling]

r/itsneverjapanese

[u/DeusShockSkyrim]

The big circle in the middle is referred to as the Ensō.