The sound of bells echoes through the monastery at Gion Shoja, telling all who hear it that nothing is permanent. The flowers of the sala trees show that all that flourishes must fade. Proud men, powerful men will fall, like dreams on a spring night, like dust before the wind.
Those first few sentences of the 13th-century Japanese classic "The Tale of the Heike" speak movingly about mujo (impermanence) as they presage that ancient account of the fall of a warrior family.
That transience, that awareness of the impermanence of all things, has remained a major theme in Japanese literature and culture to this day. Indeed, it could be said to be a part of the national psyche.