Be Not Defeated by the Wind, Be Not Defeated by the Rain

雨にも負けず風にも負けず (ame ni mo makezu kaze ni mo makezu): not beaten by the rain, not beaten by the wind. 負けず is the verb 負ける, to be beaten, in its classical negative, and the clause describes rather than commands: these are the first two lines of a poem by Miyazawa Kenji that is one sentence thirty lines long, whose verb comes at the end, such a person is what I want to become. Everything before it, the strong body, the few wants, the walk east to nurse a sick child and west to carry a tired mother's sheaves, describes that person. Miyazawa wrote it in pencil in a small black notebook, dated 3 November 1931, ill with the tuberculosis he died of two years later; it was found in a trunk and first printed in 1934. The poem is in katakana; the design writes the two lines in kanji and kana, as the phrase is quoted in ordinary Japanese, and the calligrapher chose that form.