自由に生まれて jiyū ni umarete Born Free

自由に生まれて is a beginning, as the English is, with the rest left for the reader to say. 生まれて is the joining form of the verb to be born, so the phrase runs on into whatever comes next. Its 自由 is liberty, a sense the word took on when Japan read Europe.

The phrase is Meiji Japanese for born free: a Roman history of 1874 already writes it, and before 1900 it carried the first article of the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and the first line of Rousseau's Social Contract; the 1966 film came to Japan as 野生のエルザ.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 自由に生まれて.

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