不名誉より死 fumeiyo yori shi Death Before Dishonor

不名誉より死 puts honor above life: a person would rather die than lose their honor. 不名誉 is dishonor, harm done to one's honor, and 死 is death. Set without a verb, as the English motto is, the phrase names first what is set aside and last what is taken. Whether you take it as a soldier's vow or as a rule you keep for yourself is yours.

An English vow in print by 1627, which Japanese books of English rendered as 不名譽より死 and its variants, the earliest known an excerpt of 1898 in the National Diet Library's full-text index, and set on the Japanese themselves by 1906; the Latin Malo mori quam foedari, in print by 1591, is another vow, the ermine's, which would die rather than soil its white coat, and in the sources read meets the English only in translation.

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