一生懸命 isshōkenmei Do One's Very Best

Everything you have, given as if your life hung on it: the word for the effort that holds nothing back, in a student, an athlete, a worker or a fighter. Inside it is an older picture, one place, one life, the single fief a warrior would die to keep, so the word can mean a whole life staked on one thing as much as a day's hard trying, and which you take it for is yours. The scroll brushes the word as every Japanese reader now sees it; the older spelling, 一所懸命, is the same word, and both are correct.

The four-character idiom 一生懸命 is composed of the words 一生 (read isshō) meaning "one's whole life; the greatest of one's life" and 懸命 (read kenmei) meaning "eagerness; risk one's life".

A Japanese word, first written in the 古事談 (1212–15) as 一所懸命, the one fief a warrior would stake his life on; respelled 一生懸命, a whole life, on the Edo puppet stage from 1734, and the newspapers' and broadcasters' spelling today.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 一生懸命.

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