生きる笑う愛する ikiru warau aisuru Live, Laugh, Love

Live, laugh, love: the English poster's three verbs, written in Japanese. They stand side by side in their plain dictionary forms with nothing between them, the way the English sets them, and in Japanese the dictionary form is how a resolution is written, a statement of what one means to do rather than a command, which is why the line reads quietly and takes no exclamation mark. A reader told this is an old Japanese saying has been told something false; told it is the same three verbs in a master's brush, they have been told the truth and something worth having. 愛する, to love, is the word Japanese adopted for the English love, affection between equals, so the third verb is the English one twice over. Which of the three you take is yours.

The three-character form on this page, 生笑愛, is the same three verbs reduced to their kanji.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 生きる笑う愛する.

Each design is Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase's hand-brushed calligraphy of the word or phrase on this page, delivered as a PDF you can print. Every PDF includes the line art, so a tattoo artist or a craftsperson can work from the outline as well as the brushed image.

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