Live Strong

強く生きる (tsuyoku ikiru): live strong. 強く tsuyoku is the adverb of 強い, strong; 生きる ikiru is to live, in the dictionary form that makes the line a resolution rather than a command. It was a slogan in Japanese before it was one in English: a 1914 book on the young lists it among the catchwords of the day, beside live deeply and the full life; Yosano Akiko wanted it for the whole nation in 1918 and took care to say that living strongly is not the same as being strong in arms; Kagawa Toyohiko shouted it to his own soul in 1920. A buyer who wants live strong on a scroll is getting a phrase with a Taishō life of its own.