Maximum Efficiency Minimum Effort

精力善用, read seiryoku zen'yō: the best use of energy. Not effort spared but energy used well, in the body first and then in everything; the first of the two principles of judo, and the one the second follows from. Jigorō Kanō, judo's founder, fixed the four characters as a principle of his art and then of a whole life: applied to the body they make the strongest body, to the mind the best person, to work its results. The words themselves were ordinary Japanese before judo took them, a scholar's phrase for the good use of an hour, so what Kanō made was a principle, not a coinage. In the Kodokan's own statement the second principle, 自他共栄, prospering together, comes into being as the natural result of this one, which is why the two are so often brushed as a pair. The English title is the judo world's expanded form, maximum efficiency with minimum effort; the four characters say nothing about effort, only that energy is to be used in the best way. 精力善用 is composed of the words 精力 (read seiryoku) meaning "energy" and 善用 (read zen'yō) meaning "good use".