Block · kaisho 楷書 · VB3C
Block or kaisho (楷書) styles are the most common and recognizable styles. Block styles are easily read and are noted for their angular form and their vertical and horizontal lines.
戦士魂
senshidamashii
Warrior Spirit
Warrior spirit: the spirit of anyone who fights, on any side, or for something they believe in.
by Master Eri Takase
Born and raised in Osaka, Japan, Eri Takase received the rank of Shihan, master, from two calligraphy societies, the Bokuteki-kai and Bunka-shodō, and won best-of-category awards in all-Japan national competitions. She has created calligraphy for people around the world for more than thirty years, and with your order she will be creating calligraphy for you.
In a ritual as old as calligraphy itself, Master Takase prepares the ink, meditatively rubbing the ink stick against the stone until it reaches the perfect consistency for the paper. Then, properly loading the brush with ink, she brushes your scroll. And only when the scroll is just right and meets her approval, she signs it and affixes her seal, completing your original scroll.
12 1/4" × 43" (31 × 109 cm) Japanese Scrolls
The scrolls have woven damask borders and special layered Japanese paper (washi), designed to last generations by a scroll maker in Gifu, Japan, with whom we have worked for over two decades.
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Explanation
戦士魂 (senshidamashii): warrior spirit, the spirit of anyone who fights.
No dictionary we read enters 戦士魂; the dictionaries hold its parts. 戦士 (senshi) is a soldier who fights on the battlefield, and also a person active on the front line, or one active for a principle or a belief. 魂, soul or spirit, read damashii at the close of a word, is the spirit proper to a thing, as in 大和魂 and 負けじ魂.
Where 武士 names the samurai, 戦士 names whoever fights, and 戦士魂 names no particular warrior: it can be said of the samurai, and has been, but it does not say samurai, as 武士魂 (bushidamashii) does.
In Chinese verse the three characters fall across two words, 戰士 the fighters and 魂 souls. A Japanese reading of the novel 水滸傳, printed in 1924, gives them as two words, with the ruby せんし and こん: two Chinese words read in their Chinese sounds, not a reading of the compound 戦士魂.
After 1945, the National Diet Library's full-text index finds the word most often said of warriors not Japanese, in books translated or written about them, the Celts and the Maori among them. Japanese writers use it of fighters in Japan's own past as well: a book of 1999, in a passage on the battle of Nagashino, says this too is a fierce warrior spirit.
The Japanese translation of 2000 of Eiko Ikegami's The Taming of the Samurai, her historical sociology of the samurai, gives 戦士魂 for the English warrior spirit in her the samurai's warrior spirit was clearly fading.
Senshidamashii is the reading its pattern gives, as 大和魂 is read yamatodamashii; no source read gives the word a reading in print.
As our history of the word reads it, a buyer who hangs these characters says warrior spirit in the widest sense the English has: the spirit of a fighter, of any side, and of a person who fights for something.
The Japanese word 戦士魂 meaning "Warrior Spirit" is composed of the word 戦士 (read senshi) meaning "warrior; soldier" and the kanji 魂 (read damashii) meaning "soul; spirit".
戦士魂 has no known maker: as a Japanese compound it is first found in the National Diet Library's full-text index in books of 1940, built like 大和魂 and 武士魂, with 魂 closing the compound as the spirit proper to a thing.
Learn More About These Words
We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 戦士魂.
