命は道を拓く inochi wa michi wo hiraku Life Will Find A Way

命は道を拓く (inochi wa michi wo hiraku): life finds a way, or more exactly, life opens one.

命 inochi is life, the life in a living body; 道 michi is a way, a path; 拓く hiraku is to open in the land-clearing sense, to break new ground, the spelling the dictionary keeps for pioneering. The line is Ian Malcolm's in Jurassic Park (1993), in the screenplay life finds a way, his answer to whether an all-female population could breed; the will on the design is the smoothing the saying took on afterward.

The Japanese is the house's, and 拓く is the verb that keeps Malcolm's meaning: in his sentence, life makes its way.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 命は道を拓く.

Your scroll is brushed when you order it and completed within 1 to 3 business days. It ships by USPS Priority Mail from Master Takase's studio in Washington State, boxed and ready to hang, with a printed page giving the art's English, romaji and Japanese.

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Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase brushes your scroll by hand when you order it. Each scroll bears her red seal, 英利, and her signature.

The scrolls are 12 1/4" W × 43" H (31 × 109 cm) with real silk borders and Japanese paper that are layered so the scroll hangs straight and will not warp over time. The scrolls themselves are made by Sankō (株式会社三幸) in Gifu prefecture, which has been making high quality scrolls since 1947, and we have worked with Sankō for over two decades.

Eri Takase was born and raised in Osaka, Japan, and holds the rank of Shihan, the highest rank in Japanese calligraphy, from the Bokuteki-kai and the Bunka-shodo. About Master Takase