Font Design · VD5J
Font Designs are Master Takase's unique designs. Often she will use her own style or a combination of fonts and, without a classification limit, create exactly the look she wants.
継続は力なり
keizoku wa chikara nari
Persistence Is Strength
The Japanese saying that persistence is strength: keep at a thing, however small, and it turns into results.
Master Takase creates this beautiful scroll when your order is placed. Personally preparing the ink and brushing your art that proudly bears her signature and seal. This is an original work of art.
Description
継続は力なり (keizoku wa chikara nari): persistence is strength. Even a small effort, if you keep at it, shows itself in results and succeeds.
継続 is continuing: carrying on what was already being done. 力 is strength or power, and なり is is. Older prints write the saying in the older characters, 繼續は力なり.
The saying was the motto of the storyteller Kurushima Takehiko, who carried children's stories across Japan. One writer remembered that wherever he went he was asked to brush something, and always wrote 継続は勢力なり, with 勢力, force, for 力.
In a couplet, the saying is paired with an aspiration: what you aspire to decides who you become; continuing is strength. In one essay the couplet is the creed of a man laughed at, called mad and stoned, who still hurries on along his road. The essay goes on: true strength is the strength of a heart that falls seven times and rises eight.
In Shodo (1989), a book on the brush written in English, William Reed brushed the saying and rendered it Persistence brings power. He read it through training in an art: continuity is the source of power.
The saying has no known author: the oldest use found by the National Diet Library's full-text search, a speech in the House of Representatives in March 1918, already calls it a known saying; the lay Shin Buddhist teacher Sumioka Yakō, often named as its author, set it as the second half of his own couplet, in print under his earlier pen name in his movement's magazine in December 1925.
We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 継続は力なり.
Delivery
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.
Sending it as a gift? Add your message at checkout and we will include it.
Shipping is calculated at checkout from your address; within the United States it is $13 to $23. We ship worldwide, and any import charges for your country are shown at checkout before you pay.
Every order is covered by our 30-day money-back guarantee. If your scroll arrives damaged, or we made an error, we replace it or refund you in full, including shipping. Refund policy
About Our Scrolls
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 woven damask borders and Japanese paper that are layered so the scroll hangs straight and will not warp over time. The scrolls themselves are made by a scroll maker in Gifu, Japan, and we have worked with them 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
