Fine Japanese Calligraphy

The Art of Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase

Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, PayPal accepted
Home › Library › Philology › A New Beginning

新たな始まり aratana hajimari A New Beginning

新たな始まり (aratana hajimari), a new beginning, is plain modern Japanese, a noun phrase that reads as a title. Its oldest witnesses in the National Diet Library are translators' Japanese, for a German philosopher in 1913 and for Nietzsche in 1928. This study follows it to the poet Tanikawa Shuntarō, who wrote it in his own voice in 1953.

Japanese Scroll of A New Beginning (aratana hajimari) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
A New Beginning新たな始まりaratana hajimari

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

All Fonts ›

Abstract

新たな始まり, aratana hajimari, a new beginning, is plain modern Japanese, a noun phrase that reads as a title. Its words are old; the phrase came into print as translators' Japanese. A German philosopher's new beginning in 1913, an American poem's every day is a fresh beginning in 1923, Nietzsche's child in 1928, and a sentence of Feuerbach's that three translators rendered three ways between 1933 and 1949 are its oldest witnesses in the National Diet Library, all in older spellings except Feuerbach's first. The poet Tanikawa Shuntarō wrote the phrase in his own voice in 1953; it grows common only from the 1970s.

Overview

The sense. Standard Japanese, a free phrase: a new beginning, a noun phrase that reads as a title.

The words. 新た arata, new, is an adjectival noun; the dictionaries give its first example from the 万葉集, 年月は新たなれども人は古りゆく, the months and years are new, but people grow old [1]. The 日国 adds that the root arata can be assumed from the 万葉集's examples, but that the character 新 read アラタ is certain only in an eleventh-century reading of the 史記 [2]. 始まり hajimari, a beginning, is the noun of the verb 始まる, to begin, whose first example is the 古今和歌集's preface, あめつちの開けはじまりける時, when heaven and earth first opened [3] [4]. な joins them as an attributive; the older literary form is 新たなる, and 新しき is the classical form of 新しい.

The text in English. A new beginning and 新たな始まり match word for word [5].

The historical record

1913. A German philosopher. The oldest the National Diet Library's full-text index returns, searched oldest first in ten forms, is 新なる始まり, in Hatano Seiichi and Miyamoto Wakichi's translation of Rudolf Eucken: 文明の大轉向が起り又文明の新なる始まりが起らねばならぬ場合, when a great turn of civilization, a new beginning of civilization, must come about. The index gives the line; the book is not open outside the library [6].

1923. Natorp, and an American poem. In Kubo Masao's translation of Paul Natorp's social pedagogy, the true socialism is what the end of every movement lacks: それは新しき始まりである、それこそはじめて、眞の社會主義であるであらう, it is a new beginning, and that alone would be the true socialism, with the words marked for emphasis on the page [7]. The same year 塚越菊治's translation of Ralph Waldo Trine's In Tune with the Infinite has 每日は新たなる始めである、聞けよ, every day is a new beginning, listen [8]. Trine was quoting Susan Coolidge's poem New Every Morning: Every day is a fresh beginning, / Listen, my soul, to the glad refrain, which an American Quaker weekly printed under her name in 1883 [9] [10].

1928. Nietzsche's child. An Iwanami lecture series gives Thus Spoke Zarathustra on the three metamorphoses: 童子は無邪氣であり忘却である。新しき始まり、戲れ、自ら廻る車、第一運動、神聖なる然り, the child is innocence and forgetting, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a sacred Yes [11]. Nietzsche's German is ein Neubeginnen, ein Spiel [12].

1933. Feuerbach, in the spelling on the scroll. The Iwanami Bunko's Critique of Hegel's Philosophy, translated by Sano Fumio and published two years after his death, is the index's oldest witness to 新たな始まり itself: logic 一の新たな始まりであり、當初から始まり, is a new beginning, beginning from the very first, and so collides from the first with the understanding [13]. Feuerbach's German, in his collected works of 1846, is als die Logik ein neuer Anfang ist, von vorn anfängt, und daher auch von vornherein der Verstand vor den Kopf gestoßen wird, and the translation follows it clause for clause [14]. The book was reprinted in 1948, and the leaf reads the same, with 新たな marked for emphasis [15]. Two other translators rendered the same sentence: 新しき始まり (樫山欽四郎, 1947) and 新しき始り (中桐大有, 1949) [16] [17]. In 1942 Nakayama Jiichi's translation of Friedrich Meinecke speaks of history known only in ever new forms and 常に新たな始まり, ever new beginnings [18].

1949. Coolidge again. 生長の家's magazine 白鳩 quotes a poet, 「朝々が新しき始まりであり、每日々々世界は新たに造られる」, every morning is a new beginning, every day the world is made anew: the first two lines of Coolidge's poem, Every day is a fresh beginning, / Every morn is the world made new, with day and morning exchanged [19].

1953. Tanikawa Shuntarō. In 『六十二のソネット』 the poet writes もはや新たな始まりだ, it is already a new beginning. The index gives the line; the book is not open outside the library, and which sonnet carries it is not read. The line is in his selected poems of 1958 and 1965 as well [20].

After. The National Diet Library's full-text index holds the spelling 新たな始まり in one item of the 1930s, four of the 1940s and four of the 1950s, then 33 in the 1960s, many of them translations of European thought, and 131 in the 1970s [21].

What is not a source. No text stands behind the phrase. The Japanese of the translators is where it first appears; none of them is its author.

Today. A new beginning is the stock of the English motivational register and has no English author. The English phrase met Japanese early as a gloss for another word: in 1908 Henry B. Schwartz rendered 日新 nisshin, the name the Satsuma lord Shimazu Tadayoshi took from a Confucian classic, as every day a new beginning [22].

A reading

The phrase came into Japanese to carry other people's renewals: logic that starts over from nothing, the child who forgets and plays, the morning that makes the world new. By the time Tanikawa wrote it plainly in 1953 it no longer needed a foreign sentence behind it. Brushed today it reads as plain Japanese, and the older sense is still in it: a beginning that comes after something has ended.

References

  1. 「新た」, デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/新た
  2. 「あら‐た【新】」, 精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank (under 新). https://kotobank.jp/word/新
  3. 「始まり」, デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/始まり
  4. 「始まる」, 精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/始まる
  5. JMdict (EDRDG), 「新た」, at jisho. https://jisho.org/word/新た
  6. ルドルフ・オイケン, 『新理想主義の哲学』, 波多野精一・宮本和吉訳, 内田老鶴圃, 1913. National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text snippet (not open outside the library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/951214
  7. ナトルプ, 『社会理想主義：社会教育の原理』, 久保正夫訳, 1923, p. 74, scan 48. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/969946/1/48
  8. ラルフ・ワルドー・トライン, 『無限生活』, 塚越菊治訳, 大日本文明協会事務所, 1923. National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text snippet (not open outside the library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/962816
  9. Ralph Waldo Trine, In Tune with the Infinite, 1897, at the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/intunewithinfin02tringoog
  10. Susan Coolidge, "New Every Morning," Friends' Intelligencer 40, no. 7 (March 31, 1883), at the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/sim_friends-intelligencer_1883-03-31_40_7
  11. 岩波書店編, 『岩波講座世界思潮』, 岩波書店, 1928. National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text snippet (not open outside the library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1913470
  12. Friedrich Nietzsche, Also sprach Zarathustra, "Von den drei Verwandlungen," 1908 printing, at the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/alsosprachzarath00niet_0
  13. フォイエルバッハ, 『ヘーゲル哲学の批判：他一篇』, 佐野文夫訳, 岩波文庫 950, 岩波書店, 1933. National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text snippet (not open outside the library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1194015
  14. Ludwig Feuerbach, "Zur Kritik der Hegel'schen Philosophie," Ludwig Feuerbach's sämmtliche Werke, vol. 2, Leipzig: Otto Wigand, 1846, at the Internet Archive (the digitized text). https://archive.org/details/10603853bsb
  15. フォイエルバッハ, 『ヘーゲル哲学の批判：他一篇』, 佐野文夫訳, 岩波書店, 1948, p. 41, scan 22. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1039043/1/22
  16. フォイエルバッハ, 『将来の哲学の原理』, 樫山欽四郎訳, 小石川書房, 1947. National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text snippet (not open outside the library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1039045
  17. フォイエルバッハ, 『フォイエルバッハ選集』, 中桐大有訳, 明窗書房, 1949. National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text snippet (not open outside the library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1154955
  18. マイネッケ, 『歴史主義の立場』, 中山治一訳, 創元社, 1942. National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text snippet (not open outside the library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1041161
  19. 生長の家本部編, 『白鳩』, 日本教文社, July 1949. National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text snippet (not open outside the library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/6077716
  20. 谷川俊太郎, 『六十二のソネット』, 創元社, 1953. National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text snippet (not open outside the library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1353706
  21. National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text search 新たな始まり, all tiers, sorted by date (the first 1,000 items, to 1993). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=新たな始まり
  22. Henry B. Schwartz, In Togo's Country: Some Studies in Satsuma and Other Little Known Parts of Japan, Cincinnati: Jennings and Graham, 1908, p. 19. https://archive.org/details/intogoscountryso00schwiala/page/19

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1, Takase Studios, LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · Grok 4.6 (xAI), 2026-09-06, citations of the grouped history — the bracketed paragraphs checked with web search on; one contradicted and corrected; the by-eye leaf and the Lab transcript were beyond the checker. Not re-run on the s321 amendment.

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 新たな始まり (aratana hajimari)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/aratana-hajimari.