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長寿と繁栄を chōju to han'ei o Live Long And Prosper

長寿と繁栄を (chōju to han'ei o), long life and prosperity, is the Japanese for the Vulcan blessing live long and prosper. The two nouns had met the English before, in a Meiji book of idioms of 1898 rendering an American stage toast. This study follows the words to the Vulcan scene, where who first gave them in Japanese is not settled.

Japanese Scroll of Live Long And Prosper (chōju to han'ei o) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Live Long And Prosper長寿と繁栄をchōju to han'ei o

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

長寿と繁栄を, long life and prosperity, is the standard Japanese for live long and prosper, the Vulcan blessing first spoken in the Star Trek episode Amok Time on 15 September 1967; a Japanese dictionary carries it as a headword, and the oldest book the National Diet Library's index finds with it in a Vulcan scene is a 1978 translation of James Blish's Star Trek stories. The English and the Japanese had met long before: may you live long and prosper closes Rip Van Winkle's toast on the American stage, and in 1898 Araki Waichi's Standard Verbalist, a Meiji book of English idioms, rendered it 長壽繁榮を祈る, I pray for your long life and prosperity. The two nouns had stood together as a wish since at least 1746. Who first gave the words to a Vulcan in Japanese is not settled.

Overview

The sense. A wish with its verb withheld: long life and prosperity, with the I pray for or may you have left unsaid.

The words. 長寿 chōju, long life, is in Japanese writing from about 903 [1]; 繁栄 han'ei, prosperity, flourishing, from the thirteenth-century Heike, where it is already a wish for one's descendants, 願はくは子孫繁栄たえずして, may the descendants prosper without end [2]. The phrase ends on を, the mark of the thing wished for, with the verb unsaid. The English and the Japanese overlap fully in sense; the difference is of mood: the English is a command in the form of a blessing, the Japanese an object whose verb the hearer supplies.

The text in English. The English is the Vulcan blessing, and before that a toast: Stevenson's Home Book of Quotations files Here's to your health and your family's good health. May you all live long and prosper under healths, as Rip Van Winkle's in Joseph Jefferson's play [3], which Jefferson adapted from Washington Irving's story in 1859 and played for forty years [4].

The historical record

1746. 長壽繁榮. The two nouns stand together as one blessing in a note dated the eighth month of 延享三, 1746, which copies a court astronomer's reading of three lucky stars. Of the first it says 是は天子將軍、下萬民に至る迄、長壽繁榮、太平を守る星のよし, this star, it is said, guards long life and prosperity, and peace, for all, from the emperor and the shogun down to the common people; the note survives in the 村井隨筆, printed in 1916 in the collection 鼠璞十種 [5].

1898. 長壽繁榮を祈る. Araki Waichi's 英和俗語活法, The Standard Verbalist, a book of English idioms with their Japanese, closes its second volume with Miscellaneous Toasts and Sentiments, 洋風讌席祝詞演説. The first toast reads Here's to your good health; your family's good health, and may you live long and prosper, and the Japanese beside it, 君の健康と御家族の健全とを祝し併せて長壽繁榮を祈る, I drink to your health and your family's, and pray besides for your long life and prosperity; the volume's colophon dates it 17 May 1898 [6]. The English is Rip Van Winkle's toast [3]. So may you live long and prosper had its Japanese, the same two nouns with the verb of praying written out, sixty-nine years before the Vulcans spoke it.

1911 to 1946. 長壽と繁榮. A magazine of 1911 has 長壽と繁榮とを祝福す, blesses long life and prosperity [7]. A 1915 guide to natural cures says of Japan's mild climate that by it 萬種の草木は依つて以つて無限の繁榮を保ち得るのである、人は依つて以つて健康と長壽と繁榮とを保ち得るのである, every plant can keep boundless flourishing, and people can keep health, long life and prosperity [8]: a claim about a climate, not a wish. The NDL Digital index finds 長寿と繁栄 in 24 books to 1946, the oldest a business magazine of 1907 [9], and 長寿繁栄 in 60, among them Araki's volumes and the 1746 note [10].

1967. Live long and prosper. The salute and its spoken blessing first appeared in the Star Trek episode Amok Time, the gesture devised by Leonard Nimoy and the words scripted by Theodore Sturgeon [11]. In the episode the Vulcan elder T'Pau says Live long and prosper, Spock, and Spock answers I shall do neither [12]. The New Yale Book of Quotations dates the line to the episode's broadcast, 15 September 1967 [13]. Japanese Wikipedia's article on the salute gives the phrase as 「長寿と繁栄を」 and credits Sturgeon; it gives the reply as 平和と長寿を, peace and long life [14].

1978. 長寿と繁栄を. The oldest book the NDL Digital index finds with the phrase in a Vulcan scene is the 1978 Hayakawa translation of one of James Blish's Star Trek books: …カン式の手のサインを行なった。長寿と繁栄を、スポック, …made the Vulcan hand sign. Long life and prosperity, Spock [15]. The index finds the phrase beside Spock's name in 16 books, the rest of them from 1984 on [16]. The television dub is not in print, so who first said it in Japanese is not known.

Today. Shogakukan's デジタル大辞泉プラス carries 長寿と繁栄を as a headword, the words of the Vulcan greeting [17], and Japanese Wikipedia's article on the Vulcans gives it beside the English [18]. Araki wrote the verb, 祈る; the phrase as it is used today leaves it unsaid.

A reading

長寿と繁栄を is a Japanese blessing that was waiting for the Vulcans. The two nouns had been paired as one wish since the Edo period, and in 1898 a Meiji translator had already made them the Japanese of the same English words, spoken at an American toast. Whoever first put them in a Vulcan's mouth in Japanese had only to drop the verb. That is why the phrase fits: it was a Japanese wish before it was a Vulcan one, and an answer to may you live long and prosper before Star Trek was made.

References

  1. 「長寿」, kotobank (精選版 日本国語大辞典: 初出 菅家後集, c. 903). https://kotobank.jp/word/長寿-568525
  2. 「繁栄」, kotobank (精選版 日本国語大辞典: 初出 高野本平家, first half of the 13th century). https://kotobank.jp/word/繁栄-606049
  3. Burton Egbert Stevenson, The Home Book of Quotations, Classical and Modern, fourth edition, revised, 1944, s.v. Drinking, § Healths (Joseph Jefferson, Rip Van Winkle).
  4. "Joseph Jefferson", English Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Jefferson
  5. 村井隨筆, in 諸家隨筆集, 鼠璞十種 第一, 国書刊行会, 1916, p. 101, scan 60. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1767171/1/60
  6. 荒木和一, 英和俗語活法 (The Standard Verbalist) 第2編 訂正増補, 丸善, 1898, p. 139, scan 81; colophon scan 94. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/870092/1/81
  7. 成功 21(1), 成功雑誌社, 1911-07, scan 56 (excerpt). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/11207576/1/56
  8. 井上正賀, 万病自然療法, 大学館, 1915, p. 291, scan 161. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/935045/1/161
  9. NDL Digital Collections, full text, 長寿と繁栄, oldest first. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=長寿と繁栄&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC
  10. NDL Digital Collections, full text, 長寿繁栄, oldest first. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=長寿繁栄&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC
  11. "Vulcan salute", English Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcan_salute
  12. Star Trek: The Original Series, English Wikiquote, Amok Time. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series
  13. Fred R. Shapiro, ed., The New Yale Book of Quotations, Yale University Press, 2021, s.v. Star Trek, 6, p. 781.
  14. 「バルカン・サリュート」, Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/バルカン・サリュート
  15. ジェイムズ・ブリッシュ, 斎藤伯好 訳, 禁断のパラダイス : 宇宙大作戦, ハヤカワ文庫SF, 早川書房, 1978, scan 22 (excerpt). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12583496/1/22
  16. NDL Digital Collections, full text, 長寿と繁栄 near スポック, oldest first. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=長寿と繁栄%20スポック&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC
  17. 「長寿と繁栄を」, kotobank (デジタル大辞泉プラス). https://kotobank.jp/word/長寿と繁栄を-1723549
  18. 「バルカン人」, Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/バルカン人

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 five-text history this one was split from, with web search on; for this text it confirmed the Vulcan salute article and the Japanese Wikipedia line; the sentences corrected on 2026-09-29 were not in that check

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 長寿と繁栄を (chōju to han'ei o)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/choju-to-han-ei-o.