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不撓不屈 futō fukutsu Indomitable

不撓不屈 (futō fukutsu), not bending, not bowing, means never losing heart, whatever the hardship. In China it was a judge's integrity in 1211 and Wang Yangming's bamboo in 1508. In Japan it was the bamboo again by 1826, and then a Meiji word of will.

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Japanese Scroll of Indomitable (futō fukutsu) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Indomitable不撓不屈futō fukutsu

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

不撓不屈, futō fukutsu, is the four-character word for never losing heart, whatever the hardship, and its halves are 不撓, not bending, and 不屈, not bowing; the Japanese dictionaries give it no Chinese source and date their first example to 1913 [1]. It is older than that on both sides of the sea: the Han history says of a minister that he did not bend and did not yield, in other characters [2]; the four as written today stand in a judge's postscript of 1211, of holding to the truth of a case [3], and in Wang Yangming's essay of 1508 on the bamboo of his exile, as the bamboo's bearing when the wind has dropped [4]; and the other order, 不屈不撓, is in the Yuan writer Hao Jing [5]. In Japan the earliest read here is Noda Tekiho 野田笛浦's kanbun essay on planting bamboo, which a Chinese reader had marked by the spring of 1826 [6]; from 1878 it is a word of the Meiji schoolroom and of the Freedom and People's Rights movement, read futō in one book and fukyō in another [7][8][9], and the state and the army used it in the 1930s and 1940s [10][11]. In 1993 a young sumo wrestler promised it when he was made ōzeki [12], and an English-Japanese dictionary gives it in 1904, read fugyō-fukutsu [13], before a Japanese-English one renders it indomitableness in 1928 [14].

Overview

The sense. The dictionaries give it as どんな困難にあっても決して心がくじけないこと, never losing heart, whatever the hardship, with the example 「不撓不屈の精神」 (the Digital Daijisen デジタル大辞泉), and どんな困難に出あっても心がくじけないこと。また、そのさま, not losing heart in any hardship; or such a state (the Nihon kokugo daijiten 精選版 日本国語大辞典), whose first example is Tokutomi Sohō 徳富蘇峰's book of 1913, 決して一歩も退かざる不撓不屈の精神を, a spirit that never bends or bows and never retreats a step [1]. The Yoji jukugo o shiru jiten 四字熟語を知る辞典 explains the halves: 「不撓」はたわまないこと。「不屈」は屈しないこと, 不撓 is not bending; 不屈 is not giving in [1]. None of the three names a Chinese source.

The words. 撓, tawamu, is to bend under a weight; said of the heart, the Digital Daijisen gives the verb 撓む the sense 心がくじける, to lose heart, and the Nihon kokugo daijiten 心弱くなる, to weaken, quoting the Taiheiki 太平記 of the late fourteenth century, 不レ撓(タハマ)志, a will that does not bend, where 不撓 is read in Japanese, not as a word [15]; 屈 is to bow, to give in [16]. Each half is a word of its own: the Nihon kokugo daijiten first quotes 不撓 from 1924–25 and 不屈 from 1898, and lists both in a glossary of 1869 [17][16]. The reading tō for 撓 is, in the dictionary's words, 慣用音, a customary reading [1]; the character's reading by the Chinese sound is dō, and the 字通 names its phonetic as 堯, gyō [18]. Meiji books printed both futō and fukyō (1879 and 1880, below), and the first English-Japanese dictionary to carry the word reads it fugyō (In English).

The Han frame. The Hanshu 漢書, the history of the Former Han, sums up the life of the minister Wang Shang 王商, marquis of Lechang, in four phrases: 樂昌篤實，不橈不詘，遘閔既多，是用廢黜, Lechang was honest and solid; he did not bend, he did not yield; he met many troubles, and so was dismissed, and the commentator Yan Shigu 顏師古 explains that Wang Shang was undermined by Wang Feng [2]. The transcription writes 橈, with the wood radical, and 詘; the Japanese print of 1882, Kansho hyōrin 漢書評林, read at the page image, writes 樂昌篤實。不レ撓不レ詘, with the hand radical, as today [19]. The second half is 詘, not 屈: this is the frame of the phrase, not the phrase.

The historical record

1211, a judge. Zhang Fu 張虙 wrote a postscript to his cousin Gui Wanrong 桂萬榮's Tangyin bishi 棠陰比事, a casebook of judgments, which reads, at the page image [3]:

茍推吾是心聽之以五聲簡之以五辭不撓不屈志氣清明天威具嚴洋洋在上謂人情不可得吾不信也

If I carry this heart through, hear a case by the five ways of hearing and sift it by the five pleadings, unbending and unbowed, with mind and spirit clear, Heaven's majesty all-present above me, and then say the truth of the matter cannot be found, I do not believe it. It is signed 嘉定辛未良月之望張虙識, the fifteenth of the tenth month of 1211. The page is from a manuscript, and a copyist's colophon on the same page dates the copy to the first month of 嘉慶壬申, 1812, made from a copy owned by the 吳 family; the 四部叢刊續編 reproduced it [3]. The Edo-period Japanese edition of the book, read to its last leaf in two copies, ends 棠陰比事卷下終 without this postscript [20][21].

1508, the bamboo. In the spring of 1508 Wang Yangming 王陽明 (王守仁) was in exile at Longchang in Guizhou [22]. Beside his hut he built a pavilion ringed with bamboo and named it 君子, the gentleman, and his essay on it, 君子亭記, finds in the bamboo four of the gentleman's ways: virtue, constancy, timeliness and bearing [23]. The bearing is this, read at the page image under the heading 君子亭記 戊辰 [4]:

風止籟靜挺然特立不撓不屈若虞廷羣后端冕正笏而列於堂陛之側有君子之容

When the wind stops and its sounds fall still, it stands upright and alone, unbending and unbowed, like the lords at Shun's court in their caps, their tablets held straight, ranged beside the steps of the hall: it has the bearing of a gentleman. His disciples answer that the master is speaking of himself [23].

Both orders, in Chinese. The other order is as old. The Yuan writer Hao Jing 郝經, in a fu on the tablet with which a descendant of Confucius struck a snake, has 是仲尼之以直道詒厥子孫俾萬世如矢者不屈不撓拔邪樹正, this is the straight way Confucius left his descendants, to keep ten thousand generations straight as an arrow, unbowed and unbending, pulling up the crooked and setting up the right, read at the page image of a manuscript of 1778 [5]. Chen Xianzhang 陳獻章 says of the scholar 康齋, whose teaching he went to hear at twenty-seven, that he was 不屈不撓如立千仭之壁, unbowed and unbending, like a wall standing a thousand fathoms high, read at the page image of the print the 四部叢刊三編 reproduces [24], and a Korean court diary of 1680 urges the king 常使此志、不屈不撓, to keep this resolve always unbowed and unbending [25]. Chinese Wikisource carries both orders in Ming and Korean texts [26]; the Chinese Buddhist canon carries neither before the twentieth century [27]. The Korean diary is read in a transcription; Hao Jing and Chen Xianzhang at the page image.

By spring 1826, the bamboo in Japan. Noda Tekiho 野田笛浦 (1799–1859), a samurai of the Tanabe domain in Tango, made his name by his written conversations with the Chinese of a ship that drifted to Japan in 1826 [28]. His prose collection Kaikōen shōkō 海紅園小稿, the work of his years before twenty-eight, was printed in 1881 by his son [6][29]. In it is an essay, 栽竹記, On planting bamboo: he has ten-odd bamboos set in a small plot of his garden; the bamboo has no spring flowers to please the eye, no autumn fruit for the mouth, no scent for the nose, and yet, read at the page image [6]:

而偃蹇磊砢。不撓不屈。而其韻之清。其節之高。亦自不可掩。

And yet, proud and rugged, it neither bends nor bows, and the clearness of its sound and the height of its joints cannot be hidden. He finds in himself much that falls short of the bamboo, and when a guest mocks him for befriending a plant he answers that among men he finds no match, and in the bamboo he does. Beside these words stand the marks of the Chinese reader Zhu Liuqiao 朱柳橋, a small tag 柳橋批 and dots down the line [6]. Zhu Liuqiao of Zhejiang kept the accounts and papers of that drifted ship, the 得泰船, which Tekiho escorted from Shimizu in Suruga toward Nagasaki [30], and his preface to the collection is signed 大清道光六年三月二十四日序於紀州二木浦 浙江朱柳橋撰, written at Futagi Bay in Kii on the twenty-fourth day of the third month of the sixth year of Daoguang, 1826 [6]. The essay therefore existed by the spring of 1826. The notes printed with it are by Zhu Liuqiao, Rai San'yō 頼山陽 and Shinozaki Shōchiku 篠崎小竹 [6][29]: 山陽云、末幅柳橋所改竄、至當不易, San'yō says: the last part is Liuqiao's revision, and it is exactly right, and Shōchiku suggests the title 竹亭記. San'yō's collected works date his notes on Tekiho's prose to the ninth day of the eighth month of 1826 and print the same words on 栽竹記, in the Library's snippet view [31][32], and the National Institute of Japanese Literature records postscripts to the printed collection by San'yō and Shōchiku dated 1826 [33]. The essay does not name Wang Yangming; its bamboo, unbending and unbowed and clear of sound, is close to his.

1875, the other order in Japan. The earliest 不屈不撓 read here in a Japanese book is in Amano Mitami 天野御民's collection of the writings of Chōshū loyalists, Zoku fūen isō 続風簷遺草 (1875), of a mother who kept the house alone while her sons were in prison: 有老母、年六十餘、不屈不撓、獨與李女守家, he had an old mother past sixty, who, unbowed and unbending, kept the house alone with his younger sister [34].

1878, the schoolroom. The earliest 不撓不屈 read here in a Meiji book is a headword in a composition primer of June 1878, Ueda Sadanori 上田貞典's Ronsetsu kiji sakubun shinpo 論説紀事作文進歩, glossed for the pupil タユミコジケヌコト, not slackening and not giving way, with a model sentence using it on the same page [7]. The two earlier hits that the Library's full-text index returns, of 1872 and 1877, are 不撓 and 不屈 as separate entries in word lists, which the machine reading ran together [35][36].

1879 and 1880, two readings. An essay topic in Saitō Tokiyasu 斎藤時泰's Kiji bundai 紀事文題 (1879), read at the page image, has 此時ニ當リ。不撓不屈其志ヲ立テ其道ヲ行ヒ。天下ヲ濟フノ大策ヲ講ジ, at such a time, unbending and unbowed, to set one's will and walk one's way, and plan the great measures that will save the realm, with the ruby フタウフクツ, futō fukutsu in the old spelling [8]. A year later Yamamoto Ken 山本憲's Kōgai yūkoku ron 慷慨憂国論 (1880) says of the thirteen colonies of North America that they had 不撓不屈の一志氣, a single spirit, unbending and unbowed, and its ruby reads ふきようふくつ, fukyō fukutsu [9].

1880 and 1881, the people's rights. In the Freedom and People's Rights movement it was a word for the argument itself. Murai Ichiei 村井一英's Tsūzoku aikoku minken ron 通俗愛国民権論 (1880), read at the page image: 須ラク百唱有和不撓不屈隆々論シテ以テ熟眠者流ノ耳底ヲ驚カサヾル可ラザルナリ, we must call a hundred times and be answered, unbending and unbowed, and argue loudly, until the sleepers' ears are startled [37]. A translation of 1881, Minken risshi hen 民権立志編, says of Demosthenes after his first failure as a speaker that he worked all the harder, 不撓不屈ノ心ニ由テ必ス素懷ヲ遂ケンヿヲ欲セシ, resolved, by an unbending and unbowed heart, to achieve what he had set out to do [38].

1891, a graduate's vow. On 6 July 1891 the College of Science of the Imperial University held the first graduation of its short course, and the government gazette of 9 July printed the reply of the graduates' representative, 石川一男, which closes, at the page image: 生等駑ナリト雖モ將ニ不撓不屈專ラ其初志ヲ貫徹シ以テ成功ヲ他日ニ期セント欲ス, dull as we are, we mean, unbending and unbowed, to carry our first resolve through and look for success in days to come [39].

The two orders in Japanese books. In the National Diet Library's full text of its public-domain books, the two orders run close through the Meiji years and part afterwards: books carrying 不撓不屈 against books carrying 不屈不撓, 166 to 181 in the 1890s, 494 to 404 in the 1900s, 889 to 835 in the 1910s, 1,042 to 814 in the 1920s, 1,762 to 1,125 in the 1930s and 1,100 to 546 in the 1940s [40]. The corpus changes size by decade, so only the ratio is read here. The older order lived on: in Uno Kōji 宇野浩二's novel Munashii haru 空しい春 (1921), an art student's room is papered with slogans, 不屈不撓、時は金、天才は努力の別名なり, unbowed and unbending; time is money; genius is another name for effort, with the ruby ふくつふたう [41].

1937 to 1941, the state and the army. The Ministry of Education's Kokutai no hongi 國體の本義 (1937), on the national character, says of natural disasters: 災禍は却つて不撓不屈の心を鍛錬する機會となり、更生の力を喚起し、一層國土との親しみを增し, calamity becomes rather an occasion to temper an unbending, unbowed heart, rouses the strength to rise again, and deepens our closeness to the land [10]. The infantry manual, Hohei sōten 歩兵操典 (1940), article 132: 敵陣ニ突入セバ分隊ハ不撓不屈突擊ト射擊トヲ反復互用シ陣內ニ突進スベシ, once in the enemy position, the squad shall, unbending and unbowed, alternate charge and fire and drive into it [11]. Both are read at the page image. The army's code of 1941, the Senjinkun 戰陣訓, has 剛毅不屈, not the four [42], and a commentary of the same year, under the headword 剛毅不屈, notes that 不屈 is 通常多く「不撓不屈」と連用せられる, usually joined with 不撓 as 不撓不屈, read at the page image [43]. The word was in general use in those years, in business, in school and in sport, as the titles in the same full text show, and not only in the state's and the army's texts [40].

1993, a promise. When the young wrestler Takahanada was made ōzeki early in 1993, taking the name Takanohana 貴ノ花, his answer to the messengers was 「つつしんでお受けします。不撓不屈の精神で相撲道に精進します」, I humbly accept. I will devote myself to the way of sumo in a spirit unbending and unbowed [12][44]; a magazine of that April says he put into his answer words he had long liked [45]. These are read in the Library's snippet view.

Today. 不撓不屈 is a title: of a serialized novel whose first installment is dated 29 January 2001, 不撓不屈 — 国家権力に抗した男, the man who stood against the power of the state [46]; of a novel by Takasugi Ryō 高杉良, reviewed in 2002 [47]; and of a film of 2006 on the tax accountant 飯塚, listed in English as Futo Fukutsu [48][49]. In English books it appears as the personal motto of Sakai Saburō, futo fukutsu (Never give up!) [50], and as a precept of a Gōjū-ryū karate dōjō, hitotsu futo fukutsu no seishin o yashinau koto [51], in search highlights.

不撓不屈 in English

The first dictionary. The third edition of Satow and Ishibashi's English-Japanese Dictionary of the Spoken Language (1904), read at the page image, gives under Tenacious, (in face of difficulties) fugyō-fukutsu (不撓不屈) na, and under Tenacity, fugyō-fukutsu [13]. The fourth edition (1919) keeps both and adds under Tenacious, in square brackets, also read futō-fukutsu, while Tenacity keeps fugyō-fukutsu alone [52]. So the reading the English found first was fugyō, close to the 1880 ruby's fukyō, and futō came in beside it between 1904 and 1919.

The Japanese-English dictionaries. Indomitable came to 不撓 alone before it came to the four: the Wa-Ei dairin 和英大辞林 (1909) has Futō, 不撓. a. Indomitable. [53], and the Takenobu Wa-Ei daijiten 武信和英大辞典 (1918) futō (不撓) n. Inflexibility; tenacity; constancy, with indomitable among the adjectives, and no 不撓不屈 [54]. Takehara Tsuneta 竹原常太's Sutandādo Wa-Ei daijiten スタンダード和英大辞典 (1928) is the first read here to head the four: futō (不撓), futōfukutsu (不撓不屈) n. indomitableness; dauntlessness; inflexibility, with the example 然し彼の不撓不屈の精神は少しも挫けない, But his indomitable spirit is unbroken, from the Advertiser [14]. Kenkyūsha's dictionary heads futō, with -fukutsu in brackets as optional, inflexibility; tenacity; dauntlessness, in 1931 [55], and in its printing of 1939, read at the page image, adds indomitableness and the example 不撓不屈の精神, again with 不屈 in brackets, an inflexible (indomitable) spirit [56]. A dictionary of military terms of 1942 has the other order, Fukutsu futo no seishin, an unflinching … [57]; a dictionary of idioms of 1968 renders 不撓不屈の精神 unyielding spirit [58]; and JMdict, as Weblio shows it, gives tenacity; indomitableness; dauntlessness; inflexibility [59].

A reading

The word's oldest uses are not about hardship. Zhang Fu's judge in 1211 does not bend to pressure in finding the truth of a case; Wang Yangming's bamboo in 1508 is unbending and unbowed when the wind has stopped, a posture at rest, the bearing of a gentleman at court; and Noda Tekiho's bamboo, before 1826, is rugged and straight, with nothing to show but its sound and its joints. I read that as the first sense: integrity, the uprightness that is there when nothing is pushing on it. The Meiji books turned it outward, toward a will that does not give way under a load: a pupil's word for resolve, the people's-rights speakers' word for arguing on, a graduate's vow, and then the state's word for a people tempered by disaster and the army's for a squad that keeps charging. That second sense is the one the dictionaries define today, どんな困難にあっても決して心がくじけないこと. The dictionaries date it to 1913 and give no source; the witnesses read here put it in Japan by 1826 and in China by 1211, in both orders. The reading was not settled with the word: futō and fukyō stood side by side in 1879 and 1880, and an English dictionary still gave fugyō first in 1919. The image the line carries, under the modern sense, is still Wang Yangming's: the bamboo, standing straight.

Notes

The false floors. The National Diet Library's full-text index puts 不撓不屈 in an 1872 glossary and an 1877 primer; both pages, read at the page image, print 不撓 and 不屈 as separate entries, side by side in the first and in a list in the second [35][36]. The index's floor is a fact about its machine reading.

The 1880 glosses. Beside the ruby ふきようふくつ the 1880 page prints a gloss on the left of each half, read as かゝまぬ beside 不屈 and, less surely, たわまざ beside 不撓 [9].

The manuscript of 1856. A manuscript of extracts from Tekiho's prose, its title page naming Zhu Liuqiao, Rai San'yō, 江芸閣 and 篠崎小竹 as critics and its last leaf dated the first month of 1856, survives at the National Institute of Japanese Literature; it does not include 栽竹記 [60]. The 1881 print is the essay's only witness read here.

The Chinese texts in Japan. 君子亭記 was known in Japanese books: a commentary of 1911 on the Meiji Emperor's poems quotes it whole, 不撓不屈 included, in the Library's text layer [61]. Zhang Fu's postscript was not in the Japanese edition of 棠陰比事 read here (1211, above).

The halves. The Nihon kokugo daijiten gives 不撓 a source in 荀悦's 三遊論 and 不屈 one in the 晉書 [17][16], and kotobank carries no entry headed 不屈不撓 (searched 15 October 2026).

Indomitable spirit. The 1928 dictionary renders 不撓不屈の精神 indomitable spirit [14], and other dictionaries give the same English for 不抜の氣性 [62] and for 百折不撓の精神 [63], read at the page images: it is one English of a family of Japanese words, not of this word alone.

Japanese Scrolls by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

Japanese Scroll of Indomitable (futō fukutsu) in a block font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
不撓不屈VB5JBlock
Japanese Scroll of Indomitable (futō fukutsu) in a cursive font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
不撓不屈VC5JCursive
Japanese Scroll of Indomitable (futō fukutsu) in Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase's own style (jiun)
不撓不屈VD5JJiun
Japanese Scroll of Indomitable (futō fukutsu) in a semi-cursive font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
不撓不屈VS5JSemi-Cursive

Sources not seen

Yamamoto Takeo 山本武夫, 「野田笛浦自筆「海紅園小稿」について」, 1976. On Tekiho's own manuscript of the collection; it could say whether the autograph carries 栽竹記 and Zhu Liuqiao's marks. Not held here.

「日本の諺・中国の諺 (16) 不撓不屈・新陳代謝」, 2006. A comparison of Japanese and Chinese usage; not held here.

The first and second editions of Satow and Ishibashi's dictionary, 1875 and 1879. Not found in an open scan.

Four Meiji books the Library's index places among the earliest uses of the word, of 1878, 1879 and 1881, are served in Japan only, and could not be opened from here.

A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.

References

  1. 不撓不屈, デジタル大辞泉, 精選版 日本国語大辞典 and 四字熟語を知る辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/%E4%B8%8D%E6%92%93%E4%B8%8D%E5%B1%88-619761
  2. 班固, 『漢書』 卷100下, 敍傳下, with 顏師古's commentary, at Chinese Wikisource (a transcription; the edition is not named). https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/漢書/卷100下
  3. Zhang Fu 張虙, 後序 to 桂萬榮, 『棠陰比事』, signed 嘉定辛未良月之望 (1211), in the 四部叢刊續編, reproducing a manuscript copied in 嘉慶壬申 (1812), djvu page 142, at Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Sibu_Congkan_Xubian321-%E6%A1%82%E8%90%AC%E6%A6%AE-%E6%A3%A0%E9%99%B0%E6%AF%94%E4%BA%8B-1-1.djvu&page=142
  4. Wang Yangming 王陽明 (王守仁), 君子亭記, headed 戊辰 (1508), in 『王文成公全書』 卷二十三, 四部叢刊初編 (重印本), djvu pages 19–20, at Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:%E5%9B%9B%E9%83%A8%E5%8F%A2%E5%88%8A%E5%88%9D%E7%B7%A8%E9%87%8D%E5%8D%B0%E6%9C%AC%E7%8E%8B%E6%96%87%E6%88%90%E5%85%AC%E5%85%A8%E6%9B%B824-16.djvu&page=20
  5. Hao Jing 郝經, 『陵川集』 卷一, 擊蛇笏賦, in the 摛藻堂四庫全書薈要 manuscript (its 提要 dated 1778), scan n25, at the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/06077461.cn/page/n25
  6. 野田笛浦 (逸) 著, 『海紅園小稿』, 野田鷹雄, 1881, scans 24–25 (栽竹記), 4–5 (朱柳橋's preface), 17 and 45 (the colophon). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/893435/1/25
  7. 上田貞典 著, 『論説紀事作文進歩』, 1878, scan 46. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/865552/1/46
  8. 斎藤時泰 著, 『紀事文題』 下, 1879, scan 36. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/864374/1/36
  9. 山本憲 著, 『慷慨憂国論』, 1880, scan 34, p. 57. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/783054/1/34
  10. 文部省 編, 『國體の本義』, 1937, scan 52, p. 91. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1156186/1/52
  11. 『歩兵操典』, 1940, scan 52, p. 76, 第百三十二. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1446616/1/52
  12. 小坂秀二 著, 『貴ノ花 大関への軌跡』, 1993, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/13461367
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Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5, Takase Studios, LLC)

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

Not yet reviewed.

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 不撓不屈 (futō fukutsu)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/futo-fukutsu.