吐く息一つにも生命が宿り hakuiki hitotsu ni mo seimei ga yadori Life in Every Breath
吐く息一つにも生命が宿り (hakuiki hitotsu ni mo seimei ga yadori), in even one breath breathed out, life dwells, renders Katsumoto's life in every breath from The Last Samurai (2003), spoken in the cherry garden as he tells what Bushido is. It ends on the continuative 宿り, open, as the line is in the middle of his speech.
Abstract
吐く息一つにも生命が宿り, in even one breath breathed out, life dwells, renders Katsumoto's life in every breath in The Last Samurai (2003), spoken in the cherry garden as he tells what Bushido is. The English is a direct quote; the Japanese sentence is in no book to 1946 in the National Diet Library, though its two halves are ordinary Japanese, and its continuative 宿り leaves it open as Katsumoto's sentence is.
Overview
The sense. A line of speech left open on its continuative, rendering a line from the middle of a speech.
The words. 吐く息 is breath breathed out; 宿り is the continuative of 宿る, to dwell, which leaves the sentence open, as a line of speech is.
The text in English. The English is Katsumoto's line.
The historical record
2003. Life in every breath. The line is Katsumoto's, in the cherry garden the morning after the night attack, and the transcript gives the speech whole: Like these blossoms, we are all dying. To know life in every breath, every cup of tea, every life we take. The way of the warrior. Life in every breath. That is Bushido [1]. The English is a direct quote; the Japanese, 吐く息一つにも生命が宿り, in even one breath breathed out, life dwells, is a rendering of it, and no book to 1946 in the National Diet Library has it [2]. Its two halves are ordinary Japanese, and the continuative 宿り leaves it open as Katsumoto's sentence is.
What is not a source. The line has no Japanese source; it is an English line put into Japanese.
Today. What a rendering must keep is the open ending, since it is the middle of a speech.
A reading
Katsumoto's line in a Japanese that keeps what matters most about it: it does not close. The speech goes on to the cup of tea and the life taken, and 宿り leaves room for them.
References
- The Last Samurai, dialogue transcript. https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/movie_script.php?movie=last-samurai-the
- National Diet Library Digital Collections, next-generation full-text search on 息一つにも and 生命が宿り, 1 book (unrelated) and 31 books to 1946. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/