一撃必殺 ichigeki hissatsu One Hit Certain Kill
一撃必殺 (ichigeki hissatsu), one strike, certain kill, first appears in print in 1941, in the practice reports of Japan's new wartime elementary schools, and from January 1942 in the army's short sword course. After the war karate made it its own, and its teachers warned that it does not mean what it says.
Abstract
一撃必殺, ichigeki hissatsu, one strike, certain kill, is a Japanese phrase first found in print in 1941, in the practice reports of the new wartime elementary schools and, from January 1942, in the Imperial Army's short course in sword fighting. The war correspondents carried it through 1945, and after the war karate made it its own, from a 1976 Kyokushin book title to the Shōtōkan federations' own description of their style. It reached English in 1977 through Nakayama's Best Karate, in its sibling form 一拳必殺, ikken hissatsu, with the gloss to kill with one blow, and in the next volume, of 1978, came the warning that taking the words literally is dangerous; ichigeki hissatsu itself is in an English karate book by 2006.
Overview
The sense. That one strike must be the decisive one, and the whole self committed to it; in karate, the ideal of the single finishing technique, and the spirit that trains for it. Its sibling form, 一拳必殺, one fist, names the weapon and has its own history.
The words. Ichigeki hissatsu; ikken hissatsu. 一撃 is one strike: one blow, one attack, the word the dictionaries illustrate with to fell with a single blow. Its oldest Japanese sense is a hawk's stoop, in a twelfth-century poem, and the oldest thing like our phrase in Chinese is about the same bird: a commentator on the Book of Changes explains the character for falcon by saying the bird does not perch in pairs and its one strike surely hits [1]. 必殺 is certain kill: 必, surely, and 殺, kill; the big dictionary defines it as killing the opponent without fail, or the resolve to, and its own example is our phrase turned round, 必殺の一撃, the killing blow [1]. In old Chinese the two characters are a verb, will surely kill him; the noun is Japanese and modern. 拳 is fist, and 一拳 is a real word, one fist in a poem of about 900 and a blow of the fist in a novel of 1904 [1]. So the two forms say one strike, certain kill and one fist, certain kill, and the second is the first with the weapon named. Neither is in any dictionary opened as a phrase.
The text in English. No English book carries the romaji before Nakayama's Best Karate of 1977, and that romaji is the sibling form's, ikken; Ōyama's own English of 1959 to 1980 carries the idea and never the romaji; ichigeki hissatsu is in an English karate book by 2006.
The historical record
1941, the schools. The phrase enters print in the practice reports of the new 国民学校, the wartime elementary schools created that year with martial training on the curriculum. A teacher-training school's attached school in Iwate writes, under forging the power to attack: Martial training, reduced to its essence, is the way of battle. One sword, one kill; one strike, certain kill: it is that attacking power we forge [2]. Schools in Wakayama and Tokushima print the softer 一撃必倒, one strike, certain fall, in the same sentence about the conviction and spirit to attack all at once, then to show 残心, the alert follow-through [3]; a Wakayama lesson plan of 1942 has the sword of one-strike-certain-kill, which kills or spares at will [4]; a Kagoshima report of February 1942 has a teacher demonstrate a thrust with the spirit of ichigeki hissatsu [5], and a Hiroshima report of 1945 makes it the mark of Japanese martial arts against foreign ones: the bout is decided the instant one meets the enemy [6]. Nothing older carries the four characters; the library's index has the 1930s well covered and finds the family's older members there, the killing sword in 1933, certain death, certain kill in 1936, one strike, certain hit for the navy's dive-bombers in 1937, but not this [7].
January 1942, the army. The Toyama military school, which taught the army its sword, published in the officers' journal that month a short-course sword training outline (one strike, certain kill) for men with no fencing behind them, to give them, in the school's own later words, the confidence of ichigeki hissatsu with the issue sword; the catalogue record of that issue carries the four characters, and the school's 1944 handbook dates the outline in its preface [8].
1942 to 1945, the war. From 1942 it is the correspondents' word: tank crews with pistols in Malaya, an air unit in Burma, a poem on the nine midget-submarine crew of Pearl Harbor, the navy's night actions, and the 1944 naval war record's the ship now burns with the fighting spirit of ichigeki hissatsu; miss the first strike and the chance will not come again [9]. A haiku poet, writing in 1942 about a novelist's Musashi, calls the swordsman's essence the lightning ichigeki hissatsu: the earliest known use of the phrase for the old sword, and a modern writer's [10]. The same year's one witness for the sibling form, 一拳必殺, is a Manchukuo civil-service model essay [11].
After the war, karate. The open library sees nothing between 1945 and 1976 but one popular magazine, and then the phrase belongs to karate: 大山倍達's Kyokushin publishes Karate Is My Life: Ichigeki Hissatsu in 1976, the first book so titled [12]; the national karate federation's entry on the Shōtōkan style describes it as characterized by ichigeki hissatsu from long range, and the Japan Karate Association is described as prizing the destructive power of ichigeki hissatsu and zanshin over accumulated points [13]. Japanese encyclopedic writing today also attaches the phrase to the Satsuma sword school 薬丸自顕流 and its rule doubt not the first cut; the second is defeat; the description is modern even where the school is old [14]. No Japanese dictionary opened has taken the phrase in.
Today, in two forms. 一撃必殺 is the Japanese phrase: thirteen wartime books, sixty-two titles in the national catalogue since 1976, the federations' own word [7]. 一拳必殺 has its one witness of 1942 and no Japanese life since, no title, no page, no dictionary. Where it lives is English, as ikken hissatsu, the romaji of the Shōtōkan books since 1977. Which characters the Japanese originals of those books print under the romaji is not settled here; the reading ikken is 一拳, one fist.
What is not a source. The samurai; no text before 1941 carries the phrase, and the 1942 essayist who applies it to Musashi is a modern writing modern Japanese. The Chinese classics; neither form occurs, and the nearest neighbor is a falcon [1]. The dictionaries; none has either form, and the big one dates 必殺 itself to 1965, thirty years after the library's furigana witness [1]. The sniper's One shot, one kill, which Japanese encyclopedic writing also compares it to: a fair comparison, and no ancestor in either direction established here.
The word in English
1959 to 1978. Ōyama's English, then Nakayama's. Ōyama's English books from 1959 carry the idea in every one, knock down any man with one blow, and the romaji in none [15]. The phrase itself arrives with Nakayama's Best Karate (1977, glossary: ikken hisatsu: to kill with one blow), the earliest known romaji [16]; his 1978 volume adds the warning: long ago there was the expression ikken hissatsu, meaning "to kill with one blow," but to assume from this that killing is the objective is dangerous [17].
2006 to 2015. Ichigeki hissatsu in English. Kanazawa's 2006 course is the earliest known English karate book to write ichigeki hissatsu [18]; Gottschall's 2015 book on fighting gives Ōyama's creed as the Japanese warriors' maxim Ichigeki hissatsu, which is the tradition's belief about its own age [19]. From 1998 Ichigeki Hissatsu is also the English name of the instant-kill moves in the Guilty Gear games, and most printed uses of that spelling are in game magazines [20].
Today. In 1941 the phrase is an attitude to be drilled into schoolchildren with bamboo swords and into new officers with steel ones: conviction, spirit, attacking power, the bout decided at the first contact. After the war it is karate's, and the schools that took it up were at pains to say what it does not mean. Nakayama's 1978 warning against taking the words literally is the phrase's best commentary: the aim is to finish in the shortest time with one decisive technique, not to kill. Kanazawa added in 1987 that one attack is generally not enough against an equal, which is why one trains for the one that is. Japanese encyclopedic writing says the same in its own words: an ideal and a spirit, not necessarily one blow, with 多撃必倒, many strikes, certain fall, as its opposite.
A reading
The honest history of this phrase is a date and a lane. 一撃必殺 is a phrase of 1941, born in the wartime school curriculum and the army's sword course, carried through the war by the correspondents, and inherited by postwar karate, which made it its own and, to its credit, took care to explain that it does not mean what it says. It is not classical, not Chinese, not the samurai's. The idea it names is older than the words, and the falcon in the Chinese commentary and the 1936 novelist's certain death, certain kill show the words gathering; but the four characters together are a product of their year, and the year was 1941. What redeems the phrase is what the karate teachers did with it: the single decisive technique, the whole self behind it, the refusal to hedge. That is a real ideal, and Nakayama's sentence is its best commentary.
References
- 「一撃」・「必殺」・「一拳」・「必殺技」, 大辞泉・日本国語大辞典, at kotobank; 黃宗炎, 周易象辭, 卷12 (the falcon), at zh.wikisource. https://kotobank.jp/word/一撃 · https://kotobank.jp/word/必殺
- 岩手県女子師範学校附属国民学校, 国民学校実践研究, 第5輯, 1941, scan 112. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1450886/1/112
- 和歌山県師範学校附属国民学校, 体錬科武道(剣道・柔道・薙刀)の実践, 1941, scan 8; 徳島県, 本校教育の実際：道の修練, 1941, scan 80. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1454840/1/8 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1450618/1/80
- 和歌山県師範学校附属国民学校, 国民学校各科授業形態の研究, 1942, scan 52. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1278652/1/52
- 鹿児島県教育研究会, 研究録, 第37回, 1942-02, scan 143. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1455193/1/143
- 広島高等師範学校附属国民学校, 国民学校戦力増強の教育, 1945, scan 170. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1460919/1/170
- National Diet Library Digital Collections, next-generation full-text search on 一撃必殺 and related spellings, and the national catalogue by title since 1976. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/
- 陸軍戸山学校, 軍刀の操法試斬, 1944 (drill dated 1942-01), scan 5 and scan 13. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1460369/1/5 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1460369/1/13
- 朝日新聞社, マレー作戦; 同盟通信社, ビルマ作戦; 大本営海軍報道部, 大東亜戦争海軍戦記, 第4輯, 1942–44. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1908888/1/42
- 松本たかし, えごの花：随筆, 1942, scan 76. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1128223/1/76
- 満洲司法協会, 満洲帝国常識模範論説全集, 1942, scan 92. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1266899/1/92
- 極真会館 (国際空手道連盟), 空手いのち：一撃必殺, 講談社, 1976. National Diet Library Search catalogue.
- 全日本空手道連盟, 松濤館流 entry; 日本空手協会, ja.wikipedia entry. https://www.jkf.ne.jp/karate-word/kw-shotokanryu · https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/日本空手協会
- 「薬丸自顕流」, at ja.wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/薬丸自顕流
- Mas Oyama, What Is Karate?; Vital Karate; This Is Karate, 1959–1980, at Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/what-is-karate
- Nakayama Masatoshi, Best Karate, vol. 1, Kodansha International, 1977, at Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/bestkarate0000naka
- Nakayama Masatoshi, Best Karate, vol. 3, Kodansha International, 1978, at Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/karatebestkarate03kumite011978
- Kanazawa Hirokazu, Black Belt Karate: The Intensive Course, Kodansha International, 2006, at Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/isbn_9784770027757
- Jonathan Gottschall, The Professor in the Cage, 2015, at Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/professorincagew0000gott
- Guilty Gear, Arc System Works, 1998, and game-magazine coverage from September 1998, at Internet Archive.