今を生きる ima o ikiru Live the Moment
今を生きる (ima o ikiru), live the now, is the Japanese title of the film Dead Poets Society of 1989. The phrase was Japanese long before the film, and an essayist asked in 1914 how to live the now. This study follows it to a new religion's watchword of the 1930s and to Horace's carpe diem, which the title renders.
Abstract
今を生きる, live the now, is the Japanese title of the 1989 film Dead Poets Society, いまを生きる, written with the kanji 今. The title renders the Latin carpe diem, Horace's pluck the day, which the film's teacher speaks and glosses as seize the day. The phrase was Japanese long before the film: an essayist asked in 1914 how to live the now, a philosopher wrote in 1930 of living the eternal now, and in the 1930s 今を生きる was a watchword of 生長の家, a new religion, in its founder's books and in a 1936 pamphlet that credits him.
Overview
The sense. Horace's advice by way of a film title, in a Japanese phrase that writers had used for living the present since at least 1914.
The words. 今 ima, now; 生きる ikiru, to live; を makes the now the thing lived. The words are ordinary. 生きる is the plain form, not a command: Japanese Wikipedia notes that, strictly, the Latin means いまを生きろ or いまを掴め, live the now! or seize the now! [1].
The text in English. The film's own English for carpe diem is seize the day: Carpe, carpe diem, seize the day boys, make your lives extraordinary [2].
The historical record
23 BC. Carpe diem. Horace's eleventh ode tells Leuconoe not to ask what end the gods have given, to strain the wine and cut long hope to the short space, and ends dum loquimur, fugerit invida aetas: carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero, while we speak, envious time has fled: pluck the day, trusting the next as little as you may, where carpe is the verb for picking fruit [3].
1914 to 1945. 今を生きる before the film. In 1914 the critic 相馬御風 wrote that our greatest question is neither what circumstances nor what state of mind to live in, but たゞ如何にして今を生きんかの問題である, only the question of how to live the now [4]. In 1930 高階順治's 世界観的現象学 wrote of living その永遠の今, that eternal now [5]. In 1935 the teaching notes to a middle-school reader summed up an essay of 市島春城 on the word 今 as われわれは「今」を生きる爲に全力を注ぐべきである, we must give all our strength to living the now [6]. The same year the phrase is in 谷口雅春's 生命の実相 [7], the scripture of 生長の家, the new religion he began in 1929–1930 [8], and a book of his from 1938 speaks of it as 生長の家では『今を生きる』と云ふ言葉が…, the phrase "live the now" in Seichō no Ie [9]. In 1936 辻村楠造 published a pamphlet on Japan and world peace, 皇国大日本, whose chapter 實相の日本 opens by crediting 谷口先生 with revealing the true aspect, 實相, and says 實相の世界は今を生きる世界だ。今といふても今といふうちに過去になつて居るその今を生きる世界だ, the world of true aspect is a world that lives the now, the now that is already past even as one says "now" [10]. The word 實相 is Buddhist; the teaching is Taniguchi's. The NDL Digital index finds 今を生きる in 62 books to 1945, the oldest 高階's, and 26 of them are Taniguchi's or his publisher's [11].
1989 and 1990. いまを生きる. Dead Poets Society opened in the United States on 2 June 1989 and in Japan on 17 March 1990 as いまを生きる. Japanese Wikipedia says the title is the Japanese of the Latin carpe diem that the teacher Keating speaks in the film [1]; the teacher's own English is seize the day [2]. Nothing ties the title to the religious use of the 1930s.
Today. The title keeps Horace's advice and drops his command: 生きる states what the Latin orders.
A reading
Horace's advice by way of a film title, in a Japanese phrase that already had a life. Before the film, the now in 今を生きる was a place to stand: the only real time for 相馬 and for Taniguchi's readers, the time in which there is nothing to worry over. The film made it an instruction to act. The brushed phrase is in the plain form, so it can be read either way, and I read it the older way: not a call to seize anything, but a statement of where one lives.
References
- 「いまを生きる」, Japanese Wikipedia. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/いまを生きる
- Dead Poets Society, English Wikiquote. https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dead_Poets_Society
- Horace, Odes, 1.11, at the Latin Library. https://www.thelatinlibrary.com/horace/carm1.shtml
- 相馬御風, 自我生活と文学, 1914, p. 98, scan 64. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/952035/1/64
- 高階順治, 世界観的現象学, 1930, scan 145 (excerpt). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1175004/1/145
- 光風館編輯所, 中学国文教科書教授備考 巻3, 1935, scan 49. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1456810/1/49
- 谷口雅春, 生命の実相 : 生長の家聖典全集 第14巻, 1935, scan 126 (excerpt). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1256054/1/126
- 「生長の家」, kotobank (デジタル大辞泉; 精選版 日本国語大辞典; 日本大百科全書). https://kotobank.jp/word/生長の家-86231
- 谷口雅春, 一流の人・妻・子を作るには, 1938, scan 169 (excerpt). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1072340/1/169
- 辻村楠造, 皇国大日本, 1936, p. 25, scan 14. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1092528/1/14
- NDL Digital Collections, full text, 今を生きる, oldest first. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=今を生きる&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC