痛みは体から抜ける弱さ itami wa karada kara nukeru yowasa Pain is Weakness Leaving the Body
This is a philological study of 痛みは体から抜ける弱さ (itami wa karada kara nukeru yowasa), the Japanese rendering of the United States Marine Corps' drill-field saying "Pain is weakness leaving the body." It traces the English saying from a 1996 interview through the Marine Corps' own 1999 recruiting campaign to a memoir that takes the line as its title, and examines the undocumented legend that attributes it to a decorated general.
Abstract
痛みは体から抜ける弱さ is the house's own Japanese rendering, made by 2010, of an American drill-field saying: Pain is weakness leaving the body. The English is a drill instructors' aphorism before it is anyone's slogan, in print by 1996 and made into a Marine Corps recruiting advertisement in March 1999, after which every branch of the American military and much of civilian fitness culture claimed it. A popular attribution to Lieutenant General Lewis "Chesty" Puller has no known document behind it, and first appears in print only in 2015, decades after Puller's death. No Japanese source carries the sentence; the rendering uses 抜ける, the ordinary Japanese verb for tiredness or air leaving a body, so the slogan reads as Japanese rather than as a translation.
Overview
The sense. One sense, the drill instructor's: the pain of training is the weakness going out of you, so it is good.
The words. 痛み is pain, the noun from 痛む, and は makes it the topic. 弱さ is weakness, the noun from 弱い. Between them stands 体から抜ける, leaves from the body, a clause that describes the weakness: the whole is pain is the weakness that leaves the body, with the is left unsaid, which is how Japanese writes a headline or a motto. The verb is the one the sentence turns on. 抜ける is what comes out of something it was inside: the dictionary's second sense is what filled or was held inside goes out, with air from a tire and a smell as examples; its fourth is a force or a habit going out of a person, the tiredness leaves, the strength goes out of the hips [1]. The English leaving is the same picture, and Japanese has it ready-made, so the slogan lands without strain. The particle is から, from; the sentence needs it to be grammatical.
The text in English. For this phrase the usual order runs in reverse: the text is English and the Japanese is the translation. The English has one form, with just sometimes inserted, and the recruiting ad's line added the change is forever after it.
The historical record
1996. Steven Zeeland, The Masculine Marine. The earliest print known. An interviewed Marine recites a favorite DI aphorism: "Pain is weakness leaving the body," and the author repeats it as something taught at boot camp [2]. A drill instructors' saying, already a favorite, before it was anyone's slogan.
March 1999. Leatherneck, vol. 82 no. 3. The Marine Corps made the saying an advertisement. A full-page recruiting ad, PAIN IS WEAKNESS LEAVING THE BODY. THE CHANGE IS FOREVER, with the marines.com address, runs in the Marine Corps Association's own magazine from this issue through October 2006, in twenty-four issues, and in two magazines a seventeen-year-old reads, a Scholastic current-events magazine (2003, 2006) and the FFA's own magazine (1999 on). The ad names no author [3].
October 1999. Swim News, no. 253. Sport took it in the same year: a swimmer's column under the title Pain is Weakness Leaving the Body. High-school yearbooks carry it from 2001 [4].
2004. Stephen F. Tomajczyk, To Be a U.S. Marine. The saying in a drill instructor's mouth, answering a recruit: PAIN? Well that's GOOD! Pain is weakness leaving the body [5].
2011. Karl Marlantes, What It Is Like to Go to War, p. 16. A Marine officer of the Vietnam war on what carried him: I was in situations where any reasonable person would have quit, but I had become a Marine and Marines aren't reasonable people. Quitting is unthinkable and pain is just weakness leaving the body. A Navy chaplain's 2014 paper quotes this sentence with its page and calls it the Marine warrior's ethos, asking whether an ethos that never admits weakness is why Marines do not ask for help [6][7].
April 2012. Men's Health, vol. 27 no. 3. SEAL instructor aphorism: Pain is just weakness leaving the body. By now every service claims it [8].
2015. Keith Trotter, 100 Small Steps. The attribution appears in print with a date: "Pain is weakness leaving the body" —Lt. General Lewis B. "Chesty" Puller, USMC, (c. 1955) [9].
2022. Lyle Jeremy Rubin, Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body: A Marine's Unbecoming. A Marine's memoir takes the line as its title and turns it against itself. The same month, a Marine Corps Recruit Depot graphic calls it, simply, a Marine Corps phrase [10][11].
What is not a source. Chesty Puller. Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller (1898–1971), the most decorated Marine, is named as the author on every quotation site and in the 2015 book above, with a year, c. 1955, that has no document behind it. The 1999 advertisement does not name him; the 1996 book does not; Marlantes does not. In everything known, the line has no author, and Puller's name is attached to it only from the 2010s, which is what a legend looks like. A Marine Corps record not yet found could move the date; none is known.
The word in English
1996 to 2022. The English, unchanged. Pain is weakness leaving the body is the drill field's own words, unchanged since the earliest print; the recruiting campaign added the change is forever, and later civilian use sometimes inserts just.
Today. No Japanese source carries the sentence. The house's rendering, 痛みは体から抜ける弱さ, is dated by its design file to 2010; the one other seller of the identical string offered the phrase in Chinese alone in 2012, so its Japanese is the later [12]. What a rendering must keep is the verb, 抜ける, the thing that was inside going out, which is the whole image of the English; and the particle から, without which the Japanese is not a sentence.
A reading
A barracks saying, not a proverb: no author, no date before a book of 1996, and a general it is hung on who never said it in anything known. The Marine Corps made it a slogan in 1999 and it has been every service's since. The readings since have not agreed on what it means: a code of silence that keeps Marines from asking for help, the lie a memoirist was told, a joke turned back on itself, or plain encouragement that hardship earns strength. The Japanese rendering is right: what tiredness, poison and air do in Japanese is exactly 抜ける, so the sentence reads as Japanese and not as a translation, and the missing copula is how a motto is written on a wall.
References
- 「抜ける」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank.
- Steven Zeeland, The Masculine Marine: Homoeroticism in the U.S. Marine Corps, Haworth Press, 1996.
- Leatherneck, vol. 82, no. 3, March 1999, and twenty-three later issues to October 2006; the same advertisement in a Scholastic current-events magazine, April 2003 and April 2006, and the FFA's magazine, from 1999.
- Swim News, no. 253, October 1999.
- Stephen F. Tomajczyk, To Be a U.S. Marine, MBI Publishing, 2004.
- Karl Marlantes, What It Is Like to Go to War, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2011 (Grove Press reprint, 2012), p. 16.
- Troy K. Todd, "Good to Go!": Marines, Combat, and the Culture of Silence, Princeton Theological Seminary, May 13, 2014, DTIC accession ADA610215, footnote 51.
- Men's Health, vol. 27, no. 3, April 2012.
- Keith Trotter, 100 Small Steps, Book 1, Morgan James Publishing, 2015.
- Lyle Jeremy Rubin, Pain Is Weakness Leaving the Body: A Marine's Unbecoming, Bold Type Books, 2022.
- DVIDS, graphic 23046, Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, December 14, 2022.
- orientaloutpost.com, product page, live and its snapshot of December 7, 2012.
Books Cited
Books this article cites that can be ordered today.
ISBN 9781560249825