自分を信じる jibun o shinjiru Believe in Oneself
自分を信じる (jibun o shinjiru), believe in yourself, is plain Japanese with a Japanese life of its own. In this spelling its first page in the National Diet Library's books is in Ozaki Kōyō's 金色夜叉 of 1898. This study follows it and the older form 自分を信ずる, in print by 1890.
Abstract
自分を信じる, jibun o shinjiru, believe in yourself, is plain Japanese with a Japanese life of its own. In this spelling its first page in the National Diet Library's books is spoken by the wronged lover of Ozaki Kōyō's 金色夜叉, in the first book edition of July 1898; a tanka critic of 1908 and a poet's autobiographical story of 1919 carry it after him. The same sentence with the older form of the verb, 自分を信ずる, is in a speech anthology of 1890 and a literary magazine of 1891, and a moralist of 1898 defines 自信, self-confidence, with it. Kōyō's 信じる is four years older than the dictionary's first citation for the one-step verb.
Overview
The sense. Standard Japanese, a free phrase, and a sentence of decision. 自分を信じる is a verb with its object, and the object is the reflexive 自分, oneself, so the sentence works for any speaker.
The words. 自分 jibun: デジタル大辞泉 反射代名詞。その人自身。おのれ, the reflexive pronoun: the person himself, oneself, with 自分を省みる, to look at oneself; 精選版日本国語大辞典 cites the reflexive from a 1724 puppet play and the first-person use from 1425 [1]. 信じる shinjiru, to believe, is the modern one-step form of the older 信ずる; the dictionary's first citation for the new form is Uchida Roan's 社会百面相 of 1902 [2]. Kōyō's sentence below, in print in 1898, is four years older than that citation. The two verbs share the form 信じて, so 自分を信じて in an older book cannot say which of them the writer meant; only 信じる and 信ずる can.
The text in English. Believe in yourself and 自分を信じる are the same verb and the same object; Japanese adds nothing and loses nothing [3].
The historical record
1898. 自分を信じる, in 金色夜叉. Kōyō's novel ran in the 読売新聞 from 1 January 1897, and Shun'yōdō published its first part as a book in July 1898 [4]. In the eighth chapter, the Atami beach parting, whose 来年の今月今夜 is the line the encyclopedia quotes, Kan'ichi says to Miya, who is leaving him for a rich man: 「宮さん、お前に限つては然云ふ了簡は無からうと、僕は自分を信じるほどに信じてゐたが、それぢや依樣お前の心は慾だね、財なのだね。」, Miya, I believed, as surely as I believe in myself, that you of all people would never think that way; so after all your heart is greed, is money [5]. The book cited is the first printing, issued 6 July 1898 by its colophon; the National Diet Library dates it 1903, the year the five-volume set closed. In the full-text index of the library's digitized books and magazines, searched oldest first, this is the first page with the sentence in this spelling. The newspaper's text of 1897 was not read.
Before Kōyō, in the older form. The sentence was already said with 信ずる. A speech anthology of 1890, on why a man votes for himself: 人に依ては自分を信ずると云ふ, with some, it is what is called believing in oneself [6]. The literary magazine 都の花 in December 1891, one speaker to another: 御自分樣は御自分を信ずる事の篤いので, you, sir, believe in yourself so deeply (the index's excerpt reads い for は) [7]. And in December 1898 the moralist Nishimura Shigeki, lecturing to schoolteachers, defines self-confidence with it: 其次ハ自信。是ハ自分デ自分ヲ信ズルデアル, next is 自信, self-confidence: that is, believing in yourself by yourself [8].
1908 and 1919. The tanka poet Kubota Utsubo, commenting on a poem, writes the sentence a self-help book would: 自分を信じるといふ事は、理窟としては、如何にもたやすい事のやうであるが、實際としては、案外困難の事である。此れは誰しも感ずる事だ, to believe in oneself seems, as a matter of theory, the easiest thing, but in practice it is surprisingly hard; everyone feels this [9]. And the seventeen-year-old narrator of Murō Saisei's autobiographical story 性に眼覚める頃, first printed in 中央公論 in October 1919 [10]: 自分は自分を信じるちからが大きかつたため、いま在る生活がきつと自分を善くしてくれることを考へてゐた, because my power to believe in myself was great, I thought that the life I was living would surely make me better [11]. The National Diet Library's full-text search of its public-domain books finds the spelling in thirty-nine books, from 1898 to 1947, thirty-seven of them by 1946 [12], and these are its shapes: a lover's reproach, a critic's aside, a young man's confession.
What is not a source. No text stands behind the sentence. It is a sentence anyone can say, and Kōyō's Kan'ichi said it memorably.
Today. Believe in yourself is a stock phrase of English encouragement. Norman Vincent Peale opened The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) with it, Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities!, and the Internet Archive's full text finds that sentence in 429 books, many of them under his name [13]. The reflexive is what a rendering keeps: it makes the sentence true for whoever reads it.
A reading
The sentence has a better story than its English. A speechmaker, a magazine's fiction and a moralist of the 1890s said it with 信ずる; the first page to spell it as the scroll does gives it to a jilted man on a beach, and Kan'ichi's sentence shows the phrase carrying its full weight, belief in oneself as the measure of every other belief.
References
- 「自分」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/自分-523303
- 「信じる」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/信じる-537902
- JMdict (EDRDG), 「自分」, at jisho. https://jisho.org/word/自分
- 「金色夜叉」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典・日本大百科全書, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/金色夜叉-67257
- 尾崎紅葉, 『金色夜叉』前編, 春陽堂, 1898, 第八章, printed pp. 148–149, scan 78; the colophon at scan 89. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/886443/1/78
- 伊東武彦 編, 『演説軌範』, 大成館, 1890, scan 49, read at the National Diet Library's search excerpt. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/861771/1/49
- 『都の花』 73, 1891, read at the National Diet Library's search excerpt (a 不二出版 reprint). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2328933
- 西村茂樹 述, 『西村茂樹先生道徳教育講話筆記』, 愛知県南北設楽八名三郡教員講習会, 1898, 第二回, printed p. 33, scan 18. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/809114/1/18
- 窪田空穂, 『新派短歌評釈』, 玄黄社, 1908, scan 91. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/873602/1/91
- 「性に眼覚める頃」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/性に眼覚める頃-306323
- 室生犀星, 『性に眼覚める頃』, 新潮社, 1920, scan 148. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/962886/1/148
- NDL Lab full-text search, 自分を信じる, every hit. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/api/book/search?keyword=自分を信じる&searchfield=contentonly&size=100
- Norman Vincent Peale, The Power of Positive Thinking, Prentice-Hall, 1952, ch. 1, p. 1 (the page as The Cure Within, 2008, and Religion and American Culture, 1990, cite it; the line read in a later printing's text), at the Internet Archive (lending). https://archive.org/details/positivethinking00peal