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常在戦場 jōzai senjō Always on the Battlefield

常在戦場 (jōzai senjō), always on the battlefield, first stands in the 三國志 of about 290, on a watchful general who drilled his camp in peace. A samurai house made it the head of its code, and it became a domain's creed and Admiral 山本五十六's motto. This study follows it and a reversed twin into English: one precept, told to a family's sons in peace, then to a nation at war.

Japanese Scroll of Always on the Battlefield (jōzai senjō) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Always on the Battlefield常在戦場jōzai senjō

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

常在戦場, always on the battlefield, first stands in 陳壽's 三國志 (about 290), on a Wu general who was watchful all day as if on the battlefield and kept his camp drilled in a time of peace. This study follows it through a samurai family's house code, dated by tradition to the sixteenth century and in print from 1895, a Japanese domain's creed, a lord's 1787 dream and poem, the motto the books of 1943 and 1944 give Admiral 山本五十六, born in that domain, and the slogans of the war — and a second, reversed-order line, 戰場常在, carried through a different Edo house into the three English translations of the 武道初心集. It finds one precept, to act always as one on the battlefield, whose hearers changed: a general's camp and a family's sons in peace, where Nagaoka kept it by plainness of life and drill, and from 1938 a nation at war.

Overview

The sense. One precept, from the Wu camp to the Pacific war: act always as one on the battlefield. 陳壽 praises it in a general who drilled his camp morning and evening though the world was at peace; the 牧野 set it at the head of the rules their elders taught their sons; 高野 makes it the cure for debt and drills it in a tent once a year; 忠精 dreams it; the admiral, by the 1944 textbook, brushes it. The Nagaoka witnesses say it of peace, and of what peace does to men who forget. From 1938 the same four characters are said to a nation at war: on a publisher's blurb, in a factory directory, in the books made of the admiral after his death.

The words. Four characters and one sentence: 常 always, 在 to be in, 戦場 the battlefield. The old books write 戰場 or 戰塲, and the modern 戦 is the current form; the reading is the Chinese one throughout, jōzai senjō. Read into plain Japanese it is 常に戰場に在り, as a 1944 book of mottoes heads it, and a lord of Nagaoka made it a poem in 1787, 戰の庭にあるそと常にたゞ思ふ心をたもて武士, keep a heart that thinks, always and only, "I am on the field of battle": that is a warrior. One Edo book and the anecdote it carries write the four characters in the other order, 戰場常在, senjō jōzai, and hang them on a 武田 veteran's wall; the sense is the same, and the witnesses are below. The dictionaries define it as a precept, act always with the readiness of one on a battlefield, and that is what it has meant at every witness; what changed was who was being told, a general's soldiers, a family's sons, a domain's samurai, a navy, a nation.

The text in English. Hepburn's dictionary does not enter it in the text of its 1867, 1872 or 1886 editions, and the collections of Japanese proverbs in English read for this study, Buchanan's of 1965 and Galef's, have no place for it. The first English is of the 武道初心集's reversed order, in all three translations of that book.

The historical record

About 290. Chen Shou 陳壽, 三國志, the Book of Wu, chapter 56, the biography of Zhu Ran 朱然. Zhu Ran (182–249) held 江陵 for Sun Quan 孫權 against the Wei; the four characters stand in the biography's portrait of the man, set after his last campaign and before his illness and death, not in the chapter's closing appraisal (評曰), which does not have them. 然長不盈七尺，氣候分明。內行修潔，其所文采，惟施軍器，餘皆質素。終日欽欽，常在戰場，臨急膽定，尤過絕人。雖世無事，每朝夕嚴鼓，兵在營者，咸行裝就隊。以此玩敵，使不知所備，故出輒有功: He was under seven feet tall, his bearing clear and sharp. His private life was clean; the only ornament he allowed was on his weapons, and all else was plain. All day long he was watchful, as if always on the battlefield; in a crisis his nerve held, far past other men. Though the world was at peace, morning and evening he had the drums beaten, and every soldier in camp fell in dressed for battle. With this he confounded the enemy, who could not tell what he was preparing for, so that whenever he marched he won. [1] The four characters are a description of a habit, not yet a maxim: his watchfulness all day, with the peacetime drill the next sentence. The Qing rhyme dictionary 佩文韻府 (1711) indexes the passage under 戰場, and the 鳳文館 and 博文館 printed it in Japan in 1885 and 1890 [2]. The later Chinese books that carry the four characters in Chinese Wikisource and the National Diet Library's index, the encyclopedias and the gazetteers, all copy this sentence about 朱然; none of them uses the four as a saying of its own. Whether the 牧野 family below took them from the 三國志, from the rhyme dictionary or from common speech, no witness opened for this study says; the 三國志 is the oldest text in which they stand together.

The sixteenth century by tradition, and in print from 1895. The 牧野 family's wall-text from 牛久保 in 三河. The 牧野 held 牛久保 castle between the 今川, the 武田 and the 徳川, and a list of house rules called the 參州牛久保之壁書, the wall-text of 牛久保 in 三河, is the family's own account of what that made of them. Its first article is the four characters: 一常在戰塲の四字, item: the four characters "always on the battlefield" [3]. Then 弓矢御法と云ふ事, the way of bow and arrow; 禮義廉恥と云ふ事 (古語之由), propriety and shame, an old saying; the etiquette of attendance, of the saddle, of the road, of greeting the old, of the seat, of the eye and the hand; how to take a man who has barricaded himself, how to witness a seppuku and how to second one; 貧は士之常と云ふ事, poverty is the samurai's normal state; a samurai's manners bear on his lord's reputation; 百姓に似る共、町人に似るな, be like a farmer if you must, never like a townsman; 鼻は欠とも、義理は欠な, lose your nose before you fail a duty. Eighteen articles in the 1931 history of 長岡 city and in the 1931 biography of Kawai Tsuginosuke 河井継之助, which adds the family's own note that the retainers of the old lords held it in high regard, acted on it in all things and taught it to their sons [4]; twenty-seven in two books of 1944 [5][6]. The earliest print of the list known is in 越後風俗志, the 1895 journal of a 長岡 local-history society, which names it 牧野右馬允成定壁書(永祿五年の物), the wall-text of 牧野成定, a thing of 永祿 5, that is 1562, and runs its articles as the things a samurai must not forget, 武士の忘れ間敷 … 常在戰塲の四字弓矢の故實禮義廉耻出仕の禮 [7]. The two 1944 books call its date uncertain and put it probably of the time of Makino Narisada 牧野成定 (1525–1566), the grandfather of the first lord of 長岡. No manuscript of the list is in the National Diet Library's digital collections.

The sixteenth century by tradition again, and about 1725 in writing. Baba Nobuharu 馬場美濃守 of the 武田 house, in Daidōji Yūzan 大道寺友山's 武道初心集 and in the 名将言行録. A second line, told of a man of another house, keeps the same four characters in the other order. Daidōji Yūzan (1639–1730), trained in the 甲州 school of war, wrote his primer for young samurai late in life, about 1725; it went round in manuscript and was printed at 松代 in 1834 [8]. Its chapter on duty, after a page on how the warriors of the civil wars slept in armor on brown rice and salt soup and how a samurai born in peace has no cause to grumble at guard duty, ends: 甲州武田家ノ老臣。弓矢功者ト呼レシ。馬塲美濃ト申タル士ハ。戰塲常在ト申ス四字ヲ書テ壁間ニ懸置。平生ノ受用ト仕候由申傳ヒ候。初心ノ武士心得ノタメ仍如件, it is handed down that a samurai called 馬場美濃, an elder of the 武田 house of 甲州 and known as a master of bow and arrow, wrote the four characters 戰場常在 and hung them on his wall for his daily use. Set down for the instruction of young samurai. [9] That is Baba Nobuharu 馬場信春 (d. 1575), and the 名将言行録 tells it of him in its own words: 信房常ニ戰塲常在ト云四字ヲ、壁間ニ掛ケ置キ、平生ノ誠トセリ, 信房 always kept the four characters 戰場常在 hung on his wall, and made them his everyday sincerity [10]. A third Edo text, the 列公間話 of the 池田 lords printed in the 史籍集覧, quotes it as a saying in the compiler's own voice: 私曰戰塲常在トテ治國ニ武之心懸厚ク務ル將ハ敵ニ成テ六ケ敷可存, I say: a general who, "always on the battlefield" as the phrase goes, governs his country with his mind on war is a hard enemy to face [11]. In this order the National Diet Library's full-text index has the phrase in 48 items to 1944, the first the 1869 名将言行録 [12]. The index gives no excerpt for any of them; by their titles they are the primer and the 名将言行録 reprinted, the bushidō anthologies that carry them, the 広文庫, and books for soldiers (1892, 1908, 1913, 1927, 1930), and at least one is a false join, an 1891 guidebook's 古戰塲 beside a temple called 常在寺. Outside that index, the Lab's text of a manuscript commentary on the 庭訓往来, catalogued as late Muromachi, has 戰塲常在 in a gloss on war banners, read at the leaf: 旗ハ兵皆持事也。戰塲常在 …, the four characters there describing a banner, not standing as a saying [13]. Chinese Wikisource and the CBETA canon have no text in this order. The 1944 ethics textbook that praises the admiral's 常在戰場 turns to the 武道初心集 on the same page, but to its passage on a samurai's last moment, not to Baba's wall [14].

Undated, in Edo. 高野常道, 昇平夜話, read in the 1923 edition. The 牧野 came to 長岡 in 1618, and the phrase went with them. 高野常道, called 餘慶, the domain's scholar, tutor to the ninth lord, 牧野忠精, lord from 1766 [15], and, by a 1944 biographer's reckoning, an ancestor of 山本五十六 five generations back, is named as the author of a book of Talks in Peacetime on why samurai go broke, and the four characters are its answer three times. The 1923 editor took the name from a Nagaoka local history, his own copy's preface being signed only a man without a surname, and wrote that he had seen no signed copy and thought the attribution eight or nine in ten sure, 十中の八九までは常道の著作に疑ひなきものゝ如し [16]. 何程靜謐安泰の御代たりといへ共、武士の生立、本は貴賤上下を嫌ず、常在戰場と云文字を常に心頭に挾で身の榮耀を好ず、質素を宗とし: however calm and secure the age, a samurai is raised, high or low, to keep the characters "always on the battlefield" at the front of his mind, to take no pleasure in show, and to make plainness his rule [16]. Debt comes when men rest in the long peace and forget the household teaching of 常在戰場. And he describes the cure: a camp-hut meeting every summer, a day of marching in armor, mounting, shooting, taking heads, and eating brown rice with miso in a tent, its purpose being that the samurai not forget the sense of 常在戰場.

1787. Makino Tadakiyo 牧野忠精, the ninth lord, a dream and a poem. On the second night of the first month of 天明 7 the lord dreamed he rode out to battle and came home to the rising sun. He wrote it down, and a centenary book of 1930 prints his words with punctuation: 覺めてつら〳〵おもふ、かゝる事はゆめにしも限らじ、もののふたらんものは、常在戰場と云ふ心をこそ、しばしも忘るまじき事ぞ, waking, I thought it through: such a thing need not be only a dream; one who would be a warrior must not for a moment forget the heart called 常在戰場, and made the poem, in the first print of 1915: 戰の庭にあるそと常にたゞ思ふ心をたもて武士 [17]. It is the one poem made of the four characters among the witnesses opened here; read into plain Japanese they are 常に戰場に在り, which is how the 1944 book of mottoes heads its entry on them, kana beside the characters [5]. The Nagaoka historian who printed it in 1915 adds: 『常在戰塲』との一語は、長岡武士の一信條なりしなり, the single phrase 常在戰場 was the one creed of the Nagaoka samurai [17], and he said it again in 1917, 長岡藩士の一信條 [18].

1938 to 1944. The war. The National Diet Library's full-text index has the four characters in this order in 519 items to 1944: the Chinese books and their Japanese printings to 1890, the wall-text from 1895, the Nagaoka histories and poems from 1915, eight items in 1938, fourteen to twenty-seven a year from 1939 to 1942, and 187 in 1943 and 200 in 1944 [19]. A publisher's blurb for wartime-system editions says the nation needs the vigor of 常在戰場 (printed at the back of the series' books from 1938); a factory directory lists a company whose factory spirit is always on the battlefield; the commentary on the mobilization law, the judo hall's history of 嘉納治五郎, the Ministry of Education's readers. In 1943, after the admiral's death, the navy minister Yonai Mitsumasa 米内光政 dictated a book titled 常在戦場: his forty years in the navy were from first to last one 常在戰場 spirit, and its editor lists the phrase among the elements of the 山本 spirit to be pressed on a hundred million people [20]. The 1944 textbook explains where he had it: 山本五十六元帥は中學生時代からこの言葉を好み、後年揮毫するにもよくこの四字を以つてした, the admiral liked the phrase from his middle-school days and in later years often brushed these four characters, from the head of the old Nagaoka domain's precept, and it prints the poem, wrongly, under the founder Tadanari 忠成's name [6].

The dictionaries today. 大辞泉: いつでも戦場にいる心構えで事をなせという心得を示す語, a term for the precept that one should act always with the readiness of one on a battlefield; no source, no date [21]. JMdict enters it as a yojijukugo, being combat ready at all times [22]. Neither names the 三國志, the 牧野, or the admiral.

What is not a source. The 1944 textbook sets the phrase beside the 葉隠's 常住死身, to live as one already dead, and a 1944 Confucian daily-reader beside the proverb 油断大敵; those are neighbors on a page, not origins. The budō reception in English (below) attaches the phrase to Nakayama Hakudō 中山博道 and to Funakoshi Gichin 船越義珍; no Nagaoka witness names either, and the Nagaoka line does not run through them. In the Chinese texts opened for this study, Chinese Wikisource and the National Diet Library's index, the phrase is not a maxim; it is a clause of one biography, and its life as a motto is Japanese.

The text in English

1941. A. L. Sadler, The Beginner's Book of Bushido, Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai, Tokyo; later The Code of the Samurai. There was a certain Baba Mino, a veteran of renown under the house of Takeda of Kai, who wrote out and hung up on the wall as his life's maxim the four characters that signify "The field of battle is my normal abode." [23]

1984. William Scott Wilson, Budoshoshinshu: The Warrior's Primer of Daidoji Yuzan, Ohara. One of the elders of the clan of Takeda Shingen in Kai, Baba Mino no kami, a man especially accomplished in archery, had the words "Constantly Living on the Field of Battle" hung on his wall. It is said that these words have been passed down for everyday contemplation. [24]

1999. Thomas Cleary, Code of the Samurai: A Modern Translation of the Bushido Shoshinshu, Tuttle, the chapter Military Service. It is related that a famous warrior known as the Master Archer used to have a sign on his wall with four words he applied in everyday life: "Always on the Battlefield." I note this for the edification of novice warriors. [25]

2001. John Stevens, Budo Secrets: Teachings of the Martial Arts Masters, Shambhala. A calligraphy of the four characters by the kendō master Nakayama Hakudō, captioned Jozai Senjo, "Always Present on the Battlefield", and, of the karate founder Funakoshi Gichin, his personal motto was jozai senjo, "Always present on the battlefield of life, ready …" [26].

2010. Denny Holzbauer, Truth for Fighters. ALWAYS PRESENT ON THE BATTLEFIELD, with a section on its history [27].

2011. Takashi Inoguchi and Purnendra Jain, Japanese Politics Today, Palgrave Macmillan. Of Diet members and their districts: they say "we are always on the battle field" (Jozai Senjo) [28].

2015. Naval War College Review, vol. 68 no. 3. A citation of Kensuke Onishi's book NGO, Jozai Senjo, rendered Always Prepare Yourself as If You Are on a Battlefield [29].

The Library of Congress's union catalog records the 1943 米内 book and a Nagaoka pamphlet, 『長岡藩風と常在戦場の精神』, The Nagaoka domain's character and the spirit of 常在戦場, by title [30].

Today. Six English forms are in print: Sadler's The field of battle is my normal abode, Wilson's Constantly Living on the Field of Battle and Cleary's Always on the Battlefield, all three of the 武道初心集's 戰場常在; Stevens's Always Present on the Battlefield, which Holzbauer repeats; the plainer always on the battle field of the political-science book; and the naval review's Always Prepare Yourself as If You Are on a Battlefield. The words always on the battlefield were ordinary English long before any of them.

A reading

The four characters stand first in the 三國志, of a general watchful all day who beat the drums morning and evening in peacetime so that no one, least of all he, forgot the war; whether the Japanese took them from there, no witness says. A samurai family in 三河 made them the first line of its house rules; the domain that family founded kept them, in a scholar's book on debt, in a lord's dream of 1787, in a yearly day in armor eating camp rice, and its historian called them in 1915 the one creed of its samurai; the admiral born there, by the textbook of 1944, took them up as a schoolboy and brushed them in his later years, and when he died the books of the war made them a slogan for a nation fighting one. The precept did not change; who was told it, and when, did. A second line, told of a 武田 general, runs from Baba Nobuharu's wall through the 武道初心集 to its three English translators with the characters reversed, and it is the one an English reader is likeliest to know. The Japanese says always and the battlefield and leaves ready to the reader; the English that adds ready or prepared supplies what the four characters leave to be understood.

Sources not seen

A reader with access to any of these is invited to write to Takase Studios at Tim@Takase.com.

References

  1. 陳壽『三國志』吳書十一, 朱治朱然呂範朱桓傳, at Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/三國志/卷56
  2. 佩文韻府, 鳳文館, 1885 and 1890 printings, indexed under 戰場. National Diet Library, from the library's full-text index. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/
  3. 長岡市 編, 『長岡市史』, 1931, § 第十六節 藩風, the 參州牛久保之壁書. National Diet Library pid 1176291, scan 131. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1176291/1/131
  4. 今泉鐸次郎, 『河井継之助伝』, 目黒書店, 1931. National Diet Library pid 1223547, scan 26. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1223547/1/26
  5. 日本文学報国会 編, 『定本国民座右銘』, 朝日新聞社, 1944. National Diet Library pid 1039842, scan 14. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1039842/1/14
  6. 文部省 編, 『高等科修身編纂趣意書』第1, 1944. National Diet Library pid 1460844, scan 36. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1460844/1/36
  7. 温古談話会, 『越後風俗志』, 長岡, 1895, scans 65 and 74, excerpt only. National Diet Library pid 764495. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/764495/1/74
  8. 「武道初心集」, 日本大百科全書, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/武道初心集
  9. 大道寺友山, 『武道初心集』, in the 1894 print. National Diet Library pid 860499, scan 39. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/860499/1/39
  10. 『名将言行録』, 1869 print. National Diet Library pid 778853, scan 41. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/778853/1/41
  11. 『列公間話』, in 『史籍集覧』第11冊, 1906. National Diet Library pid 1920318, scan 118. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1920318/1/118
  12. National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text index, 戦場常在, oldest first (148 items; 48 to 1944). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=戦場常在&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC
  13. 『庭訓往来抄』 (the catalogue's supplied title), 2 volumes, manuscript, catalogued 室町末 (late Muromachi), scan 38, read at the leaf. National Diet Library pid 2532287. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2532287/1/38
  14. 文部省, 『高等科修身』, 1944. National Diet Library pid 1460841, scan 65. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1460841/1/65
  15. 「牧野忠精」, デジタル版 日本人名大辞典+Plus, at kotobank: 越後(えちご)(新潟県)長岡藩主牧野家9代. https://kotobank.jp/word/牧野忠精
  16. 高野常道, 『昇平夜話』, in 滝本誠一 編『日本経済叢書』續 第2巻, 大鐙閣, 1923, with the editor's 解題. National Diet Library pid 930919, scans 6–8 (解題), 22, 35 and 62. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/930919/1/22
  17. 今泉鐸次郎, 『北越名流遺芳』第1集, 1915, pp. 13–14. National Diet Library pid 1185239, scans 15–16. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1185239/1/15 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1185239/1/16 — the punctuated text of the dream quoted from 福島甲子三, 『旧長岡藩再中興の英主牧野忠精公の百年祭を迎へて』, 1930, scan 13. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1187521/1/13
  18. 今泉木舌, 『長岡三百年の回顧』, 1917. National Diet Library pid 948596, scan 40. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/948596/1/40
  19. National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text index, 常在戦場, oldest first (4,065 items; 519 to 1944). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=常在戦場&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC
  20. 米内光政 述, 『常在戦場』, 大新社, 1943. National Diet Library pid 1058250, scans 2–8. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1058250/1/2
  21. 「常在戦場」, デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/常在戦場-531590
  22. JMdict, 「常在戦場」. gokanji/data/gokanji.db words 2790470.
  23. A. L. Sadler, translator, The Beginner's Book of Bushido, being translation of Daidoji Yuzan's Budo shoshinshu, Kokusai Bunka Shinkokai, Tokyo, 1941 (National Diet Library catalogue); quoted from Daidoji Yuzan's Code of the Samurai, dual-language edition, Ulysses Press, 2007, pp. 121–122.
  24. William Scott Wilson, translator, Budoshoshinshu: The Warrior's Primer of Daidoji Yuzan, Ohara, Burbank, 1984 (archive.org budoshoshinshuwa0000daid); quoted from Budōshoshinshū: Essential Teachings on the Way of the Warrior, Shambhala, 2018, the chapter's close.
  25. Thomas Cleary, translator, Code of the Samurai: A Modern Translation of the Bushido Shoshinshu, Tuttle, 1999, the chapter "Military Service".
  26. John Stevens, Budo Secrets: Teachings of the Martial Arts Masters, Shambhala, Boston, 2001, snippet view, Internet Archive budosecretsteach0000unse.
  27. Denny Holzbauer, Truth for Fighters, 2010, snippet view, Internet Archive truthforfighters0000unse.
  28. Takashi Inoguchi and Purnendra Jain, Japanese Politics Today, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011, snippet view, Internet Archive japanesepolitics0000unse_w1l3.
  29. Naval War College Review, vol. 68, no. 3, 2015, citing Kensuke Onishi, NGO, Jozai Senjo, snippet view, Internet Archive sim_naval-war-college-review_naval-war-college-review_summer-2015_68_3.
  30. Library of Congress union catalog (The National Union Catalog), entries for 米内光政's 1943 book and 『長岡藩風と常在戦場の精神』, snippet view, Internet Archive nationalunioncat0015unse and nationalunioncat07libr.

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1, Takase Studios, LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · Claude Sonnet (Anthropic), 2026-09-15, citations — every item tested at its address; a couple resolve; nothing found to differ; the rest not openable; an unflagged hit in a book held here (Cleary) taken up

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 常在戦場 (jōzai senjō)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/jozai-senjo.