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常在戦場 jōzai senjō Always on the Battlefield

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

Abstract

常在戦場, always on the battlefield, stands first, in the texts searched, in 陳壽's 三國志 (late third century), 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, who came from 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.

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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; the 昇平夜話 ascribed to 高野 makes it the cure for debt and keeps it by a yearly day in a camp hut; 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 read but one, the 庭訓往来抄's gloss below, where the reversed four characters describe a banner; 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 earliest known English, in the sources read, is of the 武道初心集's reversed order, in all three translations of that book.

The historical record

The late third century. Chen Shou 陳壽, 三國志, the Book of Wu, chapter 56, the biography of Zhu Ran 朱然. 陳壽 (233–297) wrote it after the three kingdoms ended, and one dictionary, マイペディア, puts its completion at the end of the third century [1]. 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, and the CBETA canon, searched for 常在戰場 and 戰場常在, has the four in neither order. 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 those searches find them 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. The 1931 biography of Kawai Tsuginosuke 河井継之助 heads its list 御家風十八箇條, the eighteen articles of the house manner, and stops at the eighteenth, 進退ならぬと云ふ事 [4]; the 1931 history of 長岡 city prints the list unnumbered and runs on past it, to 腰は不立とも、一分を立よ, keep your honor standing though your hips cannot, and 日陰奉公, service out of sight, the twenty-seven articles that two books of 1944 count [3][5][6]. Both 1931 books carry the word handed down with it, 老人申候, so the old men say: the retainers of the old lords held it in high regard, acted on it in all things and taught it to their sons [3][4]. The earliest print of the list in the National Diet Library's full-text index, read oldest first, is in 越後風俗志, the 1895 journal of a 長岡 local-history society, known here only from the index's excerpt windows. The 1895 window's text layer reads 牧野右馬允成定雙書(水縣五年の物) and gives the list's opening in its ruby, じやうざいせんじやうゆみやこじつれたれんちしゆつし; the 1977 and 1990 reprints of the same text read 牧野右馬允成定壁書(永祿五年の物)に曰武士の忘れ間敷 … 常在戰塲の四字弓矢の故實禮義廉耻出仕の禮 (their layers 間數), and the 1895 window is read so: the wall-text of 牧野成定, a thing of 永祿 5, that is 1562, and its articles the things a samurai must not forget [7]. One 1944 book calls its date unsettled, 成立年代は定かでない [5], and both put it probably of the time of Makino Narisada 牧野成定 (1525–1566), the grandfather of the first lord of 長岡 [5][6]. Searches of the National Diet Library's catalogue by title (壁書, 牛久保, 御家風) and of its full-text index find no manuscript of the list.

The sixteenth century by tradition again, and in Daidōji's primer. 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 a version revised by men of the 松代 domain was published in 1834 [8]. The passage on Baba is read here in the 1894 print [9]; whether the revisers, who cut and edited articles, kept it as the manuscript of about 1725 had it, no witness opened shows. 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 (1514–1575), whose other names include 信房, and the 名将言行録 tells it of him in its own words [10]: 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 烈公間話 (列公間話 in the library's contents), a retainer's record of the talk of the 池田 lord 光政, 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 to early Edo, 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 [15], and from then on, by a book of 1944, the phrase was the domain's house manner [5]. 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 [15], is named as the author of a book of Talks in Peacetime on why samurai go broke, and the four characters stand in it three times, twice as the answer and once as the purpose of a yearly day. The 1923 editor had the name from a friend's letter, 小野式夫's, which came with a pamphlet, 長岡の史的囘顧, carrying 高野's life; his own copy's preface was signed only a man without a surname. He 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; and he found in his ten volumes not one passage particular to the Nagaoka domain, and wondered whether it was another book of the same name, 一ケ所も長岡藩に特殊の記事を揭げあることなく … 或は同名異書にてはあらざるかと思はるゝも. The Nagaoka history he quotes says 高野 himself held camp-hut days, 陣營を假設して粗飯を食ひ水を飮み(陣小屋會といふ) [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 the book describes a camp-hut meeting, held every summer with six or seven men of the same school of war: a day of marching in armor, mounting, shooting, the forms of inspecting heads, and eating brown rice with miso in camp huts set up in the garden, 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 a 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, Admiral Yonai Mitsumasa 米内光政, 米内海軍大將 in its editor's preface, dictated a book titled 常在戦場, which says of 山本 these 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] The sentence ran in the Japan Times & Advertiser of 2 September 1942, in a column headed Samurai Had Duties in Peace and in War and signed Daidoji Yuzan (1639-1730) and K.B.S., the translation's publisher [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 caption, Jozai Senjo, "Always Present on the Battlefield," by Hakudo, and a Spanish edition of the 五輪書 in the same index captions a calligraphy of the phrase por Hakudo Nakayama, Nakayama Hakudō; and, of Karate's Gichin Funakoshi, 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 elected members and their districts: they say "we are always on the battle field" (Jozai Senjo). The elected members visit their districts … [28].

2015. Naval War College Review, vol. 68 no. 3. In a Japanese naval officer's article, a citation of Kensuke Onishi's book NGO, Jozai Senjo (2006), 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 also prints; 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 a creed of its samurai; the admiral who came from there, by the textbook of 1944, liked them from his middle-school days 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.

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Japanese Scrolls by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

Japanese Scroll of Always on the Battlefield (jōzai senjō) in a block font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
常在戦場VB4CBlock
Japanese Scroll of Always on the Battlefield (jōzai senjō) in a cursive font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
常在戦場VC4BCursive
Japanese Scroll of Always on the Battlefield (jōzai senjō) in Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase's own style (Eri's Choice)
常在戦場VD5BEri's Choice
Japanese Scroll of Always on the Battlefield (jōzai senjō) in a semi-cursive font by Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase
常在戦場VS4CSemi-Cursive

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; its date, 「三国志」 at kotobank (百科事典マイペディア: ３世紀末成立; 陳寿 233–297 in the 世界大百科事典 and Nipponica), https://kotobank.jp/word/三国志; read at the leaf in the 成都書局 print of 1871 (同治10), National Diet Library pid 2600777, scan 94, https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2600777/1/94, and in 鈴木義宗's typeset of 1885, pid 899859, scan 32, https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/899859/1/32
  2. 佩文韻府, the 鳳文館 printing of 1885 (National Diet Library pids 895780, 895783, 895784) and the 博文館 printing of 1890 (pid 903615), indexed under 戰場, 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, scan 65, excerpt only. National Diet Library pid 764495. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/764495/1/65 — with the reprints of the same text, 歴史図書社, 1977 (scan 70), and 国書刊行会, 1990 (scan 74), excerpts, from the full-text index searched within the title. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=壁書&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC&title=越後風俗志
  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 — Baba's dates and names, 「馬場信春」, デジタル版 日本人名大辞典+Plus at kotobank: 1514－1575 … 名は別に氏勝,政光,信房,信勝. https://kotobank.jp/word/馬場信春
  11. 『烈公間話』 (『列公間話』 in the library's contents), 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 室町末期-江戸初期 (late Muromachi to early Edo), 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; the 長岡 domain from 1618 (元和4), 世界大百科事典 on the same page — the ancestry, 渡辺幾治郎, 『史伝山本元帥』, 千倉書房, 1944, scan 15: 高野餘慶(元帥の五世の祖). National Diet Library pid 1058247. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1058247/1/15
  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, Berkeley, 2007, pp. 121–122. The newspaper printing: Japan Times & Advertiser, 2 September 1942, issue 15597, the column Samurai Had Duties in Peace and in War, Internet Archive sim_japan-times_japan-times-advertiser_1942-09-02_15597, the sixth of the issue's eight scanned leaves. https://archive.org/details/sim_japan-times_japan-times-advertiser_1942-09-02_15597
  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, Boulder, 2018, chapter 10, When Thinking of the Battlefield, One Cannot Be Indolent, at its close.
  25. Thomas Cleary, translator, Code of the Samurai: A Modern Translation of the Bushido Shoshinshu, Tuttle, 1999, the chapter "Military Service", pp. 77–79 by the contents, at its close.
  26. John Stevens, Budo Secrets: Teachings of the Martial Arts Masters, Shambhala, Boston, 2001, snippet view, Internet Archive budosecretsteach0000unse; the name from a Spanish edition of the 五輪書, El libro de los cinco anillos, snippet view, Internet Archive ellibrodeloscinc0000miya.
  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. Takuya Shimodaira, "The JMSDF's Resilient Power for Civil Society: Lessons from the Great East Japan Earthquake", Naval War College Review, vol. 68, no. 3, Summer 2015, from p. 64; note 22, p. 75, citing Kensuke Onishi, NGO, Jozai Senjo (Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, 2006), p. 243. Read in the issue as the Defense Technical Information Center filed it, ADA616727. https://archive.org/details/DTIC_ADA616727
  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, Sonnet 5 and Opus 5.5, Takase Studios, LLC)

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

Checked · Takase Studios (an address check by script), 2026-10-27, citations — every reference with a web address opened and the quoted words looked for at each, with controls that must fail and did; the dictionary pages answered as the history states, the 1931 city history's list found unnumbered and running past eighteen, the 烈公間話 page head and two printings of the 佩文韻府 corrected, and the 1895 journal readable only in the library's excerpts, as the history says · two fresh-context readers (Claude), 2026-10-27, every claim in the page's summary block traced to its source, claim by claim: round 1 failed from both readers on wrong facts, each conceded at the source, among them the 1931 city history's list counted as eighteen articles, the admiral Yonai called navy minister and the kendō master the caption does not name; round 2 passed from both with no wrong fact, with wordings corrected in the pass, among them the oldest witness scoped to the searches that found it, the forty years in the navy given to 山本, the 1923 editor's source named as a friend's letter, and the Baba passage dated by the 1894 print it is read in · 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.