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継続は力なり keizoku wa chikara nari Persistence Is Strength

継続は力なり (keizoku wa chikara nari) means: keep at it, and it becomes strength. A member of the Diet quoted it as a known saying in 1918, the oldest use the National Diet Library's full-text search finds. The Buddhist teacher often named as its author made it half of a couplet of his own.

Japanese Scroll of Persistence Is Strength (keizoku wa chikara nari) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Persistence Is Strength継続は力なりkeizoku wa chikara nari

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

継続は力なり, continuing is strength, is the Japanese saying that whatever you keep at, however small, turns into results; the dictionary gives it no author and no source [1]. The oldest use of it that the National Diet Library's full-text search returns is a speech in the House of Representatives on 19 March 1918, which already calls it 所謂, what people say, and through the 1920s and 1930s it was the motto of the children's storyteller Kurushima Takehiko 久留島武彦 and of teachers [2][3][4]. The lay Shin Buddhist teacher the web names as its author, Sumioka Kyōfū 住岡狂風, later Sumioka Yakō 住岡夜晃, set it as the second half of a couplet of his own, 念願は人格を決定す, 繼續は力なり, what you aspire to decides who you become; continuing is strength, in an essay he signed in his movement's magazine in December 1925 [5]. I read it as an anonymous saying of the Meiji and Taishō years, made on the pattern of 知識は力なり, knowledge is power, and I hold its three early senses side by side.

Overview

The sense. デジタル大辞泉: わずかなことでも、続けて行えば成果となってあらわれる。小さな努力も、続けてやれば成功する。, even a small thing, if you keep doing it, shows itself as results; a small effort, if you keep at it, succeeds. The dictionary gives no source, no author and no date [1].

The words. 継続 is continuing: 日本国語大辞典's first sense is 以前から行なわれていた事が引き続いて行なわれること, something done before being carried on, with a first example from 1901 [6]. 力 is strength, power, and なり, is. Before the war it was printed in the older characters, 繼續は力なり, and in official prose 繼續ハ力ナリ [2][7].

The text in English. The oldest English rendering read for this history is in William Reed's Shodo of 1989: Persistence brings power [8]. JMdict, the open dictionary that most English-language tools draw on, glosses it perseverance makes one stronger and slow but steady wins the race [9].

The historical record

1918. 所謂 in the Diet. On 19 March 1918 the House of Representatives took up a motion, 建議案 no. 46, on better treatment for municipal officials, moved by Arakawa Gorō 荒川五郎 and three others [2]. Arakawa, born in Hiroshima prefecture in 1865, sat in the house from 1904 [10]. Speaking for the motion, he said: 今日ハ世間一般ニ多年ノ勤續者ヲ表彰スル風ガ行ハレツヽアリマス、是モ所謂繼續ハ力ナリ、其繼續ノ勤勉ガ之ヲ奬勵シテ、其事業ノ進步發達ヲ圖ルニ外ナラナイト思ヒマス, nowadays it is the general custom to honor those who have served many years; this too is what they call "continuing is strength": I take it to be nothing but encouraging that continued diligence so as to advance the work [2]. A municipal journal printed the speech two months later [11]. 所謂 says he took the words as a known saying in March 1918. This is the oldest use the National Diet Library's full-text search returns for the saying in any of its forms; that index is not complete for the magazines of the Meiji and Taishō years, so the date is the instrument's earliest hit, not the saying's birth (see Notes). Here the strength is that of long service: years in one post.

1924 to 1936. Kurushima's motto, and his own form. Kurushima, who lived from 1874 to 1960, founded the お伽倶楽部 in 1906 and carried the telling of children's stories across the country [12]. In May 1927 a moral-culture journal reports that he gave the words continuing is strength as a strong motto for the future of our Toyooka University [3]. A volume of tributes, 『いぬはりこ』 of 1936, calls the words his own motto; one contributor kept by their seat, as a motto, the words continuing is strength that he had brushed on Chinese paper and handed over; another had heard that the motto he had held for twenty years put 勢力, force, where the saying has 力 [4]. The National Diet Library's index has 繼續は勢力なり first in a preface of 1924 [13]. His biographer's chronology of 1986 records that he said 継続は勢力なり, and also 継続は努力なり, and at the last stressed 継続は力なり [14], and a writer in a children's-culture journal remembered, in 1985, that wherever he went he was asked to brush something and always wrote 継続は勢力なり, in a very fine hand [15].

1925 to 1932. Sumioka's couplet. The movement 真宗光明団 published a monthly, 『光明』. The movement's chronology says its founder issued its first leaflet in November 1918 under the pen name 住岡狂風, and renamed himself 夜晃 in 1936 [16]; the Buddhist yearbook for 1933 gives 住岡狂風's birth as 15 February 1895, the date the movement gives for 住岡夜晃 [17]. The magazine's issue of 15 December 1925, vol. 7 no. 12, by its masthead, carries an essay signed 住岡狂風, 「事實の權威」, the authority of fact [5]. Under the heading 彼の信條, his creed, it draws a man who keeps to his own road: the world laughs at him as ignorant, those around him call him mad, a crowd follows him and worships him and then stones him, he goes three years in summer clothes through the winters, and 彼は依然として彼の道を急いだ, still he hurried on along his road [5]. Then: 彼の信條は、『念願は人格を決定す』『繼續は力なり』といふことである。, his creed is "what you aspire to decides who you become" and "continuing is strength" [5]. The next section, 眞の力, true strength, ends: 眞の力となるものは七轉八起きする心の力のみである。, the only thing that becomes true strength is the strength of a heart that falls seven times and rises eight [5]. In the issue of December 1928, which marks the movement's tenth year, a member of the movement, Kamase Haruyoshi 釜瀬春芳, sets the couplet at the head of a paragraph of his 「追憶の記」, a record of remembrance, and calls it 狂風氏の唯一の訓言, Mr. Kyōfū's one precept [18]. The magazine's issue of 15 February 1931 prints it again in an unsigned article, 「河内支部の創始者」, the founder of the Kawachi branch: of a branch six years old, and of the frail wife of the family that keeps it, it says that the whole of the bodhisattva Hōzō's vow has become her strength, and then 念願は人格を決定す。經續は力なり。 [19]. That print sets 經, a wrong character, under the ruby けいぞく, which is 繼續. The movement's site serves twenty-five issues of the magazine from 1921 to 1931, and the couplet is in three of them; the 1925 issue is the oldest of the three (see Notes) [20]. In February 1932 Sumioka published 『最後の日』 [16][7]. There the couplet closes a passage set as verse. It follows a retelling of the monk Ichikurō 市九郎, who cut a tunnel through the rock at the 山國川 alone while the villagers mocked him [7], a retelling close, sentence by sentence, to Kikuchi Kan 菊池寛's story 『恩讐の彼方に』 of 1919 [21]. Then Sumioka writes his own ladder of years: 先づ狂人扱ひにされる。, first you are treated as a madman; 一年繼續する。依然としてそれだ。, a year you continue: still the same; the bystanders fall silent, sympathy turns to kindness, someone begins to admire, it becomes a question for thinking people, true fellows come, then helpers who give their hearts; 十年たつてもまだ、誰をも動かし得ない事業、それは人間に用事のない事業だ。, a work that after ten years still moves no one is a work that humans have no need of. And: 念願は人格を決定す。繼續は力なり。 [7]. In each of these prints the strength is that of a person or a cause carried through years of scorn, and 念願, the aspiration, comes first.

1933 to 1942. A motto in the schools. From the 1930s the National Diet Library's index returns the saying in teachers' journals and school books every year. In 1933 a boy writes in a psychology journal that his teacher said continuing is strength, and that since he has never kept anything up he has no strength [22]. In 1937 a teacher writes in an education journal that unity is strength and continuing is strength are what he always tells his pupils [23], and a report of the Ministry of Education, printed in 1939, lists keeping the two mottoes, unity is strength and continuing is strength, among the measures of a higher school [24]. The pair stands together again in 1942, when the pupils of the youth educator Magami Kōtarō 馬上孝太郎 remember them as his mottoes [25]; in 1953 a colleague wrote that Magami had made the motto continuing is strength to encourage the young [26], a claim of authorship that the 1918 所謂 is against. In 1941 the teachers' guide to a textbook for the youth schools heads a section of its lesson on keeping a diary 繼續は力の泉である, continuing is the spring of strength, and glosses: 物事を辛抱强く續けて行ふことは力のみなもととなる。日記を續けて記すことはやがて作文力の養成となり、精神的には意志力の鍛鍊となる。, carrying a thing on patiently becomes the source of strength; keeping a diary daily in time builds the power to write, and in spirit trains the will, and adds that it is よい言葉, a good saying [27]. Here the strength is that of a daily habit, the sense the dictionary gives today [1].

After 1945. The couplet in its own line. The couplet kept its place in the movement. In a text printed in his selected works of 1971, Sumioka recalls how many times, as the costs came on one after another, he meant to stop with that month, and how each time the voice that rose from this creed, the couplet, stood him up again [28]. The movement's biography of him (2008) places this in the magazine's first years, from 1919 to 1923 [29]; that is the biographer's reading of an undated recollection, which the 1925 print neither confirms nor rules out. The movement's history, 年輪, sets the couplet as a cry at its tenth-anniversary convention, in December 1928 [30], and the magazine's issue of that month carries the couplet as his precept [18]. In the same selected works a poem to the young, young people, be strong, quotes the couplet in quotation marks and says that true strength lies in carrying a right aspiration through [28]. His pupils remember it as the movement's banner and his brushed words [31]. Through his pupil Matsuda Fujiko 松田藤子 it became the motto of 作陽学園, the school she founded at Tsuyama in 1930: she wrote that she founded it on those words, given to her by her teacher [31][32]; that account was printed decades later. For the school's fiftieth year, in 1980, she set the couplet on a stone, with his name [33].

1993 to 2014. Two authors. In 1994 the National Diet Library's reference desk, asked who first said 継続は力なり, wrote that it could not find a source; it had found the saying in one dictionary, 『成語林』 (1993), without a source, guessed that it was a Western saying brought into Japanese after Meiji, and found in A Dictionary of American Proverbs (1992) the Illinois proverb Continuity is the father of success [34][35]. A later answer in the same record cites Kusayanagi Daizō 草柳大蔵's 『継続は力なり』 of 1993 for the claim that the words were a school rule of the 大分 evening middle school with which the teacher Hiramatsu Oriji 平松折次 was connected, the source again unknown, and notes that Hiramatsu's memorial volume, 『継続ハ力』 (1985), does not give one [34]. Weblio's dictionary of practical expressions, in an entry of December 2014, names both men, Hiramatsu as an educator of the Taishō period and Sumioka as a religious figure of the Meiji period [36]; Sumioka was born in 1895 and began his movement in 1918 [16]. The Japanese Wikipedia article on the saying cites Weblio for both names and calls Sumioka 浄土宗 [37]; his movement is 真宗, Shin Buddhist [16]. Both names are later attributions of a saying already called 所謂 in 1918 [2].

1989 to today. The English. William Reed's Shodo: The Art of Coordinating Mind, Body and Brush (1989), a book on the brush written in English, gives the saying as no. 26 of a gallery of his own brushed works: Keizoku wa Chikara Nari. Persistence brings power. His comment reads it through training in an art: continuity is the source of power, and … the alternative is stagnation and death [8]. Zen and Aikido (1992) has a chapter headed Keizoku wa chikara nari [38]. JMdict glosses it perseverance makes one stronger and slow but steady wins the race [9]. The second gloss is the tortoise and the hare, a race won by a slower runner. None of the Japanese senses read for this history is a race: the long service of 1918, the person or cause carried through scorn of 1925 to 1932, the diary of 1941.

A reading

The saying is older than both men the web names for it. When Arakawa used it in the Diet in 1918 he called it 所謂, and nothing read for this history puts a maker's name on 繼續は力なり before 1953, when a colleague of Magami said he made it, a quarter-century too late [2][26]. In 1928 the movement's magazine calls the couplet Sumioka's one precept, which says whose watchword it was there, not who made its second half [18]. I read the saying as anonymous, of the years between Meiji and the 1930s, and I read its shape as a sign of where it came from: X は力なり is the pattern of 知識は力なり, knowledge is power, which a translated teachers' book called an old proverb in 1876, and of 團結は力なり, unity is strength, called the motto of the international socialist parties in 1911 [39][40]. 繼續は力なり is the same sentence with a new subject, and the pairing of unity is strength with continuing is strength in the schools of the 1930s shows the two were heard as a set [23][24]. No English or Chinese line read for this history is its source: perseverance is power is an English maxim in print by 1838, but no Japanese witness read renders it [41]. This is a reading of the form, not a found source, and I sign it as that.

What I read in the early witnesses is three senses, not one. In the Diet the strength is that of many years in one post. In Sumioka's couplet it is a person or a cause held through mockery, and he puts the aspiration first: what you continue matters because 念願 has decided who you are; in 1925 he names that strength at once as 七轉八起き, falling seven times and rising eight. In the 1941 textbook it is the daily diary, and that is the sense the dictionary keeps today [1]. The English slow but steady wins the race fits none of them; persistence brings power, Reed's line, fits all three. Signed, 典.

Notes

What stays open. No use of the saying older than 1918 was found for this history, and the issues of 『光明』 that carry the couplet were not available to it, so an older witness may exist.

Kurushima's twenty years. One contributor to the 1936 tribute volume had heard that 繼續は勢力なり had been his motto for twenty years, which would carry it back to about 1916 [4]. That is hearsay printed in his honor, and no print of those years read for this history carries it.

The magazine's other issues. 『光明』 is served by its movement's site in twenty-five issues, from vol. 3 (1921) to vol. 13 (1931), with gaps [20]. They have no text layer; for this history they were searched by a machine reading of the page images, which pointed to the couplet in vol. 7 no. 12 (1925), vol. 10 no. 12 (1928) and vol. 13 no. 2 (1931), and each of those pages was then read at the image itself [5][18][19]. A machine reading of vertical type in these scans misses words, so the absence of the couplet from the other issues is not established; its presence in those three is. The issues before December 1925 that the site serves are vol. 3 nos. 6 and 9 (1921) and vol. 7 no. 11 (1925).

The tunnel. Sumioka's retelling of Ichikurō in 『最後の日』 quotes Kikuchi's story almost word for word, the villagers' mockery and the twenty-two ken of tunnel after nine years among them; the ladder of years and the couplet are not in Kikuchi's text [7][21].

The English maxim. Francis Lieber's Manual of Political Ethics (1838) writes that a citizen should be ever mindful that repeated and uninterrupted action may compensate for the absence of great power, and that perseverance is power, and may be and has frequently been employed in the service of wicked ends [41]. The maxim ran on in English books for boys of the 1850s. It is set here as a parallel, not a source.

Sources not seen

The issues of 『光明』 the movement's site does not serve, among them every issue of vols. 1–2, 4–6 and 11–12 (1919–1920, 1922–1924, 1929–1930) and all but two of vol. 7 (1925); and the served issues at their pages, which were searched only by the machine reading.

『新住岡夜晃選集』 (2018), whose volumes are arranged by year from 1918; it would date the couplet's first print in his writings. 『住岡夜晃全集』 and 『住岡夜晃選集』 (1971) at their pages, and 『讃嘆の詩』 in any edition, for the first printing of the poem to the young.

西川芳渓, 『すぐ役に立つ学校歌劇』 (1924), at its page, for who wrote the preface that has 繼續は勢力なり; the National Diet Library did not serve its image.

草柳大蔵, 『継続は力なり』 (1993), and 平松折次's memorial volume, 『継続ハ力』 (1985), at their pages.

『成語林』 (1993), the first dictionary the 1994 reference answer found to carry the saying.

The snippet-view witnesses of 1927 to 1953 at their pages, which a reader outside Japan cannot open.

Zen and Aikido (1992) at its page.

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

References

  1. 「継続は力なり」, デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/継続は力なり-2876580
  2. 衆議院事務局 編, 『帝国議会衆議院議事摘要』 第40回, 1918, p. 1090, 建議案 四六, scan 563, at the National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1335183/1/563
  3. 『弘道』 (420), May 1927 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/6057962
  4. 安倍季雄・樫葉勇 編, 『いぬはりこ』, 1936 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1230228
  5. 住岡狂風, 「事實の權威」, 『光明』 7 (12), 光明團本部, 15 December 1925, pp. 56–62, the couplet on p. 59 (PDF page 31), at 真宗光明団. https://koumyoudan.jp/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/第７巻第12号.pdf
  6. 「継続」, 精選版日本国語大辞典 and デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/継続-488967
  7. 住岡狂風, 『最後の日』, 光明団叢書 第1輯, 1932, pp. 36–39, scans 25–26, at the National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1054759/1/26
  8. William Reed, Shodo: The Art of Coordinating Mind, Body and Brush, Japan Publications, 1989, p. 184, no. 26 and Fig. 12-26, read on the house's shelf.
  9. 「継続は力なり」, JMdict, at Jisho. https://jisho.org/word/継続は力なり
  10. 「荒川五郎」, 新訂 政治家人名事典 明治～昭和, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/荒川五郎-1674967
  11. 『自治機関』 19 (220), May 1918 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/3551337
  12. 「久留島武彦」, 改訂新版 世界大百科事典, 日本大百科全書 and デジタル版 日本人名大辞典+Plus, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/久留島武彦-1072625
  13. 西川芳渓, 『すぐ役に立つ学校歌劇』, 1924 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1716324
  14. 勢家肇, 『久留島武彦・年譜』, 1986 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12462870
  15. 『子どもの文化』 17 (7), July 1985 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/7949618
  16. 「住岡夜晃」, with its 年譜, 真宗光明団. https://koumyoudan.jp/yakou-sumioka/
  17. 『仏教年鑑』 昭和8年版 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1213972
  18. 釜瀬春芳, 「追憶の記」, 『光明』 10 (12), 光明團本部, 15 December 1928, pp. 24 ff., the couplet on p. 26 (PDF page 15), at 真宗光明団. https://koumyoudan.jp/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/第10巻第12号.pdf
  19. 「河内支部の創始者」, 『光明』 13 (2), 光明団本部, 15 February 1931, p. 16 (PDF page 10), at 真宗光明団. https://koumyoudan.jp/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/13−2_compressed.pdf
  20. 「『光明』誌 アーカイブ」, 真宗光明団. https://koumyoudan.jp/koumyou-archive/
  21. 菊池寛, 『恩讐の彼方に』 (1919), at Aozora Bunko (base text 1988). https://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000083/files/496_19866.html
  22. 『教育心理研究』 8 (7), July 1933 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1894211
  23. 『帝国教育』 (709), November 1937 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1570667
  24. 文部省 編, 『高等諸学校ニ於ケル国民精神総動員実施状況』, 1939 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1685233
  25. 馬上先生教育功労記念会 編, 『記念志』, 1942 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1034871
  26. 『教育心理』 1 (1), 1953 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2279187
  27. 戸田貞三・土井不曇, 『青年学校教科書 教授参考書 普通学科 1』, 1941, pp. 60–61, scan 37, at the National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1022430/1/37
  28. 住岡夜晃, 『若い友のために』 (住岡夜晃選集 第1巻), 1971 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12272754
  29. 堤日出雄, 『住岡夜晃先生と真宗光明団』, 真宗光明団 教師会, 2008, p. 28, at 真宗光明団. https://koumyoudan.jp/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/162954a13db17acb0f434a4b908ecd66.pdf
  30. 住岡夜晃, 住岡夜晃選集 第3巻, 1971, 「年輪」 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12270595
  31. 『住岡夜晃先生』 下巻, 1981 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12272618
  32. 『リクルートキャリアガイダンス』, 1991 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/7946746
  33. 福田景門, 『石の声 みまさか文学碑百選』, 1986 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12502060
  34. 「「継続は力なり」の言葉の出典。」, レファレンス協同データベース, D2001F5105, 国立国会図書館, quoting 『図書館協力通信』 44 (July 1994), p. 4. https://crd.ndl.go.jp/reference/detail?page=ref_view&id=1000014125
  35. Wolfgang Mieder, Stewart A. Kingsbury and Kelsie B. Harder, eds., A Dictionary of American Proverbs, Oxford University Press, 1992, s.v. continuity, read in the 1996 paperback issue on the house's shelf.
  36. 「継続は力なり」, 実用日本語表現辞典, at Weblio. https://www.weblio.jp/content/継続は力なり
  37. 「継続は力なり」, Wikipedia (Japanese). https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/継続は力なり
  38. Shigeo Kamata and Kenji Shimizu, Zen and Aikido, Aiki News, 1992 (snippet view, Internet Archive). https://archive.org/details/zenaikido0000unse
  39. ジョハン・エス・ハート, 『学室要論』, 1876 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/808208
  40. 『実業の世界』 8 (6), 15 March 1911 (snippet view, National Diet Library). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/10292815
  41. Francis Lieber, Manual of Political Ethics, Part I, Boston, 1838, § XIV, at the Internet Archive. https://archive.org/details/manualpolitical00liebgoog

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Opus 5.5, Takase Studios, LLC)

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

Not yet reviewed.

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 継続は力なり (keizoku wa chikara nari)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/keizoku-wa-chikara-nari.