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決して諦めない kesshite akiramenai Never Give Up

決して諦めない (kesshite akiramenai), never give up, is a plain Japanese sentence of resolve. It is in print in its plain form by 1918, of the French army, and its English is not Churchill's. This study follows the English to Tupper's ballad of the 1840s, and the two senses of 諦める inside the Japanese.

Japanese Scroll of Never Give Up (kesshite akiramenai) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Never Give Up決して諦めないkesshite akiramenai

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Abstract

決して諦めない, kesshite akiramenai, never give up, is a plain Japanese sentence of resolve, and its English is not Churchill's: never give up is the refrain of a ballad by Martin Farquhar Tupper, reprinted in American papers by 1845, while at Harrow in 1941 Churchill said never give in. The Japanese is in print by 1915, and in its plain form by 1918, in a magazine's account of the French army. In 1922 a translator of Maeterlinck used it for the opposite thing, a devotion that will never be resigned, and the two senses of 諦める, to give up and to resign oneself, sit inside the sentence still.

Overview

The sense. A resolution with no subject: never give up. It is a sentence, not a set phrase; no dictionary opened enters it.

The words. 決して kesshite with a negative is never, by no means; the 日本国語大辞典's first example of that use is from 1779, and of 決して meaning surely, with no negative, from 1733 [1]. 諦める akirameru is もう希望や見込みがないと思ってやめる。断念する, to stop because one sees no hope, in the デジタル大辞泉, and 仕方がないと思い切る, to resign oneself, since nothing can be done, in the 日本国語大辞典, first cited from a puppet play of about 1693 [2]. The 日本国語大辞典 enters あきらめる a second time, under 明, to brighten or to make clear: in the 万葉集 it is to clear the heart, and from the Heian period on, to make a matter clear, a sense that runs through the Edo period [3]. The character is the Chinese 諦, to examine closely, clear, true; its gloss to give up is, in the character dictionary's words, 国語では, in Japanese [4]. In Buddhism the character is read tai and means truth, as in the Four Noble Truths [4]; that is a different word written with the same character.

The text in English. Never give up renders the sentence word for word: 決して, never; 諦めない, not give up. What the English does not carry is the second sense of 諦める, to resign oneself, which the Japanese keeps inside the word.

The historical record

1845. Tupper's ballad. Never give up! it is wiser and better / Always to hope than once to despair: three stanzas by the English poet Martin Farquhar Tupper, each opening and closing on the refrain, in the Scientific American of 25 September 1845 and in other American papers that month [5]. Tupper wrote in 1886 that the ballad had no fewer than eight musical settings, and that on his first American tour, in 1851, he found it printed anonymously on the ward doors of a Philadelphia asylum, where the doctor had seen the verses, anonymous, in a newspaper, and judging them a good moral dose of hopefulness even for the half insane, placed them on every door [6]. The watchword was his before it was anyone's motto.

1915. A young man beaten. The oldest print of the sentence in any form that the National Diet Library's full-text index returns is emphatic, with は: in a story in 三田文学 of August 1915, reprinted in 小山内薫's selected works of 1928, a young man crushed by the world resolves to bear himself well, 前のやうに、決して諦めるとは言はない。決して諦めはしないが、男らしい忍耐と大量とを以て, I would not say, as before, that I give up. I will never give up; but with a man's patience and generosity he will face the woman and her parents [7].

1918. The French army. The oldest print of the plain form the index returns is in a magazine, the 極東時報, in October 1918, written in kana: the French army, the more it is beaten the more its spring fills, 少しも落膽しない, never disheartened, 决してあきらめない, never giving up, thrown out again and again and attacking again [8]. It is Japanese prose about an army that does not give up, twenty-three years before Harrow.

1919. The other sense. The next is a tragic novel of 1919, 和田天華's 茨の道: お柳, deeply devoted to her parents, if forced against her will, 決して諦めぬとは云ふまい, would not say she will never resign herself to it [9]. Here 諦める is the 日本国語大辞典's resign oneself, not give up.

1922. A translator's resignation. In Maeterlinck's essay Portrait de femme in Le Double Jardin (1904), the woman's dévouement et son sacrifice ne seront jamais résignés; ils ne s'abandonneront jamais à la douceur perfide du malheur [10]. The English of the same year reads her devotion and sacrifice will never be resigned, will never abandon themselves to the perfidious sweetness of sorrow [11]. 鷲尾浩's Japanese of 1922 reads 彼女の獻身と犧牲とは決して諦めないであらう、決して悲哀の二心ある甘美さに身を委ねない [12]: its 悲哀, sorrow, is the English word, not the French malheur, misfortune, so the translator was probably working from the English. 決して諦めない there renders never be resigned.

1926 to 1935. Japanese in its own voice. By 1926 an essay on book lovers in 中央公論 has the sentence in the modern sense: so you think they give up? They never give up, だから諦めるかと思ふと、決して諦めない [13]; the same passage is in 辰野隆's essays of 1931 [13]. A 1932 translation of a baseball manual sets it in quotation marks: 「決して諦めない」といふ事が好い外野手を作る, never giving up makes a good outfielder [14]. The novelist 岡本かの子, in a Buddhist reader of 1934, writes of faith's 決して諦めない執拗な追求力, a tenacious pursuit that never gives up [15]. In 1935 the haiku poet 荻原井泉水 puts the verb in quotation marks: 西洋人は決して「あきらめ」ない, Westerners never "give up"; they think of new tactics and press on [16].

1941. Churchill. At Harrow School on 29 October 1941: never give in, never give in, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense [17]. His verb was give in.

A reading

The Japanese sentence came into print with both of its senses at once: in 1915 and 1918 a beaten man and an army that never give up, and in 1919 a daughter who, forced, would not say she will never resign herself. The translator of 1922 chose it for résignés. By 1935 a haiku poet put the verb in quotation marks, as a thing Westerners never do. So I read 決して諦めない as refusing two things: quitting, and making peace with a loss because nothing can be done. The English keeps the first. Tupper's always to hope than once to despair comes closer to both.

Notes

References

  1. 「決して」, at kotobank: 精選版 日本国語大辞典, with the 初出 浮世草子・鬼一法眼虎の巻 (1733) and 黄表紙・無益委記 (1779). https://kotobank.jp/word/決して-489955
  2. 「諦める」, at kotobank: デジタル大辞泉; 精選版 日本国語大辞典, with the 初出 浄瑠璃・蝉丸 (1693頃). https://kotobank.jp/word/諦める-423240
  3. 「明らめる」, at kotobank: 精選版 日本国語大辞典, with the 初出 万葉集 18・4094 and the 語誌. https://kotobank.jp/word/明らめる-423239
  4. 「諦」, at kotobank: 普及版 字通; デジタル大辞泉 漢字項目; 世界大百科事典 (旧版), 真理. https://kotobank.jp/word/諦-573333
  5. Martin Farquhar Tupper, "Never Give Up!", Scientific American 1, no. 5 (25 September 1845). https://archive.org/details/sim_scientific-american_1845-09-25_1_5
  6. Martin Farquhar Tupper, My Life as an Author (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, & Rivington, 1886), ch. XXI, pp. 190–191. https://archive.org/details/mylifeasauthor00tupp
  7. 小山内薫, 新選小山内薫集, 改造社, 1928, p. 314; first printed in 三田文学 6(8), 1 August 1915, from the index's excerpt. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1175163/1/165 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/11030083
  8. 極東時報 (75), 極東時報社, October 1918, from the index's excerpt; not open outside the library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1559979
  9. 和田天華, 茨の道 : 悲劇小説 前編, 樋口隆文館, 1919, from the index's excerpt; not open. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/908285
  10. Maurice Maeterlinck, Le Double Jardin (Paris: Fasquelle, 1904), "Portrait de femme", p. 256. https://archive.org/details/ledoublejardin00maetuoft
  11. Maurice Maeterlinck, The Double Garden, tr. Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (London: George Allen, 1904), "Portrait of a Lady", p. 218. https://archive.org/details/doublegarde00maetuoft
  12. モーリス・メーテルリンク (tr. 鷲尾浩), マーテルリンク全集 第3巻, 冬夏社, 1922, p. 249. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/962806/1/414
  13. 中央公論 41(9), 1 September 1926, from the index's excerpt; 辰野隆, さ・え・ら, 白水社, 1931, the same passage, from the index's excerpt; neither open. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/10232141 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1176316
  14. カール・エル・ラングレン (Carl L. Lundgren), tr. 藤田信男, 野球読本 : 守備及び攻撃の基本, 岩波書店, 1932, from the index's excerpt; not open. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1216187
  15. 岡本かの子, 仏教読本, 大東出版社, 1934, p. 226. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1050914/1/120
  16. 荻原井泉水, 俳談, 千倉書房, 1935, from the index's excerpt; not open. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1259485
  17. Winston Churchill, "Never Give In" (29 October 1941), International Churchill Society. https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1941-1945-war-leader/never-give-in/

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 · Grok 4.6 (xAI), 2026-09-06, citations of the grouped six-motto history this was split from — the bracketed paragraphs checked with web search on; none contradicted for this text; the Lab corpus counts were beyond the checker. Not re-run on the s322 amendment.

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 決して諦めない (kesshite akiramenai)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/kesshite-akiramenai.