来た見た勝った kita mita katta I came, I saw, I conquered
来た見た勝った (kita mita katta), I came, I saw, I won, is Caesar's veni, vidi, vici, three verbs in Latin and three in Japanese. The one page to 1946 in the National Diet Library writes them in the classical perfect, in a 1931 guide to seduction that misspells the Latin.
Abstract
来た見た勝った, I came, I saw, I won, renders veni, vidi, vici, Caesar's three words on his victory at Zela in 47 BC: three verbs in Latin and three in Japanese. It is the headword of the Japanese reference works at kotobank; the one page to 1946 in the National Diet Library writes the classical perfect, in a 1931 guide to seduction that misspells the Latin.
Overview
The sense. Caesar's three verbs, as terse in Japanese as in Latin.
The words. 勝つ katsu, to win, is what the Japanese renderings of vici use, since Japanese has no conquered in one syllable [1].
The text in English. I came, I saw, I conquered is the received English.
The historical record
47 BC, and 1931. Veni, vidi, vici. Caesar's three words on the victory at Zela over Pharnaces of Pontus: the encyclopedia reports two ancient sources and quotes neither: Plutarch's Life of Caesar, which has Caesar write them to Amantius, a friend in Rome, and Suetonius's Julius, which has them carried as a placard in his Pontic triumph [2]. The three Japanese reference works on one platform inherit the disagreement, one giving a letter to a friend, one a report to Rome, one a report to the Senate. The modern Japanese, 来た見た勝った, is the dictionaries' headword [1]; the one page to 1946 in the National Diet Library, under three spellings [3], writes the classical perfect and misspells the Latin, in a guide to seduction praising the directness of ancient courtship: 希臘時代はなんといつても、例のVini,vidi,vici(來たり見たり勝ちたり)といふ思想で、非常に心持が簡潔だつたから, in the Greek age it was, after all, that "veni, vidi, vici" way of thinking, and feeling was very simple [4].
Today. What a rendering must keep is the three bare verbs and their tense.
A reading
Caesar's three verbs are as terse in Japanese as in Latin, and the Japanese reference works carry them in the modern past. The one witness before 1946 is a 1931 seducer quoting Caesar in the classical perfect, with the Latin misspelled and the era wrong.
References
- 「来た見た勝った」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/来た見た勝った-3210292
- "Veni, vidi, vici", English Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veni,_vidi,_vici
- National Diet Library Digital Collections, next-generation full-text search on 来た見た勝った, 来たり見たり勝てり and 来たり見たり勝ちたり, one book, 1931, to 1946. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/
- 畑耕一, 女たらしの昇天, 新思想社, 1931, scan 42. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1170982/1/42