押忍の精神 osu no seishin Spirit of Perseverance
Abstract
押忍の精神, the spirit of osu, is a byword for endurance, in none of the dictionaries opened here but in print from 1968 in the National Diet Library's full-text index, in many hands: cheer squads and students, a police magazine, a book on motorcycle gangs, and karate from 1974. 大山倍達 (Mas Oyama), the founder of Kyokushin karate, is not the first in print with it in that index, but from 1983 to 1994 his books take it up: one of 1987 calls it the spirit of endurance, and books of 1991 and 1992 print it in numbered articles, and in English, as far as the Internet Archive's full-text search reaches, it is printed from 1995 as the new motto he gave his organization before he died, the spirit of perseverance. Its first word, the greeting おす, is written 押忍 with the characters push and endure, which were already a way of writing a verb of enduring, 押し a prefix to it, in a record in kanbun with an entry that goes on to 1699, a volume of a Man'yōshū commentary printed in 1891, and a prose work of 1909. In the same index the written word comes into sight in 1966, and as the title of a cheer squad's bulletin by 1967, and in 1971 the essayist 丸谷才一 writes that the Takushoku University cheer squad's organ bears that title, and where the spoken word began is disputed, in several tellings: one, the navy's clipped good-morning, may be what a snippet of 1970 touches, where words about skipping the words in between stand near a mention of men from the Imperial Navy.
Overview
The sense. Endurance under pressure: the hall's greeting turned into a byword. In 大山倍達's words, 押忍の精神は忍耐の精神であり, the spirit of osu is the spirit of endurance [1]. Modern Japanese, plain and correct: about sixty years in print in that index, not scripture, and not ancient.
The words. 押忍, osu, is the greeting shouted in karate and other halls. デジタル大辞泉 heads it as the interjection おす, 若い男性どうしが出会ったときに使うあいさつ語。親しい間柄で使われる。おっす, a greeting used when young men meet; used between familiars; ossu, and adds 「押忍」とも当てて書く, also written 押忍, the characters assigned to it (当てて): the dictionary treats the two characters, push and endure, as a spelling fitted to the spoken word [2]. 日本国語大辞典's earliest quotation for the greeting is a line of dialogue in 野呂邦暢's 『草のつるぎ』 of 1973: 「『やあ』とぼくはいった。『おっす』と三人はいった」, "Hi," I said. "Ossu," said the three [3]. 精神, seishin, is spirit in the ordinary sense.
The text in English. Word for word it is the spirit of osu. The English books that print it render it both ways: Howard Collins in 1995 as Osu-No-Seishin the spirit of perseverance, the will of persistence [4], and Alexander Bennett in 2023 as Oyama's mantra of osu no seishin — the "spirit of osu" [5]. Perseverance reads the characters of 押忍, which Bennett glosses push and persevere [5]; 押忍 said aloud is a greeting.
The historical record
The characters before the greeting. 押忍 together had a meaning in writing before it was a greeting: a verb of enduring. The 日本国語大辞典 heads the same characters with 堪 as おしこらえる, 押堪, notes 「おし」は接頭語, oshi is a prefix, and glosses it じっと我慢する。忍耐する, to bear it patiently; to endure, first quoted from 1660 [3]; oshi-shinobu is no headword in the dictionaries opened here, and its 忍ぶ is つらいことをがまんする。じっとこらえる。耐える, to bear what is hard; to hold it in; to endure, in the デジタル大辞泉 [2]. The characters on their own are 押, read おす and おさえる, push and press down, and 忍, がまんする。じっとこらえる, endure [2]. A record in kanbun, 『豊山伝通記』, printed in the 『大日本仏教全書』, writes it in an entry that goes on to the spring of 1699: 隆光聞之。悲歎不得押忍, 隆光 heard of it, and could not hold down his grief [6]. 鹿持雅澄's commentary on the Man'yōshū, 『万葉集古義』, completed about 1840–44, in the Imperial Household Ministry's printing, in a volume dated 1891, glosses a word of a verse of the Man'yōshū's fourteenth book as 押忍て, with the reading オシコタヘ, oshikotaete, bearing it out, and adds 今俗にもいふ言なり, a word still said in common speech today [7]. Elsewhere the kana ending gives the other reading, oshi-shinobu: a passage signed 福地櫻痴, quoted in a teachers' examination book of 1932, writes 胸の痛の碎くるばかりなるを押忍びて, holding down a pain that all but broke her heart [8], and a prose work of 1909 writes 熱と苦痛を押忍んで, bearing the heat and the pain, with the ruby おし beside the first character, whose strokes, at the scan's resolution, could also be 抑 [9]. So the characters push and endure were already a pair, read oshi-kotaeru or oshi-shinobu; the second is the reading the halls' explanation gives.
1966 to 1973. The greeting in print. In the National Diet Library's full-text index, which reaches into books under copyright but shows them only as snippets, the written word 押忍 comes into view in 1966. In a weekly magazine of 16 December 1966, in an issue whose contents list a piece headed 聞け、応援団諸君!, listen, cheer squads!, a 監督 explains 「押忍」 as a variant of 「オシシノブ」, oshi-shinobu; who he is, and of what, the snippet does not show [10]. A snippet of 1970 that speaks of 拓大 quotes a former 総長 from a cheer squad's bulletin titled 『押忍』, dated 四二年四月, read as Shōwa 42, April 1967 [11], and in 1971 the essayist 丸谷才一, writing about the interjection, writes that the Takushoku cheer squad's organ bears that title, without the snippets showing that the two are one bulletin: 拓大応援団の機関紙は「押忍」という題で、これを「おす」と訓む, the Takushoku cheer squad's organ is titled 押忍, and reads it osu [12]. In 1970 the same weekly has, in two snippet windows of one page, 「押忍」と書いた額, a frame with 押忍 written on it, and 中間の言葉を全部…すっとばした, skipped all the words in between; the first window has the piece 「ぐっと我 and, near it, 帝国海軍の出身者, men from the Imperial Navy, and the second the piece 慢せよ」という意味, meaning "bear it"; each runs two columns together and does not show how the pieces join [13]. A magazine of the religious body 生長の家 gives the explanation in 1973: この"オス"といふのは"押忍"と書く。すべてを押し忍ぶ、卽ち、自我を徹底的に…, this "osu" is written 押忍: to hold down and bear everything, that is, the self, thoroughly… [14]. These are what the index can see, and only as far as its snippets reach; it cannot hear speech, and the tellings below that date the spoken word put it earlier.
Where 押忍 is said to come from. The Japanese Wikipedia article, which carries a banner that its sourcing is thin, lists the tellings under 由来については諸説がある, there are various theories of the origin: that it is おはようございます clipped in the old navy; that it arose among students of the 大日本武徳会's 武道専門学校 in prewar Kyoto, for which it cites 『月刊剣道日本』 of December 1981, page 48; that おはようございます shrank by stages, おはよーっす, おわーす, おす, and the characters 押して忍ぶ, push and endure, were fitted afterward, of which the article says 自我を抑え我慢する、の意か, perhaps in the sense of suppressing the self and enduring; and 大森敏範's claim, in his 2016 book 『押忍とは何か?』, that it began at 拓殖大学 before the war from a sumo word for withstanding a push [15]. The article's first version, of 2006, already gave the Kyoto telling and the push-and-endure gloss. The tellings disagree on the place and the mechanism. In the article the Kyoto telling cites 『月刊剣道日本』 of 1981 and 大森's cites his book of 2016, and the navy telling cites nothing; the 1970 snippet above has words about skipping the words in between near a mention of navy men, without showing how the two join. 大森 has since written a journal article of 2019 whose title asks why the characters 押忍 were fitted to the spoken オス, and, with Alexander Bennett, an English book on the word in 2024; neither is read here [16]. Bennett's own guide of 2023 gives two theories, the first reaching the highlight only as its last words, Japanese Naval Academy in the early twentieth century, the second an origin in Kyokushin karate, and goes on: Recent research, however, shows that its origins can be traced to Takushoku University [5].
1968 to 1994. The phrase, and Mas Oyama. 押忍の精神 is in print from 1968, in a job guide, where the words stand just before a car salesman's job title and his piece [17]. Through the 1970s the index has it in many hands: a prefectural police magazine's short notes on persons in 1975 and 1978 [18], and in 1979 a speaker in a book titled 『暴走族100人の疾走』, on motorcycle gangs, who quotes a saying ending これぞすなわち押忍の精神, this, namely, is the spirit of osu, and calls it 先輩がオレたちを教育する時の方針みたいなもの, something like the line our seniors took in training us [19]. In karate it is there from 1974, when a weekly magazine has someone crediting 空手之道の押忍の精神, the spirit of osu of the way of karate [20]; a university history of 1977 has 根性と勇気を持つ押忍の精神、空手道の真髄が立派に披露された, the spirit of osu, which has guts and courage, the heart of karate, was finely shown, followed by its karate club, わが山梨学院空手道部 [21]; and 山崎照朝, in a book of 1980 subtitled 空手に賭けた青春, a youth staked on karate, writes "押忍"の精神そのままに、堪え難きを耐え、忍び難きを忍び, in the very spirit of "osu", bearing the unbearable, enduring the unendurable [22]. At Takushoku a book of 1977 edited by 拓殖大学集団未来 has the line 拓大精神の高揚とか、押忍の精神とか、一体これは何なのだ, raising the Takushoku spirit, the spirit of osu: what on earth is all this? [23]; and in a book of 1987 subtitled 実録応援団, a true record of cheer squads, a speaker tells 君たち, you, that 『押忍』の精神 will be explained once they have joined, 入団 [24]. In the index, 大山倍達's own books take it up from 1983. In that year he writes that talk turned to 「押忍の精神」, and that 外国では「オスー」が単なるあいさつ程度にしか思われていない場合があ…, abroad, "osū" is sometimes taken for no more than a greeting [25]; in 1987 he defines it: 押忍の精神は忍耐の精神であり、この「忍ぶ心」こそが社会の調和を実現させる力と…, the spirit of osu is the spirit of endurance, and this "enduring heart" … the power that brings about harmony in society … [1]; in 1991 it is in a numbered article, 一、吾々は、押忍の精神を保ち、日々刻々何処においても戦場に立つ者の心構えを持つこと, we keep the spirit of osu, and at every moment and in every place hold the mind of one who stands on a battlefield, on a page where another article beginning 一、吾々は follows the words 共同宿舎である, is a shared dormitory [26]; in 1992 another numbered item says to fight a match 押忍の精神で, in the spirit of osu [27]; and a book of his published in July 1994 has 「押忍」の精神、すなわち極真精神, the spirit of osu, that is to say the Kyokushin spirit [28]. In English, Howard Collins writes in 1995 that Oyama died on 26 April 1994 and that before he died he gave the organization a new motto, Osu-No-Seishin the spirit of perseverance, and that do not give up is the essence of Osu-No-Seishin and Kyokushin [4]; Mike Lorden in 2000 writes of the true spirit of osu and that Osu is derived from the Japanese term oshi shinobu [29]. Outside the halls it stays a phrase for what training teaches: in 2011 the magazine of the Japan Science and Technology Agency, in a profile of a researcher named on the page as 橋本さん, who took up karate at forty-four and reached second dan, reports that what 橋本さん learned there was “押忍”の精神, the spirit of osu [30]. The earlier uses in print show the phrase in other hands before his books; his books show him defining it and printing it in numbered articles, and Collins shows his organization taking it as a motto.
A reading
A byword of the cheer squad and the karate hall, and in print of more than those: it belongs to many hands before it is 大山倍達's, and his books are where it is defined and set into rules, and his organization took it as its motto, which Collins prints in English as the spirit of perseverance. Its first word is spelled with an older verb. The characters push and endure were written for a verb of enduring long before the written greeting shows in the National Diet Library's full-text index, in 1966, and the explanation the halls give, oshi-shinobu, reads them as that verb. Whether the greeting came from the verb, or the verb's characters were fitted to a greeting that came from somewhere else, no book opened here can say: the earliest explanation in the index's snippets, of 1966, already joins them, and a spelling fitted after the fact would look the same. The dictionary treats the characters as fitted to the sound; the 1966 監督 and Lorden say the word comes from oshi shinobu, and neither passage read here shows how they know.
Japanese Scrolls by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase
References
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