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押忍の精神 osu no seishin Spirit of Perseverance

押忍の精神 (osu no seishin), the spirit of osu, is a byword for endurance in Japan's cheer squads and karate halls. The National Diet Library's full-text index has it in print from 1968, and from 1983 in the books of 大山倍達, the founder of Kyokushin karate. Its first word, the greeting おす, is written with the characters of an older verb, to hold something down and bear it.

Japanese Scroll of Spirit of Perseverance (osu no seishin) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Spirit of Perseverance押忍の精神osu no seishin

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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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 motorcycle gang, and karate clubs from 1974. 大山倍達 (Mas Oyama), the founder of Kyokushin karate, did not coin it, but from 1983 to 1994 his books call it the spirit of endurance and write it into numbered rules, 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 holding something down and bearing it, in a temple chronicle that records events of 1699, a Man'yōshū commentary printed in 1891 and a novel of 1909. The written greeting comes into sight in print in 1966 and at Takushoku University's cheer squad by 1967, and where the spoken word began is disputed, in several tellings, one of which, the navy's clipped good-morning, is touched in print by 1970.

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, 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 with the characters 押忍: 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 novel 『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 two characters of 押忍, push and endure; 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, to hold something down and bear it. A chronicle of the 長谷寺 temples compiled by the monk 隆慶, 『豊山伝通記』, writes it in Chinese, 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 and printed by the Imperial Household Ministry in 1891, glosses a word of an eastern verse as 押忍て, with the reading オシコタヘ, oshikotaete, holding it down and bearing it, and says of that verb 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 novel of 1909 writes 熱と苦痛を押忍んで, bearing down on the fever and the pain [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 greeting comes into view in 1966. In a weekly magazine of 16 December 1966, in an issue that carries a piece addressed to university 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]. By April 1967 the cheer squad of 拓殖大学, Takushoku University, titled its bulletin 『押忍』 [11], and in 1971 the essayist 丸谷才一 wrote about the interjection and that 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 a hall with a framed 「押忍」 explained as 「ぐっと我慢せよ」, bear it, and on the same page the word as one that 中間の言葉を全部…すっとばした, skipped all the words in between, beside a mention of men from the Imperial Navy; the snippet 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 every telling below puts the spoken word 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, and only the Kyoto one is sourced to print in the article; the navy's clipping is touched in print by 1970, as above. 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 an origin at the Japanese Naval Academy and one in Kyokushin karate as theories, 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, as a heading over a car salesman's piece in a job guide [17]. Through the 1970s the index has it in many hands: a prefectural police magazine's notes on its officers in 1975 and 1978 [18], and a motorcycle gang's motto in 1979 [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 praises its karate club's 押忍の精神、空手道の真髄, the spirit of osu, the heart of karate [21]; and the karate fighter 山崎照朝 writes in 1980 of a man who lived 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 students' book of 1977 asks what the slogans are for: 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 is all this? [23]; and a cheer squad's senior in a book of 1987 tells recruits that 『押忍』の精神 will be explained to them once they have joined [24]. 大山倍達 takes it up in his own books 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 is the power that brings harmony to society [1]; in 1991 it is an article in a numbered list of rules that follows the words 共同宿舎である, is a shared dormitory: 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 [26]; in 1992 another numbered rule 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]. The earlier uses in print show that Oyama did not coin the phrase; his books show him defining it and writing it into rules, 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 students carried it abroad as the spirit of perseverance. Its first word is spelled with an older verb. The characters push and endure were written for holding something down and bearing it long before any greeting is in print, 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 printed explanation, 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, and nothing opened here contradicts it.

References

  1. 大山倍達, 『昭和五輪書 風之巻』, PHP研究所, 1987, scan 58, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12146643/1/58
  2. デジタル大辞泉「押忍」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/押忍-1996120
  3. 精選版 日本国語大辞典「おっす」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/おっす-40600
  4. Howard Collins, The Absolute Karate: Applications of Kyokushin, 1995, read at the Internet Archive's full-text highlights. https://archive.org/details/absolutekarateap0000unse
  5. Alexander Bennett, The Insider's Guide to the Japanese Martial Arts, Tuttle, 2023, read at the Internet Archive's full-text highlights. https://archive.org/details/insidersguidetoj0000alex
  6. 隆慶, 『豊山伝通記』 巻下, in 『大日本仏教全書』 106, 仏書刊行会, 1922, p. 357, National Diet Library Digital Collections. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/952810/1/182
  7. 鹿持雅澄, 『万葉集古義』 第十四巻 下, 宮内省, 1891, scan 40, National Diet Library Digital Collections. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/874259/1/40
  8. 大明堂編輯部 編, 『小学校教員各科検定試験最近問題集』 昭和7年版, 大明堂書店, 1932, p. 150, National Diet Library Digital Collections. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1274076/1/83
  9. 小林蹴月, 『変化傘』 後編, 名倉昭文館, 1909, p. 140, National Diet Library Digital Collections. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/888163/1/75
  10. 『週刊読売』 25(55), 16 December 1966, scan 16, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1814357/1/16
  11. 『朝日ジャーナル』 12(28), 12 July 1970, scan 5, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1725008/1/5
  12. 丸谷才一, 『大きなお世話 : 日づけのある随筆』, 朝日新聞社, 1971, scan 151, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12534937/1/151
  13. 『週刊読売』 29(34), 7 August 1970, scan 16, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1813252/1/16
  14. 『白鳩』 42(9), 生長の家本部, September 1973, scan 29, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/6078005/1/29
  15. Japanese Wikipedia, 「押忍」, citing 『月刊剣道日本』 1981年12月号48ページ and 大森敏範『押忍とは何か?』, 三五館, 2016. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/押忍
  16. 大森敏範, 「空手の世界で使われる日本語「押忍」について」, 『日本語学』 38(11), 明治書院, 2019, pp. 58–70 · 大森敏範 and Alexander Bennett, Karate's Universal Codeword, 2024, at CiNii Research. https://cir.nii.ac.jp/crid/1521136280935210880 · https://cir.nii.ac.jp/crid/1970586434879089552
  17. 『就職ガイド : ダイヤモンド』 1969年版, ダイヤモンド社, 1968, scan 557, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/9525860/1/557
  18. 『旭の友』 29(10), 長野県警察本部警務部教養課, October 1975, scan 27, and 32(9), September 1978, scan 15, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2632376/1/27 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2632411/1/15
  19. 中部博 編, 『暴走族100人の疾走』, 第三書館, 1979, scan 111, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12015562/1/111
  20. 『週刊明星』 17(23), 23 June 1974, scan 48, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1825223/1/48
  21. 山梨学院大学三十年史編集委員会 編, 『山梨学院大学三十年史』, 山梨学院, 1977, scan 191, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12115937/1/191
  22. 山崎照朝, 『無心の心 : 空手に賭けた青春』, スポーツライフ社, 1980, scan 109, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12149073/1/109
  23. 拓殖大学集団未来 編, 『浪曼者の志気』, 島津書房, 1977, scan 42, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12110611/1/42
  24. 坂口拓史, 『ザ・シゴキ : 実録応援団』, 時事通信社, 1987, scan 46, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12551479/1/46
  25. 大山倍達, 『わがカラテ武道教育』, 講談社, 1983, scan 67, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12146646/1/67
  26. 大山倍達, 『わがカラテ、日本への提言』, サンマーク出版, 1991, scan 31, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/13183239/1/31
  27. 大山倍達, 『極真カラテ21世紀への道』, 徳間書店, 1992, scan 143, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/13315113/1/143
  28. 大山倍達, 『極真の精神』, 市井社, 1994, scan 93, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/13134667/1/93
  29. Mike Lorden, Oyama: the Legend, the Legacy, Multi-Media Books, 2000, read at the Internet Archive's full-text highlights. https://archive.org/details/oyamalegendlegac0000lord

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 (the grouped s46 draft of that date; superseded by the s267 gate and the ten-s746 coding)

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 押忍の精神 (osu no seishin)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/osu-no-seishin.