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精力善用 seiryoku zen'yō Maximum Efficiency Minimum Effort

精力善用 (seiryoku zen'yō), the best use of energy, is the first of Kanō Jigorō's two principles of judo. Kanō published it in 1922 as 精力の最善活用, and by 1925 he was summing up his principles in the four characters and their partner. This study follows the principle to its partner, 自他共栄, and to the English Kanō himself gave it in 1922.

Japanese Scroll of Maximum Efficiency Minimum Effort (seiryoku zen'yō) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Maximum Efficiency Minimum Effort精力善用seiryoku zen'yō

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

精力善用, seiryoku zen'yō, the best use of energy, is the first of Kano Jigorō's two principles of judo. He published it in 1922 as 精力の最善活用 when he founded the Kodokan Cultural Society; the four characters are in the society's magazine by that November, and in a lecture of 1925 he says his principles can be summed up in the eight characters 精力善用自他共栄. His signed essay of 1925 in the society's yearbook makes it the rule from which the second principle, 自他共栄, prospering together, follows as its result. The four characters were ordinary Japanese before Kano fixed them, in print from 1904; the phrase is not a headword in any Japanese dictionary opened here, and Kano himself carried the principle into English in 1922, as the principle of the Maximum Efficiency in Use of Mind and Body, a rendering of the long form.

Overview

The sense. Use your energy in the best way: the first of 嘉納治五郎's two principles, the rule, of which the second, 自他共栄, you and others prosper together, is the result.

The words. Four characters: 精力 energy, vigor, 善用 to use well. Kano gave them as the short form of his longer 精力最善活用, the best and most living use of energy. In an essay translated in Mind Over Muscle, undated there and read here only in English: if we use the term seiryoku to refer to both mental and physical energy, we should write seiryoku saizen katsuyo (best use of one's energy). This can be shortened to seiryoku zenyo (highest efficiency) [1]. In Japanese, in a lecture of 1925, with its partner: 此の精力の最善活用、相助相譲自他共栄の主義を簡單に言へば「精力善用自他共栄」の八字に約言することが出来るのであります, this principle of the best use of energy, and of helping one another, yielding to one another and prospering together, can be summed up in the eight characters 精力善用自他共栄 [2]. Of the long form: 心身の力を精力の二字に詰め、最有効使用の五字を最善活用とした, I packed the power of mind and body into the two characters 精力, and made the five characters 最有効使用, "most effective use," into 最善活用, "best use", because human action must aim at the good, and 最善 means to do the good most effectively [2]. The reading is on'yomi throughout; a 1939 encyclopedia prints it in ruby, せいりよくぜんよう [3]. The phrase is not a dictionary headword: kotobank and Weblio return nothing for it, and the bilingual JMdict has no entry [4]. It belongs to judo and to the schools and societies that borrowed it, and its definition is the Kodokan's.

The text in English. It reaches English in 1922, in Kano's own lecture, as the principle rather than the four characters.

The historical record

1904 to 1920, the four characters before judo. The National Diet Library's full index, which reaches the magazines, has the phrase in an education journal in 1904, 之を精力善用利用の說からみれば, seen from the doctrine of the good use of energy, as its text layer reads [5]; in a youth magazine in 1907, which calls not caring another name for the art of using energy well, 精力善用法 [6]; and as an economist's chapter title, 精力善用論, in 1920 [7]. None has anything to do with judo.

1911, 遠藤隆吉, 生活の趣味, a sociologist's book on the pleasures of living, chapter 精力善用論. Eleven years before the Kodokan fixed the phrase, it is a chapter title: On the good use of one's energy. 人間は精力善用と云ふことが必要であらうと思ふ, I think a person needs what is called the good use of energy; every moment should develop the self, and to reach that state one must use one's own energy well: a scholar who sits all day with his books is doing what he should, but one who smokes and gazes out of the window, or rests his chin in his hand watching others exercise, or strolls about to no purpose, cannot be said to have used his energy well [8]. The chapter was in a magazine that January, before the book [9]. The four characters were ordinary Japanese; what Kano did was fix them as a principle and pair them.

1922, 嘉納治五郎 and the 講道館文化会, the Kodokan Cultural Society. The founder's own words date it. In May 1922 a notice in an education journal lists an article by Kano titled 精力の最善活用 and quotes the society's creed: 精力の最善活用は自己完成の要訣なり、自己完成は他の完成を助くることに由つて成就す、自他完成は人類共榮の基なり, the best use of energy is the key to perfecting oneself; perfecting oneself is accomplished by helping others to perfect themselves; the perfecting of self and others is the foundation of the common prosperity of mankind [10]. By November the society's monthly 『柔道』 opens each issue on its declaration, 本會は精力の最善活用に依つて人生各般の目的を達成せんことを主義とす, this society takes as its principle the achieving of every aim in life by the best use of energy, and an article in the same issue already writes the four characters, 精力善用主義 [11]. The Kodokan's own book series, 『柔道叢書』, has neither form in the Lab's text of its volumes of 1921 and 1923; its 1922 volume, which neither the Lab nor the image server would open here, carries an advertisement for the society's magazine with the long form, at snippet: 柔道の根本原理たる、精力の最善活用, the best use of energy, the root principle of judo [12]. The later witnesses agree: the Kodokan's bilingual dictionary dates both phrases to 1922 [13]; a Nippon Budokan history has Kano declare at the society's council in 1922 that 精力最善活用, now referred to as seiryoku zenyō, is the principle [14]; an American history has the society founded in 1922 on the two [15]; and a 2011 study of how the two principles were formed dates their announcement to the society's founding [2]. The pair 精力善用自他共栄 is a lesson in the timetable of the primary school attached to the Fukushima normal school by 1924 [16]. Kano's own book 『精力善用国民体育』 (1930) is digitized by the National Diet Library for readers in Japan only; his 『柔道教本』 (1931) is not digitized.

1925, Kano's essay 講道館柔道の使命, the mission of Kodokan judo, printed in the 柔道年鑑 and reprinted in the yearbooks to 1939. Signed 講道館師範 嘉納治五郎 and written in his first person, it follows the yearbook's short opening creed, 柔道の本義と修行の目的. The principle of judo, it says, applied to the body makes the strongest body, to the mind the best man, to food, clothing, housing and manners the people's welfare, to business its results. Then the diagnosis and the cure: 近來の我が國は、勞を厭ひ逸を追ふものが益々增加し、奢侈贅澤風をなし、到る所、個人も團體も、喧嘩、小競合ひで精力を消耗しつゝあるの現狀である。これを救ふには、一面柔道の原理を社會生活に應用した主義である精力最善活用に依て各般のことを行ふと同時に、その自然の結果として成立する相助・相讓・自他共榮主義を以て、個人、團體相互の融和、協調を圖るより外に有効なる道はないと信ずる, in recent years more and more of our people shun labor and chase ease, luxury has become the fashion, and everywhere, individuals and groups alike, energy is being worn away in quarrels and squabbles. To cure this there is no effective way but to do everything by the principle that is judo's applied to social life, the best use of energy, and at the same time, by the principle that comes into being as its natural result, helping one another, yielding to one another, prospering together, to seek harmony and concord between persons and between groups. The two are cause and effect, and 精力善用 is the cause [17]. The 1928 yearbook adds that the society's magazine 作興 clarifies in every issue the sense of 精力善用・自他共栄 that Master Kano has preached for many years [18].

1932 to 1942, the phrase in the schools and on the walls. The Ministry of Education's 1932 handbook on physical education repeats the whole formula with the imperial house at its center [19]; a town history of 1936 records a branch of the society holding up the two great spirits of 精力善用自他共栄 [20]; a teachers' college in 1939 makes its pupils apply them to every part of daily life [21]; and the Tokyo prefecture's register of 1937 defines the society by thought-guidance and life-improvement by the 精力善用自他共栄 principle [22]. Kano brushed it himself: a list his student Shiotani Muneo compiled of Kano's framed calligraphy in dojos and schools across Japan has 精力善用 second, with sixty-six examples, and the long form, 精力最善活用, seventh, with five [23], and a 1942 school history describes his brush of the long form, 「精力最善活用」, hung high in its dojo [24]. The Lab's index of public-domain books has seventy-four books with the phrase before 1945 [25]; the National Diet Library's full index, which reaches the magazines, dates more than three hundred items to the years before 1940 [26].

The sense across time. One sense, unchanged since 1922: 精力善用 is a rule for the use of oneself, in the body first and then everywhere, and 自他共栄 is what follows when everyone keeps it. The phrase had a private, almost domestic sense before judo took it, the good use of an hour; Kano made it a principle of the body and then of a nation.

What is not a source. The 1911 chapter is a prehistory of the words, not a source of the principle; nothing cited here says Kano knew it. The thought has a prehistory in Kano's own speeches, which 井上 traces: in 1891, as principal of the Fifth Higher Middle School in Kumamoto, he spoke to the pupils on 勢力, the force that moves things and the force that thinks, and urged them to put it fully to work for the nation; 井上 reads the speech as the basis of the later 精力善用, the word 精力 not yet being in Kano's writing, and finds the germ of both principles in his 1889 lecture on judo's value in education [2]. A story, told in the memoirs Brian Watson translated in 2014, traces the germ of the idea to Kano's school days at the Kaisei School in the 1870s: a classmate, Shiraishi Naoharu, never studied late and always passed, because he used every spare ten minutes and every cancelled hour, and it was this observation of Shiraishi that gave Kano the germ of an idea for his now famous motto [27]. It is a telling, not a source for the phrase, and it dates no wording.

The phrase in English

1922 and 1932. Kano's own English. In July 1922 Kano lectured before the Asiatic Society of Japan at the British Embassy in Tokyo; the Japan Advertiser printed the lecture and The Living Age reprinted it that September: Is there, then, any principle which never fails of application? Yes, there is! And that is the principle of the Maximum Efficiency in Use of Mind and Body [28]. In 1932, lecturing at the University of Southern California and printed in the Journal of Health and Physical Education that November, he gives both principles in the form the judo world still uses: the final aim of Jiudo, therefore, is to inculcate in the mind of man a spirit of respect for the principle of maximum efficiency and of mutual welfare and benefit [29].

1945 to 1963. The Budokwai, then the Kodokan's own English. A contents line in the Budokwai's Judo Quarterly Bulletin, vol. 1, London, Judo: Maximum Efficiency and …, is the earliest English after the war known here [30], and the bulletin has maximum efficiency and minimum effort by January 1947 [31]. The Kodokan's own Judo, Tokyo, 1955, gives the standard since: Professor Kano summarized the above teaching in the slogans, Seiryoku-Zen'yō, the Maximum-Efficiency, and Jita-Kyōei, the Mutual Welfare and Benefit [32].

1974 to 2020. The handbooks, the founder's own voice in English, and the teaching books. The 1974 Judo Handbook sets it as an examination question. Pat Harrington's 1987 Judo: A Pictorial Manual reproduces Dr Kano's handwriting of both principles, the first glossed maximum efficiency [33]. Kodansha International's 1986 English edition of Kano's own Kodokan Judo carries a chapter on Principles and Aims [34]; Murata Naoki's 2005 anthology of the founder's writings, Mind Over Muscle, gives seiryoku zenyo (maximum efficiency) in his words in English translation [35]. Kawamura Teizō's Kōdōkan New Japanese-English Dictionary of Judo, 2000, dates the phrase to 1922 [13]. Takahashi Masao's Mastering Judo, 2005, gives "seiryoku zenyo" (maximum efficiency with minimum effort) [36]. Alexander Bennett's Budō: The Martial Ways of Japan, Nippon Budokan, 2009, gives "Seiryoku-zenyo" (the most efficient use of energy), and notes that Kano's 1922 wording was the long form [14]. The Legacy of Kano Jigoro: Judo and Education, 2020, gives Seiryoku zen'yo (maximum efficient use of energy) [37].

Today. Maximum efficiency is the founder's own English for the principle, from 1922, where it renders the long form, the Maximum Efficiency in Use of Mind and Body; with minimum effort is in neither of his English texts read here, and is in print by 1947. A rendering keeps the phrase as a rule about energy, not effort. No Japanese dictionary opened here enters it as a headword [4].

A reading

This is Kano's first principle, and the grammar matters: in his own essay of 1925 it is the rule, and 自他共栄 is what follows from keeping it. His own creed of 1922 says the same in three steps, from the best use of energy to the perfecting of oneself, to the perfecting of others, to the prosperity of all. And it was ordinary Japanese before judo, in print from 1904 and a sociologist's chapter title in 1911, so what Kano made was a principle, not a coinage; the thought was his before the words, as 勢力 in 1891, and by 1925 he was the one summing it up in four characters.

Sources not seen

Kanō Jigorō, 『精力善用国民体育』 (1930): digitized by the National Diet Library for transmission to libraries and readers in Japan, which this house cannot reach. 『柔道教本』 (1931): catalogued, not digitized, and not held here. Either would give Kano's own definition of the four-character form in Japanese at length.

The Kodokan Cultural Society's magazines, 『柔道』 (1922–23) and 『作興』 (1924–): digitized for transmission only. They would show where the four-character form first appears and in whose hand.

嘉納治五郎著作集 (1992), volumes 2 and 3: not held here; Kano's account of how the long form was made is read only as 井上 2011 quotes it.

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

References

  1. Kanō Jigorō, Mind Over Muscle, Snowball Publishing, 2022, chapter 2, Seiryoku Saizen Katsuyo (the essay undated in this edition).
  2. 井上源太, 嘉納治五郎の「精力善用」「自他共栄」の成立過程：外交家という視点を中心として, 京都教育大学 修士論文, 2011, p. 9, quoting 嘉納治五郎著作集 2, p. 152; pp. 37–38 (the 1891 speech 勢力); p. 67, quoting the 1925 講演会速記録 「精力最善活用自他共栄」, pp. 13–26 (note 64); p. 69, table 1 (1889). http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12176/7501
  3. 最新常識百科事典, 1939, National Diet Library Digital Collections, scan 355, text layer: 嘉納師範はこれを精力善用といひ, with the ruby せいりよくぜんよう. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1262562/1/355
  4. kotobank, 精力善用 · せいりょくぜんよう · 精力最善活用 (no entry); Weblio, 精力善用 (no headword); JMdict via jisho.org (no entry). https://kotobank.jp/word/精力善用
  5. 初等教育研究会, 教育研究 (8), November 1904, scan 18, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/6040497/1/18
  6. 世界的青年 2(6), 有楽社, June 1907, scan 6, snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1544853/1/6
  7. 神戸正雄, 社会問題, 日本図書出版, 1920, contents: 第四十六編 精力善用論, p. 614. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/962769
  8. 遠藤隆吉, 生活の趣味, 富山房, 1911, scan 113 (chapter 精力善用論 at scan 10). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/898530/1/113
  9. 教育界 10(3), 明治教育社, January 1911, scan 45, snippet view, National Diet Library: 三精力善用論 … 人間は精力善用と云ふことが必要であらうと思ふ. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1894111/1/45
  10. 初等教育研究会, 教育研究 (240), May 1922, scan 83, snippet view, National Diet Library (the text layer reads 最喜 for 最善 in the creed's first clause, read as 最善). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/6040718/1/83
  11. 講道館文化会, 柔道 1(8), November 1922, scans 5 (the declaration) and 9 (精力善用主義), snippet view, National Diet Library. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2269655/1/5
  12. 講道館文化会, 柔道叢書, 1921 and 1923, the National Diet Library Lab text of both volumes, neither 精力 nor 活用 in either; 第2, 1922, scan 103, the advertisement for 『柔道』, snippet view (the Lab refuses the volume and the image server returns NG). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/969794 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/969795 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/969796
  13. Kawamura Teizō, ed., Kōdōkan New Japanese-English Dictionary of Judo, 2000, at Internet Archive (kodokan-new-japanese-english-dictionary-of-judo-etc.), full-text index snippet.
  14. Alexander Bennett, ed., Budō: The Martial Ways of Japan, Nippon Budokan, 2009, at Internet Archive (martialwaysofjap0000alex), full-text index snippet.
  15. Michel Brousse, Judo in the U.S., North Atlantic, 2005, at Internet Archive (judoinuscenturyo0000brou), full-text index snippet.
  16. 福島県師範学校附属小学校教育研究会 編, 小学校に於ける新教育の実際, 文盛堂出版部, 1924, National Diet Library Lab, full-text highlight: 修身實演 … 精力善用自他共榮, in a timetable. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/939413
  17. 嘉納治五郎, 講道館柔道の使命, in 講道館文化会 編, 柔道年鑑, 大正14年度 (1925), pp. 2–8, scans 14–17 (the passage quoted, scan 16); reprinted in the yearbooks of 1928, 1930, 1933, 1935, 1937, 1939. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/964759/1/16
  18. 講道館文化会, 柔道年鑑, 昭和3年度, National Diet Library, pid 1121921.
  19. 文部省, 現代体育の施設と管理, 1932, National Diet Library Digital Collections. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1119716
  20. 御影町誌, 1936, National Diet Library Digital Collections. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1257877
  21. 宮城県師範学校, 本校の教育, 1939, National Diet Library Digital Collections. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1278088
  22. 東京府, 東京府史 行政篇 第5巻, 1937, scan 306. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1686821/1/306
  23. John Stevens, The Way of Judo: A Portrait of Jigoro Kano and His Students, Shambhala, 2013, the chapter on Kanō's calligraphy (Shiotani Muneo's frequency list).
  24. 桐生高等工業学校二十五年史, 1942, scan 229, text layer: 加納治五郞氏の雄大なる筆「精力最善活用」. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1276988/1/229
  25. National Diet Library Lab, full-text search of public-domain books on 精力善用, counted by decade. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/api/book/search?searchfield=contentonly&keyword=精力善用
  26. National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text search on 精力善用, all access tiers, by decade of publication. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=精力善用&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC
  27. Brian N. Watson, trans., Judo Memoirs of Jigoro Kano, Trafford, 2014, chapter 9, The Inspiration for 'Seiryoku Zenyo'.
  28. Jigoro Kano, Judo: The Japanese Art of Self-Defense, from the Japan Advertiser, 29 July 1922, in The Living Age 314, no. 4080, 16 September 1922, pp. 727–731, at Internet Archive (sim_living-age_1922-09-16_314_4080).
  29. Jigoro Kano, The Contribution of Jiudo to Education, Journal of Health and Physical Education 3, no. 9, November 1932, p. 37 and continued, at Internet Archive (sim_journal-of-physical-education-recreation-dance_1932-11_3_9).
  30. Judo Quarterly Bulletin, vol. 1, the Budokwai, London, 1945–46, at Internet Archive (budokwai.-1946.-judo-quarterly-bulletin-vol.-1-nos.-1-4), full-text index snippet.
  31. Judo Quarterly Bulletin, vol. 2, no. 4, the Budokwai, London, January 1947, at Internet Archive (budokwai.-1947.-judo-quarterly-bulletin-vol.-2-no.-4-january-1947), full-text index snippet.
  32. Kodokan, Judo, Tokyo, 1955, at Internet Archive (judo0000kodo), full-text index snippet.
  33. Pat Harrington, Judo: A Pictorial Manual, David & Charles, 1987, at Internet Archive (judopictorialman0000harr), full-text index snippet.
  34. Kanō Jigorō, Kodokan Judo, Kodansha International, 1986, the 1994 printing, at Internet Archive (kodokanjudo0000kanj), full-text index snippet.
  35. Murata Naoki, ed., Mind Over Muscle: Writings from the Founder of Judo, Kodansha, 2005, the 2013 printing, at Internet Archive (mindovermusclewr0000kanj), full-text index snippet.
  36. Takahashi Masao, Mastering Judo, Human Kinetics, 2005, at Internet Archive (masteringjudo0000unse), full-text index snippet.
  37. The Legacy of Kano Jigoro: Judo and Education, Japan Publishing Industry Foundation, 2020, at Internet Archive (legacyofkanojigo0000seit), full-text index snippet.

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 · Claude Sonnet (Anthropic), 2026-09-15, citations — every claim tested at its address; most resolve; several resolve but differ — side-findings off the cited addresses, taken into the record; the rest not openable; the withheld books stated to the check rather than shown, several re-opened by hand (the grouped s53 history of that date; superseded by the s268 gate and the ten-s743 coding)

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 精力善用 (seiryoku zen'yō)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/seiryoku-zen-yo.