真理は勝つ shinri wa katsu The Truth Will Prevail
真理は勝つ (shinri wa katsu), truth prevails, is India's motto and Prague's, and since 1914 a Japanese sentence in its own right: a translation of Windelband has truth winning at the Copernican turn, and a school graduate of 1924 made it a philosophy of sincerity.
Abstract
真理は勝つ, truth prevails, is a sentence with two famous homes, India's motto from the Mundaka Upanishad and Prague's Pravda vítězí, and, since 1914, a Japanese sentence in its own right. Four books to 1946 in the National Diet Library carry it, and none connects it to India or Prague.
Overview
The sense. A sentence true in every language and a motto in two, with a Japanese life of its own from 1914.
The words. 真理 shinri, truth, the philosophical word, not 本当; 勝つ katsu, to win.
The text in English. Truth prevails and 真理は勝つ are one sentence.
The historical record
1914. 真理は勝つ, and the two mottos behind it. The sentence truth prevails has two famous homes. One is the Mundaka Upanishad, 3.1.6, in Müller's English the true prevails, not the untrue, which India took as its motto [1]. The other is the Czech Pravda vítězí, on the president's flag since 30 March 1920, popularized by Masaryk and, the Czech encyclopedia says, not his: it traces the sentence to Jan Hus's letters and behind Hus to the apocryphal Third Book of Ezra, super omnia vincit veritas [2]. The Japanese names neither, which suits a sentence that belongs to more than one tradition. In Japanese the sentence has a life of its own: a 1914 translation of Windelband's history of modern philosophy has it in the narrative past, 眞理は勝つた。精神的創造の數々は、またこの新說のうちから發生した, truth won; many spiritual creations sprang from the new doctrine, of the Copernican turn [3]; and a 1924 school anniversary volume has a graduate's maxim, 眞面目は眞理であり、眞理は勝つ。自分は敢えてこゝに「眞面目の哲學」「眞劍な生活」を提唱するものである, sincerity is truth, and truth prevails; I dare to propose here a philosophy of sincerity, a life in earnest [4]. Four books to 1946 in the National Diet Library carry the sentence; none connects it to India or Prague [5].
A reading
真理は勝つ is a sentence that is India's motto and Prague's and a young graduate's philosophy of sincerity in 1924. The Japanese names neither motto, which suits a sentence that belongs to more than one tradition.
References
- Mundaka Upanishad, 3.1.6, tr. Max Müller, Sacred Books of the East 15, at Wikisource. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Sacred_Books_of_the_East/Volume_15/Mundaka-upanishad
- 「Pravda vítězí」, Czech Wikipedia. https://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pravda_vítězí
- ヴィンデルバント, 近世哲学史 (tr. 村岡典嗣), 内田老鶴圃, 1914, scan 77. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/950807/1/77
- 茨城県立太田中学校, 創立二十五週年祝賀記念号, 1924, scan 75. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/918653/1/75
- National Diet Library Digital Collections, next-generation full-text search on 真理は勝つ, 4 books to 1946. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/