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備えよ常に sonae yo tsune ni Be Prepared

備えよ常に (sonae yo tsune ni), be prepared, always, is the motto of the Japanese Scouts. It renders Baden-Powell's Be prepared of 1908, and the Scouts' form is in print by 1924. This study follows it from a first rendering of 1910, 用意せり, to the kana the Scouts write today.

Japanese Scroll of Be Prepared (sonae yo tsune ni) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Be Prepared備えよ常にsonae yo tsune ni

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

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Abstract

備えよ常に, be prepared, always, is the motto of the Japanese Scouts, their rendering of Be prepared, which Baden-Powell gave the Scouts in 1908 and said was founded on his initials. The first Japanese rendering was another one: a 1910 adaptation of his book glossed the badge's BE PREPARED as 『用意せり』, it is made ready. The Scouts' form is in print by 1924, in their federation's journal and in a camping manual, spelled 備へよ常に with the imperative first; the badge carried it in kana by 1925, the government took it into a wartime slogan in 1937, and the Scout Association of Japan writes it today in kana beside this kanji form.

Overview

The sense. Be prepared is Baden-Powell's pun on his own initials, B.-P.: readiness in mind and body to do one's duty. In Japanese the pun cannot survive, and the motto is simply an order: be ready, always.

The words. 備えよ sonae yo, the imperative of 備える, to make ready; 常に tsune ni, always.

The text in English. The imperative comes first in the Japanese, be prepared, always, which is how the Japanese Scouts say it, and a rendering keeps it there.

The historical record

1908. Be prepared. In the first part of Scouting for Boys, whose preface is signed January 1908, Baden-Powell wrote that the Scouts' motto is founded on my initials, B.-P., and glossed it: readiness in mind and body to do one's duty, in mind by discipline and forethought, in body by strength [1].

1910. 用意せり. Two years later a Japanese book built on his, Enomoto Kōtarō's 『少年兵団』, The Boy Soldiers' Corps, which follows his chapters from scouting and tracking to camp life and chivalry, gave the motto its first Japanese: the words on the British badge, BE PREPARED, 同兵團の格言であつて、『用意せり』の意を示すのである, are the corps' maxim and mean "it is made ready", ready at any moment to carry out an order without hesitation [2]. That rendering did not last.

1924 and 1925. 備へよ常に, the Scouts' own. The federation's journal carries 「備へよ、常に」 in its first issue, April 1924 [3]. The same year Nakano Chūhachi's camping manual, written after he took fifty Kyoto Boy Scouts to see Tokyo three days before the great earthquake, says 「備へよ常に」とはボーイ、スカウトの標語である, "be prepared, always" is the Boy Scouts' motto, and applies it to packing for camp [4]. In 1925 the federation's translation of Scouting for Boys gives the first-class badge as a brass arrowhead with a scroll bearing 「そなへよつねに」, and the motto as 「備へよ常に」: a Scout must always be resolved to do his duty at any time, and to face danger to help his fellows [5]. The kana form was on the badge from the start.

1928 and 1937. A slogan beyond the Scouts. A proletarian-party handbook of 1928 describes the Boy Scouts led by Viscount Gotō Shinpei, organized in April 1922, as formed under 『備へよ常に』の軍國主義的スローガン, the militarist slogan "be prepared, always" [6]. In 1937 the Ministry of Education's Social Education Bureau set the words fifth among its ten rules for renewing the nation's way of life, 五、備へよ常に、あらゆる力, be prepared always, with every strength, glossed that modern war is fought with the whole strength of a nation [7]. The motto was then in general use: in the National Diet Library's full-text index to 1946, 備へよ常に is in 414 items and そなへよつねに in 109, the modern spellings in 12 each [8].

Today. The Scout Association of Japan writes the motto in kana, そなえよつねに, with this kanji form beside it, and calls the world movement's 2024 tagline Ready for Life its future-facing expression [9].

What is not a source. The 1924 manual and journal are witnesses that the motto was the Boy Scouts' by then, not its origin; the motto's author is Baden-Powell, and its Japanese is the Scouts' own. Who first put it as 備へよ常に is not in any book read here.

A reading

The motto's Japanese history is short and has a turn in it. The first rendering, 用意せり in 1910, reported a state, it is made ready; the Scouts' 備へよ常に is an order with always at the end, and it stuck. By 1937 the order had a second life as a government slogan. The scroll carries the Scouts' motto, and the Scouts have kept it, in kana on the badge in 1925 and in kana on their page today.

References

  1. Robert Baden-Powell, Scouting for Boys, Part I, January 1908, at Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/65993/65993-h/65993-h.htm
  2. 榎本恒太郎, 少年兵団, 内外出版協会, 1910, p. 17, scan 15. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/843050/1/15
  3. 少年団研究 1(1), 大日本少年団聯盟, 1924-04, scan 6 (excerpt). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1595161/1/6
  4. 中野忠八, テント生活の仕方, 4th printing, 創文社, 1924, pp. 4–5, scan 10. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/981704/1/10
  5. ロバート・エス・エス・ベーデンパウエル, 少年団日本聯盟 訳, 少年団教範 : スカウテイング・フオア・ボーイス, 更新出版社, 1925, p. 20, scan 30. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/940151/1/30
  6. 産業労働調査所 編, 無産者政治必携, 1928, p. 636, scan 336. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1184740/1/336
  7. 文部省社会教育局, 社会風潮一新生活改善十則, in 国民精神総動員に就て 第1輯, 国民精神総動員山梨県実行委員会, 1937, p. 34, scan 20; the gloss of rule five, scan 21. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1091851/1/20
  8. NDL Digital Collections, full text, 備へよ常に, oldest first. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=備へよ常に&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC
  9. Scout Association of Japan, member page. https://www.scout.or.jp/member/tagline

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 of the six-text history this one was split from, with web search on; for this text it confirmed the Gutenberg passage, the Scout Association of Japan's page and the 1924 manual; the Lab counts were beyond the checker and were wrong; the sentences added or corrected on 2026-09-29 were not in that check

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 備えよ常に (sonae yo tsune ni)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/sonae-yo-tsune-ni.