強く生きる tsuyoku ikiru Live Strong
強く生きる (tsuyoku ikiru), live strong, has a Japanese past: a book on the young of 1914 already lists it among the catchwords of the day, the poet Yosano Akiko wanted it for the whole nation in 1918 and said it did not mean strength in arms, and the reformer Kagawa Toyohiko shouted it in a prose poem of 1920.
Abstract
強く生きる, tsuyoku ikiru, live strong, was a catchword of the Taishō magazines: a book of 1914 already lists it among the phrases everyone was using, and the poet Yosano Akiko and the reformer Kagawa Toyohiko both reached for it within the decade. Yosano's sentence says what the strength is: not armed force, but a strength of feeling, ethics, science, work, economy and art.
Overview
The sense. Plain spoken Japanese, the verb in the dictionary form, which is how a resolution is written. 強く生きる, live strong, was a slogan in Japanese by 1914. A 1914 book on the young names it among the phrases much used of late, alongside live deeply and the true life; Yosano Akiko wants it for the whole nation in 1918 and takes care to say it does not mean armed strength; the Christian socialist Kagawa Toyohiko shouts it in 1920. This is a phrase with a Taishō life of its own.
The words. 生きる ikiru, to live. デジタル大辞泉: 人間・動物などが、生命があり活動できる状態にある。生命を保つ。生存する, to be in the state of having life and being able to act; to keep life; to exist, then to make a living, then to live in or for something, 研究一筋に生きる. 精選版日本国語大辞典 cites it from the 宇治拾遺物語 of about 1221, この里の人々、とく逃げのきて命いきよ, people of this village, flee quickly and live [1]. 強く tsuyoku is the adverb of 強い, strong.
The text in English. The English words are the same words. Live covers 生きる exactly [2]; the difference is in what each language does without a subject. English live strong is an imperative and 強く生きる is not: the Japanese dictionary form is a statement of what one does or intends, which is why the phrase reads as a resolution rather than a command, and why a rendering should not put an exclamation mark after it.
The historical record
1914. Ishida Shintarō 石田新太郎, 『新時代の青年』: 強く生きる is already a catchword. A book on the young of the new era lists the phrases everyone is using: 「緊張した生活」とか、「充實した生活」とか、「眞實なる生活、」「深く生きる」「强く生きる」と云ふ類の言葉が近頃盛んに用ゐられて, the tense life, the full life, the true life, live deeply, live strongly: words of this kind have been much used of late, and calls them painful words expressing the demands of the present age. It is the oldest book the National Diet Library's full-text search finds with the phrase, and the phrase appears in it as something already worn [3].
1918. Yosano Akiko. In a letter to the young on Japan's attitude in the Ishii–Lansing agreement, the poet writes: 私は日本人の強くなることを欲します。個人としても、國民としても、世界人としても、強く生きることを欲します。併し私は腕力の延長である武力にのみ強いことを以て強く生きることの全部であるとは考へません, I want the Japanese to become strong. As individuals, as a nation, as people of the world, I want us to live strongly. But I do not think that being strong only in armed force, which is the extension of physical force, is the whole of living strongly; the strength she means is 情感的、倫理的、科學的、勞働的、經濟的、藝術的, of feeling, of ethics, of science, of work, of economy, of art [4].
1920. Kagawa. The Christian reformer Kagawa Toyohiko, in a prose poem addressed to his own soul: 私の魂は强く生きる。噴火口の烟の如く海洋の潮の如く、强く生きる。私の靈は自殺することが出來ない, my soul lives strong; like the smoke of a crater, like the tide of the ocean, it lives strong; my spirit cannot kill itself [5]. The full-text search finds 207 books with the phrase, from 1914 into the 1960s: 51 of the Taishō years and 134 from 1927 to 1946 [6].
What is not a source. No Japanese text stands behind it. 強く生きる has witnesses, not an author; it is what the Taishō essayists said to one another.
Today. Ishida's 1914 sentence places 強く生きる with 深く生きる, live deeply, and 充實した生活, the full life, as the age's catchwords; the sense of live strong in Japanese here is a Taishō idealism, not an athletic one. The 1918 leaf prints the standard 強; the 1914 and 1920 quotations above carry the variant 强; both forms are one character. What a rendering must keep is the verb's mood: a resolution, not an order.
A reading
強く生きる has a Japanese past, and it is the Taishō magazines'. Yosano Akiko's sentence, that living strongly is not the same as being strong in arms, says more about the phrase than any modern gloss could.
References
- 「生きる」, デジタル大辞泉・精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/生きる
- JMdict (EDRDG), 「生きる」, at jisho. https://jisho.org/word/生きる
- 石田新太郎, 『新時代の青年』, 籾山書店, 1914, scan 200. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/951972/1/200
- 与謝野晶子, 『若き友へ』, 白水社, 1918, 日米協約に現れた我國の態度, printed pp. 230–231, scan 122. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/959390/1/122
- 賀川豊彦, 『地殻を破つて』, 福永書店, 1920, scan 9. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/963084/1/9
- National Diet Library next-generation full-text search on 強く生きる, searched again 26 September 2026: 207 books, 1914 into the 1960s; 51 of 1912–1926, 134 of 1927–1946. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/api/book/search?searchfield=contentonly&keyword=強く生きる