夢実現 yume jitsugen Realize Your Dreams
Abstract
夢実現, yume jitsugen, reads as a headline compression of 夢の実現, the realization of a dream, rather than a coinage. In the National Diet Library's full-text index, once five rows it lists earlier or leaves undated are set aside, the full phrase is first used in 1903, in a title an industrial magazine quotes, and the string is in 1,303 items to 1946, among them 堺利彦's rendering of William Morris and the success books that followed. 夢 and 實現 first stand together without the particle in a volume of Tolstoy's letters in 1918, still with 実現 as a verb, and the index has it in 45 items to 1944 as read in its snippets (ten more are garbled or show none), nine of them a heading, a title or a headline, the first of those in 1925.
Overview
The sense. The realization of a dream: a hope made real, said the way a headline or a poster says it.
The words. 夢 yume, dream, here in its modern sense of a hope, which the 日国 first exemplifies from 1914 [1] and which the index has earlier, in this very phrase, in 1904 and 1907 (1903 to 1944); and 実現 jitsugen, in print by the Meiji era, set against Realization in the 哲学字彙 of 1884 [2], which the dictionary cites, and given its first example from 漱石 in 1907 [3]. Between them the particle の is dropped.
The text in English. In the Google Books ngram, realize your dreams stays low at each decade through 1990, is several times higher in 2000 and peaks in 2010, and make your dreams come true first appears in 1895 and is there at every decade from 1910 [4]. Kenkyūsha's Japanese-English dictionary of 1974 gives, under 夢 (yume), the example 多年の～を実現する, the phrase with its verb, as realize one's long-cherished dream, with give shape to and vision as its alternatives [5]. The English is an instruction, the Japanese a noun phrase.
The historical record
1903 to 1944. 夢実現, a headline compression. It is 夢の実現 with its particle dropped. Setting aside five rows the index lists earlier or leaves undated, the full phrase is first used in the index in 1903, when an industrial magazine has a passage quoting a title that ends (夢の實現) and saying that the elements of matter can be reduced to one, energy [6]. The five rows the index lists earlier or leaves undated are not earlier uses: in an 1898 magazine the string stands inside 虚夢の實現せられずして, the empty dream not being realized, where 夢 is part of another word; a book the index sorts under 1900, in two records, is of the Shōwa era by its own record; and two undated journals run from 1914 to 1919 and from 1937 to 1942 [6]. The phrase is then in print in 1904, when 堺利彦 rendered William Morris's News from Nowhere (其の樂しき夢の實現) [7], and in 1907 in Marden's 成功の基礎, where imagining a fortune made in a single morning on the stock market is 痴者の夢, a fool's dream, and 時に此の夢の實現なきにあらざるもそは只一瞬時のみ, this dream is sometimes realized, but only for a moment [8]. The string is in 1,303 items of the index to 1946, two of them undated.
夢 and 實現 first stand together without the particle in the index in a volume of Tolstoy's letters of 1918, where 實現 is still the verb (an earlier row, of 1914, has 夢 closing one title and 實現 opening the next, and one of 1917 has 靈夢實現, the tail of another word): 私は胸に手を置いて、この夢實現せよとのみ願ふと答へるでありませう, I would put my hand on my heart and answer that I wish only that this dream come true [9]. The index has the string in 45 items to 1944, and nine of them are a heading, a title or a headline, where it stands as a noun phrase. The first of the nine is a navy journal's item of 1925 on a new shell, whose heading ends 治金界多年の夢實現 (the text layer's 治金 for 冶金), the metallurgical world's dream of many years realized [10]; later come an item in a numbered list in the 1940 magazine 文化映画, its title beginning 一萬圓の夢實現, a ten-thousand-yen dream come true, and naming the first drawing (初抽籤) of national bonds [11], and a newspaper article's title quoted in a farmland journal of 1943, 佐竹藩主の夢實現, a Satake lord's dream realized, on a canal nearly finished [12]. The other thirty-six are running prose, as when 桑木彧雄, in an essay of 1936 on physics, 最近六十年間の物理學の發達, says of the alchemists やがて斯の夢實現の時節が到來したのである, in time the season came for that dream to be realized, printed in his 科学史考 in 1944 [13]. Another twenty-one items carry it only as the tail of another word (靈夢, 吉夢, 迷夢) or as two words across a comma.
A reading
A headline, 夢の実現 with its の dropped, and a Japanese reader reads it as a poster reads; that is a register, not a fault. The index first has the full phrase in a passage on the elements of matter that quotes it in a title, and in a translation of Morris's utopia, and then in the success books; the short form is the same hope said faster, and seven years after 夢 and 實現 first stand together without the particle it is set as a heading.
Japanese Scrolls by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase
References
- 「夢」, 精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/夢
- 井上哲次郎・有賀長雄, 改訂増補 哲学字彙, 東洋館, 1884, p. 105, scan 59 (Realization 實現). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/994560/1/59
- 「実現」, 精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/実現
- Google Books Ngram Viewer, English 2019, 1800–2019, "realize your dreams" and "make your dreams come true". https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=realize+your+dreams%2Cmake+your+dreams+come+true&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019
- Koh Masuda, editor, Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, fourth edition, Kenkyusha, Tokyo, 1974, p. 2024, s.v. yume.
- 工業雑誌 19(272), 工業雑誌社, July 1903, scan 18 (the index's text layer; the page is open in Japan only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1561357/1/18. The earlier-dated items set aside: 大日本 (1898-10), scan 17, 虚夢の實現 (https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1568759/1/17); 河合栄治郎, 英国派社会主義, dated 昭和年間 in its two records (https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2386052, https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2387935); 外事彙報 (大正3–8, https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1887247); 内燃機関邦訳文献集 (1937–1942, https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1592283); each read in the index's text layer and item record.
- ヰリアム・モリス, 理想郷 (抄譯 堺利彦), 平民社, 1904, scan 17; the notice at scan 2 names the original, 「ニユース、フロム、ノーホエア」. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/798702/1/17
- マーデン, 成功の基礎 (tr. 内外出版協会), 1907, scan 51. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/757460/1/51
- トルストイ書簡集 (石田三治), 1918, p. 32, scan 19. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/933065/1/19
- 有終 12(6), 海軍有終会, June 1925, scan 16 (the index's text layer; open in Japan only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1555792/1/16
- 文化映画, 文化映画協会, September 1940, scan 12 (the index's text layer; open in Japan only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/4420279/1/12
- 耕地, 帝国耕地協会, June 1943, scan 13 (the index's text layer; open in Japan only). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1505517/1/13
- 桑木彧雄, 科学史考, 河出書房, 1944, p. 480, scan 248 (the essay dated November 1936). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1063016/1/248