Fine Japanese Calligraphy

The Art of Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase

Visa, Mastercard, AmEx, PayPal accepted
Home › Library › Philology › Fortune Favors The Brave

勇者は幸運に恵まれる yūsha wa kōun ni megumareru Fortune Favors The Brave

勇者は幸運に恵まれる (yūsha wa kōun ni megumareru), the brave are blessed with good fortune, renders the English proverb fortune favors the brave. The Latin proverb behind it was already old when Cicero called it vetus proverbium in 45 BC. This study follows many Japanese renderings from 1886, until the dictionaries settled on this one by 1957.

Japanese Scroll of Fortune Favors The Brave (yūsha wa kōun ni megumareru) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Fortune Favors The Brave勇者は幸運に恵まれるyūsha wa kōun ni megumareru

Original art by Master Calligrapher Eri Takase

All Fonts ›

Abstract

勇者は幸運に恵まれる, the brave are blessed with good fortune, is not a Japanese proverb: it is the rendering the Japanese English-Japanese dictionaries give the English proverb fortune favors the brave, in print by 1957, which itself translates a Latin proverb already old when Cicero called it vetus proverbium in 45 BC. The Latin line runs from Ennius through Terence, Virgil, Seneca and the younger Pliny to a medieval audaces form; the Japanese side has many renderings between 1886 and 1946, each translator giving Fortune a different Japanese face — good fortune, Heaven, a god of luck, or plain chance — and none of them fixed, until the postwar dictionaries settled on the one wording that leaves Fortune out. The Japanese proverb tradition's own line on fortune, 運は天にあり, says the opposite: it resigns fortune to Heaven and moves anyway.

Overview

The sense. The Latin claim is that boldness moves fortune. What moved in Japanese is Fortuna. She became 幸福, good fortune, in 1886, Heaven in 1888 and 1946, a god of luck in 1909, the god of fortune and Heaven side by side in 1911, and plain luck in 1915, and the two are not the same claim: 天は勇者を祐く says the moral order rewards courage; 運は勇者を助く says the dice do. The sentence 勇者は幸運に恵まれる says neither; it says the brave are blessed, and leaves the blesser out.

The words. 勇者, yūsha, is a person of courage, a word as old as the 平治物語 of about 1220 and the Analects' 勇者不懼, the brave do not fear [1]; in Weblio's Japanese index the headwords filed beside the sentence are 勇者の遺物, 勇者の鎧 and 勇者アバン, names from games and manga, a different color from the Latin fortis [2]. 幸運, kōun, is good fortune, a lucky turn, the abstract noun; it is not Fortuna. 恵まれる, megumareru, is to be blessed with, the ordinary construction for being fortunate in something. So the Japanese says the brave are blessed with good fortune, a statement about the brave. The Latin, and every Japanese rendering below but one, is a statement about Fortune, who helps, loves or favors the brave; the one, 勇者には幸栄あり of 1909, gives the brave prosperity and names no giver.

The proverb in English. Fortune favours the brave is the standing English equation across the Japanese bilingual dictionaries from 1904, with the bold for audaces and the daring for audentes in 1909, and Saitō Hidesaburō 斎藤秀三郎's dictionary of 1915 already sets it against 運は勇者を助く [3]. The English proverb has a history of its own, in Chaucer about 1385 before any printed Latin collection [4], and the English books of Japanese proverbs carry Saitō's sentence as if it were a Japanese one, from Buchanan 1965 to Galef 2012 [5] [6].

The historical record

Second century BC. Ennius, Annals, book seven. Fortibus est fortuna viris data, fortune is given to brave men, in hexameter, quoted by Macrobius some six centuries later as the model for Virgil's line [7].

161 BC. Terence, Phormio, line 203. A slave, Geta, urging a young man to act: fortis fortuna adiuvat, fortune helps the brave. The oldest line surviving whole [8].

45 BC. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations 2.11. "Fortes" enim non modo "fortuna adiuvat", ut est in vetere proverbio, sed multo magis ratio, for not only does fortune help the brave, as the old proverb has it, but much more does reason. Already a proverb, and already old [9].

19 BC. Virgil, Aeneid 10.284. Turnus, ordering a charge that will fail: audentis Fortuna iuvat, Fortune helps the daring [10].

About AD 64. Seneca, Letters to Lucilius 94.28. Among precepts that need no argument to move the mind, a line of verse: Audentis fortuna iuvat, piger ipse sibi opstat, fortune helps the daring; the idler stands in his own way [11].

About AD 107, of the year 79. Pliny the Younger, Letters 6.16.11. His uncle, sailing toward Vesuvius to his death, to a frightened helmsman: 'Fortes' inquit 'fortuna iuvat: Pomponianum pete.' So the classical witnesses are a soldier's saying, a slave's encouragement, a doomed king, a moralist's verse and a doomed admiral [12].

The twelfth century onward. The audaces form. Alan of Lille's Parabolae has Audaces fortuna iuvat, nil grande cor audax terret; Albertanus of Brescia in 1238 writes Audaces fortuna iuvat, piger sibi ipsi obstat and gives it to Seneca by name, whose line it is, reworded; and John Owen made Audaces fortuna iuvat the title of an epigram in the fourth book of his Epigrammata, whose own dated pieces run to 1607. This is the schoolbook form, Fortune helps the bold [13].

1886. 市川義夫, 英和和英字彙大全, the alphabetical list of foreign phrases, page 786. The earliest dated Japanese rendering open to read: Audaces fortuna juvat. (Lat.) 幸福ハ胆力又ハ勇氣ヲ助ク, good fortune helps daring or courage, and a few pages on, Fortes fortuna juvat. 幸福ハ勇氣ヲ助ク. Fortuna is 幸福, and what she helps is not the brave but their quality [14]. 柴田昌吉 and 子安峻's 英和字彙 prints the first line word for word in 1888; the National Diet Library's full text finds it in none of that dictionary's printings of 1873 and 1882 [15]. 尺振八's 明治英和字典, issued in parts from 1884 to 1889, also carries 運ハ勇者 in the same full-text index, and its text is not open to readers outside Japan [16].

1888. An English-Japanese Lexicon, appendix of Greek, Latin and modern foreign phrases, page 1069. Audaces fortuna juvat. 〔羅〕天運ハ勇者ヲ愛ス, 天勇者ニ與ミス, Heaven's fortune loves the brave; Heaven sides with the brave. Fortuna becomes the Confucian Heaven [17].

1895 and 1896. Two translated histories of war at sea. A British naval history in Japanese quotes 皇天ハ勇者ニ祚ス, august Heaven blesses the brave, as a saying proved true when the wind turns in a commander's favor [18]; a treatise on naval war has 好運ハ常ニ勇者ヲ愛スル, fortune always loves the brave [19]. The line came into Japanese through dictionaries and through translations, and each translator made it again.

1901. Sassa Masakazu 佐々政一, 修辞法, a rhetoric manual, pages 230 to 231. A school essay on the set topic 運命は勇者を愛す, fate loves the brave, and its critic's complaint that the student forgot his proposition and wrote about fate alone. The line was a topic, not a saying [20].

1909. Kanda Naibu 神田乃武 and Nannichi Tsunetarō 南日恒太郎, 英和双解熟語大辞典, appendix pages 38 to 39 and 12 to 13. Three Latin forms, three Japanese: fortes fortuna adjuvat, 勇者には幸栄あり, with the Terence address; audentes fortuna juvat, 福神は勇者に幸ひす, with Virgil's and Seneca's; audaces fortuna juvat, 福神は勇敢なる者に幸ひす. Fortuna becomes 福神, a god of luck [21].

1911. The dictionary Nitobe Inazō 新渡戸稲造 oversaw, 英和俗語熟語故事大辞典, pages 1716 to 1717. Fortes fortuna juvat. 運の神は勇者を愛顧す; 天は勇者を祐く, and beside it Fortuna favet fatuis, 幸運は愚者を祐く, Fortune favors fools. The Western shelf holds both, and the Japanese copied both [22].

1908 to 1946. The rest. A boys' book of self-improvement (1908): 幸運は勇者を福す [23]. An anthology of maxims (1911): 幸運は、勇者を愛す, marked Latin [24]. Saitō (1915 and 1918): 運は勇者を助く [3] [25]. A composition dictionary (1925): 幸運は勇者を寵す, marked 西諺, a Western proverb [26]. Ethics textbooks of 1928 to 1939: 天は勇者に幸する, and one teacher's guide supplies the English original for the Japanese proverb, Heaven favours the brave, which is the whole reception in one sentence [27]. A world-maxim anthology (1932): 運は勇者を寵愛す, credited to Virgil and marked Latin [28]. The 1946 Standard: 天運ハ勇者ニ幸スル [29]. Nineteen wordings in this record alone, in sixty years, none of them fixed.

1957. The sentence itself. The Youth's Companion, a magazine for Japanese students of English, in July 1957: cf. Fortune favors the brave. (勇者は幸運に恵まれる); and 小野圭次郎's English word book of 1958: Fortune favours the brave. 勇者は幸運に恵まれる [30] [31]. The same index matches 勇者は幸運 in Kenkyusha's 新英和大辞典 in its 1954 printing and in some thirty English-Japanese dictionaries and phrase books after it, to 1999, whose text it does not show [32]. The two Kenkyusha English-Japanese dictionaries read here in full text do not carry it: the fifth edition of 1980 gives 幸運は勇者に味方する [33]. So the sentence is the rendering the postwar English-Japanese dictionaries settled on, a translator's gloss of the English proverb, not a program's.

What is not a source. There is no Japanese proverb under this sentence. The Japanese proverb tradition's own line on fortune says the opposite and is said in the same situation, before a charge: 運は天にあり, fortune is Heaven's, from the 太平記 of the fourteenth century, 運は天にあり、一足も引く事有るべからず。只討死をせよ, fortune is Heaven's; do not retreat a step; only die fighting [34]. The Roman claims that boldness moves fortune; the Japanese resigns fortune to Heaven and moves anyway. The Edo parodies, fortune is Heaven's and the rice cakes are on the shelf, mock the resignation [35]. 勇者は懼れず, the brave do not fear, from the Analects and in 毛吹草's list of 1638 [36], is a real Japanese proverb about the brave and says nothing about fortune. Erasmus's Adagia is among the witnesses, below.

The dictionaries today. kotobank has no headword for any Japanese form of the line. Weblio's English-Japanese dictionary, which says of itself that a program produces its entries, glosses fortune favors the brave as 勇者は幸運に恵まれる, and the same page quotes the sentence from Kenkyusha's 新英和中辞典 [37]. Neither Fujii Otoo 藤井乙男's proverb dictionary of 1910 nor Nakano Yoshihei 中野吉平's of 1933 files any form of the line [35] [38].

The proverb in English

1915. Saitō, Saito's Idiomological English-Japanese Dictionary, page 463, under fortune. Fortune favours the brave. 運は勇者を助く。 The English proverb and its plainest Japanese, side by side in a dictionary made for Japanese learners of English; the 1918 printing repeats it [3].

1958. Okada, Japanese Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, Japan Travel Bureau. Under 笑う門には福来る: There is a saying that fortune favors the brave, but we know of no such English proverb as "fortune favors the cheerful." The English proverb as the measure of a Japanese one [39].

1965. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, page 51. Un wa yūsha wo tasuku: "Fate assists the courageous." English parallel: Fortune favors the brave. Saitō's rendering, filed as a Japanese proverb among sayings on fighting on, after Taorete nochi yamu, fight to the last; the layer reads yiisha and tasu\u, read as yūsha and tasuku [5].

1974. Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, fourth edition, under 幸運. Fortune favors the brave as an example under the noun, with no Japanese sentence of its own [40].

1987 and 2012. David Galef, Even Monkeys Fall from Trees, Tuttle, number 66, and Japanese Proverbs, Tuttle, number 66. 運は勇者を助く, Un wa yūsha o tasuku, rendered in the entry Fate aids the courageous, and in his list of English equivalents Fortune favors the brave: Saitō's rendering given as a Japanese proverb, with no source, and kept in 2012 as Fate aids the courageous, with Fortune favors the brave bracketed after it [41] [6]. Not in Galef's Even a Stone Buddha Can Talk (2000), Zona (1996) or Trimnell (2004).

The equivalent. Fortune favours the brave in English. The English proverb is older than any printed Latin collection: Chaucer's Troilus about 1385, Thenk ek Fortune, as wel thiselves woost, Helpeth hardy man to his enprise, and Gower about 1390, Fortune unto the bolde Is favorable forto helpe [4]; Wilson dates the Chaucer about 1374 [42]; Caxton's Reynard of 1481, Who that is hardy the auenture helpeth hym, and Taverner's 1539 rendering of Erasmus, Fortune helpeth men of good courage [43]. Erasmus's Adagia files it as number 145, Fortes fortuna adjuvat, with Cicero's sentence, Ennius, Virgil, Ovid's Audentes forsque deusque juvat and Livy, and reads the adage as against those who veluti cochleae perpetuo latent intra testas, who like snails stay forever inside their shells [44]. Stevenson 1948 gives the same chain from Terence through Erasmus and Taverner [45]; Apperson 1929 adds Ovid's Audentes deus ipse juvat from the Metamorphoses [46]; Brewer's Phrase and Fable of 1894 credits Terence alone [47]; the Oxford quotations dictionary dates the English late 14th century [48].

Today. JMdict has no entry for the sentence [49]. Word for word the Japanese says the brave are blessed with good fortune, the English-Japanese dictionaries' gloss of the English proverb; the Latin, the English, and every Japanese rendering before it but one keep Fortune as the actor, and this sentence does not.

A reading

The Latin proverb is older than every author credited with it; Cicero already called it an old proverb a century before Pliny gave it to his dying uncle. What moved into Japanese is not the proverb but Fortune herself, translated afresh by each dictionary and each translator for sixty years — good fortune, Heaven, a god of luck, plain chance — and none of those renderings entered Fujii's or Nakano's dictionary of proverbs. What finally settled, in the English-Japanese dictionaries of the 1950s, is the one wording that leaves her out: the brave are blessed, and nobody blesses them. It is a good sentence and a faithful gloss, and it is the English proverb's, not Japan's.

References

  1. 「勇者」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典 and 字通, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/勇者-650735
  2. 「勇者は幸運に恵まれる」, Weblio 辞書, no headword, with the neighboring headwords listed. https://www.weblio.jp/content/勇者は幸運に恵まれる
  3. 斎藤秀三郎, Saito's Idiomological English-Japanese Dictionary, S.E.G. Publishing Department, 1915, s.v. fortune, p. 463.
  4. Speake, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, Oxford University Press, 2015, s.v. Fortune favours the brave.
  5. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, 1965, p. 51.
  6. David Galef, Japanese Proverbs: Wit and Wisdom, Tuttle, 2012, no. 66.
  7. Ennius, Annales VII, quoted in Macrobius, Saturnalia 6.1.62, at Latin Wikisource. https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Saturnalia/VI
  8. Terence, Phormio, line 203, at The Latin Library. http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/ter.phormio.html
  9. Cicero, Tusculanae Disputationes 2.11, at The Latin Library. http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/cicero/tusc2.shtml
  10. Virgil, Aeneid 10.284, at The Latin Library. http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/vergil/aen10.shtml
  11. Seneca, Epistulae morales ad Lucilium 94.28, at The Latin Library. http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/sen/seneca.ep14-15.shtml
  12. Pliny the Younger, Epistulae 6.16.11, at The Latin Library. http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/pliny.ep6.html
  13. Alan of Lille, Parabolae, at Latin Wikisource. https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Parabolae · Albertanus of Brescia, De amore et dilectione Dei III (1238), where the line is given to Seneca. https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/De_amore_et_dilectione_Dei/III · John Owen, Epigrammata, book IV, no. 55, Audaces fortuna iuvat, the book dedicated to Arbella Stuart as his second, with pieces dated 1606 and 1607. https://la.wikisource.org/wiki/Epigrammata_(Ioannes_Audoenus)
  14. 市川義夫 編訳, 島田三郎 校『英和和英字彙大全』, 1885–1886, alphabetical list of foreign phrases, p. 786. National Diet Library pid 870118, scan 399. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/870118/1/399
  15. 柴田昌吉・子安峻 訳『英和字彙』, 1888 printing, National Diet Library pid 1084206, snippet view · the 1873 edition, pid 870052, and the 1882 edition, pid 870057, searched inside for Audaces and 勇氣ヲ助. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1084206 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/870052 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/870057
  16. 尺振八 訳編『明治英和字典』, issued in parts 1884–1889. National Diet Library pid 1871587 (full-text index match for 運ハ勇者; out of commerce). https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1871587
  17. An English-Japanese Lexicon, appendix, p. 1069. National Diet Library pid 1677027, scan 551. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1677027/1/551
  18. バレンチン 著, 岡松参太郎 訳『英国海戦史』, 1895. National Diet Library pid 845037, scan 79. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/845037/1/79
  19. 格倫 著, 鈴木光長 訳『海戦論』, 1896. National Diet Library pid 845171, snippet view. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/845171
  20. 佐々政一『修辞法』, 1901, pp. 230–231. National Diet Library pid 864859, scan 116. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/864859/1/116
  21. 神田乃武・南日恒太郎『英和双解熟語大辞典』, 1909, appendix pp. 12–13 and 38–39. National Diet Library pid 990169, scans 845 and 858. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/990169/1/845 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/990169/1/858
  22. 新渡戸稲造監輯『英和俗語熟語故事大辞典』, 1911, pp. 1716–1717. National Diet Library pid 902975, scan 864. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/902975/1/864
  23. 広瀬金蔵『修養訓話 : 少年立志』, 1908. National Diet Library pid 756721, snippet view. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/756721
  24. 久保天随・芋川泰次『詞華類典』, 1911. National Diet Library pid 891870, snippet view. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/891870
  25. 斎藤秀三郎, Idiomological English-Japanese Dictionary, 1918, s.v. fortune. National Diet Library pid 1681530, scan 231. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1681530/1/231
  26. 鈴木周作『実用音引作文辞典』, 1925, pp. 36–37. National Diet Library pid 914586, scan 356. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/914586/1/356
  27. 大瀬甚太郎『中学新修身教授資料』, 1928. National Diet Library pid 1457231, scan 47. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1457231/1/47
  28. 日本講学協会 編『世界格言全集』, 1932. National Diet Library pid 1108066, scan 51. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1108066/1/51
  29. 竹原常太『スタンダード和英辞典』, 1946, s.v. ten-un. National Diet Library pid 1126792, scan 538. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1126792/1/538
  30. The Youth's Companion, July 1957. National Diet Library pid 3542830, snippet view. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/3542830
  31. 小野圭次郎 編『小野圭英單語字典 : 学習受験』, 1958. National Diet Library pid 2436463, snippet view. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2436463
  32. National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text search for 勇者は幸運, oldest first: 岩崎民平・河村重治郎 編『研究社新英和大辞典』, 1954 printing, pid 2470572, the earliest dictionary among 33 items. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2470572
  33. 小稲義男 編, Kenkyusha's New English-Japanese Dictionary, 5th ed., Kenkyusha, 1980, s.v. fortune · and 岩崎民平 編, Kenkyusha's New Pocket English-Japanese Dictionary, Kenkyusha, 1962, s.v. fortune.
  34. 「運は天にあり」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典・ことわざを知る辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/運は天にあり
  35. 藤井乙男『諺語大辞典』, 1910: 運ハ天ニアリ with its parodies, scan 91; 勇者ハ懼レズ, scan 535; no entry for any form of the Latin line. National Diet Library pid 862766. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/862766/1/91
  36. 松江重頼『毛吹草』, 1638, as reprinted in 藤井乙男『諺の研究』, 1929, scan 151: 仁者憂へず, 智者は惑はず, 勇者は懼れず, the Analects line beside the first; p. 240 (scan 127) names 毛吹草 the earliest collection of proverbs of the Edo period. National Diet Library pid 1452761. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1452761/1/151
  37. 「fortune favors the brave」, Weblio英和対訳辞書, with its example sentences quoted from 研究社 新英和中辞典, at Weblio. https://ejje.weblio.jp/content/fortune+favors+the+brave
  38. 中野吉平『俚諺大辞典』, 1933. National Diet Library pid 1453041. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1453041
  39. Okada, Japanese Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, Japan Travel Bureau, 1958, s.v. 笑う門には福来る.
  40. Kenkyusha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, 4th ed., Kenkyusha, 1974, s.v. 幸運.
  41. David Galef, Even Monkeys Fall from Trees: The Wit and Wisdom of Japanese Proverbs, Charles E. Tuttle, Rutland and Tokyo, 1987, no. 66, p. 146.
  42. Wilson, ed., The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, 1970, s.v. Fortune favours the bold (brave).
  43. Tilley, A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, University of Michigan Press, 1950, F601.
  44. Erasmus, Adagia I.ii.45, no. 145, Fortes fortuna adjuvat, in Les Adages, volume I, Les Belles Lettres, 2013.
  45. Stevenson, The Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases, Macmillan, 1948, s.v. Fortune.
  46. Apperson, English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, Dent, 1929, p. 245.
  47. Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Cassell, 1894, s.v. Fortune.
  48. Knowles, ed., Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 8th ed., Oxford University Press, 2014, Proverbs, Fortune favours the brave.
  49. JMdict, Electronic Dictionary Research and Development Group, release 3.6.2. https://www.edrdg.org/jmdict/j_jmdict.html

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), 2026-09-05, citations · gpt-6-astra (OpenAI), 2026-09-05, citations

Cite as: Tim Jackowski and Ten, "Philology of 勇者は幸運に恵まれる (yūsha wa kōun ni megumareru)," Takase Studios, 2026, https://takase.com/library/philology/yusha-wa-koun-ni-megumareru.