初心忘る可からず shoshin wasurubekarazu Never Lose Your Beginner's Spirit

Never Lose Your Beginner's Spirit in Japanese is 初心忘る可からず which is read shoshin wasurubekarazu

初心忘る可からず (shoshin wasurubekarazu): the beginner's mind must not be forgotten.

初心忘る可からず carries two senses, and both are true. In everyday Japanese it is advice to a beginner: keep the humility and seriousness you started with. The fuller sense is a master's rule: every stage of a life has its own beginning, and old age is the last. The first reading is not wrong; the second is the larger half. The last word is written with 可 standing for the syllable べ, a spelling a reader who knows the source will recognize. Whether you hang it for a first year of training or the fortieth is yours.

Zeami wrote the line in 1424 at the close of his treatise 花鏡, The Mirror of the Flower, naming it the one maxim his school held good in every art; the same teaching stands in his earlier 風姿花伝 in other words, and the treatises lay unpublished until 1909.

We want you to be as happy with the meaning as you are with Master Takase's art. To learn more, visit Philology of 初心忘る可からず.

Your scroll is brushed when you order it and completed within 1 to 3 business days. It ships by USPS Priority Mail from Master Takase's studio in Washington State, boxed and ready to hang, with a printed page giving the art's English, romaji and Japanese.

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Master Japanese Calligrapher Eri Takase brushes your scroll by hand when you order it. Each scroll bears her red seal, 英利, and her signature.

The scrolls are 12 1/4" W × 43" H (31 × 109 cm) with real silk borders and Japanese paper that are layered so the scroll hangs straight and will not warp over time. The scrolls themselves are made by Sankō (株式会社三幸) in Gifu prefecture, which has been making high quality scrolls since 1947, and we have worked with Sankō for over two decades.

Eri Takase was born and raised in Osaka, Japan, and holds the rank of Shihan, the highest rank in Japanese calligraphy, from the Bokuteki-kai and the Bunka-shodo. About Master Takase