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What is the optimal way to translate this phrase for a tattoo

Ezert faria

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15 Feb 2023
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Hello Everybody, I want to tattoo a famous phrase by the legendary swordsman Miyamoto Musashi, "To win any battle, you must fight as if you are already dead.", "step by step walk a thousand miles", and "it is better to be a warrior in a garden, than a gardener in a war ", I know there are different ways to write in Japanese such as kanji hiragana and katakana, I do not trust google for this and I would like some help from native Japanese speakers to help me get this tattoo, thank you very much.
 
As to the writing system, it would be written in a combination of hiragana and kanji. If these phrases are from Musashi, the original phrasing ought to be readily available.

Here are some pages that contain Musashi quotes in Japanese. You can use an internet translator to see which quotes match the ones you've listed:



I have heard that the gardener quote has questionable providence and has been erroneously attributed to several people, so that's probably not listed.
 
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thank you!! I took a look into the phrases and I am still deciding,I did a little bit more research into the words 'to win any battle you should fight as if you are already dead' and it seems that despite it never being in the book of five rings it is always associated with Miyamoto Musashi, I've also read that it is a common proverb in Japan and China, is it true? the phrase is just a commonly known proved or is it really seen as his?
 
thank you!! I took a look into the phrases and I am still deciding,I did a little bit more research into the words 'to win any battle you should fight as if you are already dead' and it seems that despite it never being in the book of five rings it is always associated with Miyamoto Musashi, I've also read that it is a common proverb in Japan and China, is it true? the phrase is just a commonly known proved or is it really seen as his?
I've heard it somewhere before... it's sounds like a Musashi quote, but I'm no expert. I had only recently been informed of the questionable sources around the gardener quote (lots of people attribute it to Bruce Lee, etc)

Be sure that your tattoo artist understands Japanese or Chinese, and knows how to properly write kanji/hanzi, or the best you can hope for is a decent copy of a soul-less computer font.
 
This is the thread about the gardener quote nice gaijin-san mentioned.
 
This is the thread about the gardener quote nice gaijin-san mentioned.
ahhhhh THAT thread 🤣 I'll never live it down
 
Hope that I didn't do 余計なおせっかい.😅
Haha no I just learned not to trust a single source on the internet before I say anything with confidence

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