Ganbaru (頑張る): to keep at something with steady, patient effort, especially in a hard time. Ganbatte (頑張って): keep at it. Ganbarimasu (頑張ります): I will keep at it.
In 2020, the psychiatrist and industrial physician Inoue Tomosuke wrote in President Woman Online that it has become widely known that encouraging a patient with depression with Ganbatte ne is considered wrong.
On January 17, 1995, the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake struck Kobe. In the season that followed, the baseball team Orix BlueWave wore a patch on the right sleeve that read Ganbarō KOBE. Let us keep at it, Kobe.
That year, the team won its first Pacific League title since moving to Kobe. In November 1995, the players, among them Ichirō, held a victory parade in uniforms that carried the same words.
In 1870 and 1871, the scholar Nakamura Masanao published Saigoku risshi hen, his translation of Self-Help by Samuel Smiles. The book is linked with the line Ten wa mizukara tasukuru mono o tasuku. Heaven helps those who help themselves.
A Japanese encyclopedia puts the total number of copies printed at more than one million.
One of the viewpoints under which Japanese schools assess pupils is shutaiteki ni gakushū ni torikumu taido, the attitude of tackling learning on one’s own initiative.
A document of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government explains how it is judged. Teachers look at the pupil’s nebarizuyoi torikumi, persistent effort, in gaining knowledge and skills, and ask whether the pupil tries to adjust his or her own learning along the way.
Inamori Kazuo, the founder of Kyocera, described it with a formula: way of thinking times enthusiasm times ability. Ability and enthusiasm each run from 0 to 100 points. Way of thinking runs from minus 100 to plus 100.
A book of his sayings, quoted in President, draws the conclusion: Sainō wa netsui de kabā dekiru. Talent can be made up for with enthusiasm.
Every year on April 29 and November 3, the Japanese state awards the ōju hōshō, the Medal with Yellow Ribbon. The Cabinet Office describes it as a medal for people in agriculture, commerce, industry and similar fields who have been diligent in their work and whose skills or achievements are a model for others.
An older Cabinet Office document states the criterion in fewer words: a person recognized as diligent in work and a model for the people.
Doryoku wa kanarazu mukuwareru. Moshi mukuwarenai doryoku ga aru no naraba, sore wa mada doryoku to wa yobenai. “Effort is always rewarded. If there is effort that is not rewarded, it cannot yet be called effort.”
Japanese websites often print these words as a saying of the baseball player Ō Sadaharu. The site All About calls it his best-known saying. Neither of the two sites checked here names the occasion or gives an original source, so the attribution is not confirmed.
In October 2004, Suzuki Ichirō broke the major league record for hits in one season. Afterwards he said: Chicchai koto o kasaneru koto ga, tondemonai tokoro ni tadoritsuku tada hitotsu no michi nan da na to, ima, kanjite imasu. “Now I feel that piling up small things is the only way to reach an extraordinary place.”
Sources give his words in slightly different forms.
Many Japanese school grounds have a statue of a boy who carries firewood on his back and reads a book as he walks. He is Ninomiya Kinjirō, later known as Ninomiya Sontoku.
The first such statue at a school was put up in 1924 in Toyohashi. In the 1930s and 1940s, schools across the country followed. Many statues were taken for their metal during the Second World War.
Otsukaresama (お疲れ様): an expression that acknowledges another person’s effort. At work, it is also said to a colleague who leaves before others. It can be said to colleagues and to superiors.
Isshōkenmei (一生懸命): with all one’s might. It grew out of the older isshokenmei (一所懸命), which described a medieval warrior who staked his life on a single landholding.