Recently I’ve been practicing calligraphy by copying Japanese 4-character idioms. These are known as 四字熟語 (yo-ji-juku-go) and as the name suggests, they are idiomatic phrases made of 4 kanji characters.
They often contain a small life lesson or moral message, similar to English sayings such as “you reap what you sow” and “the early bird gets the worm”.
The kanji in this one are:
奮起 = stirring; rousing oneself
一番 = number one; most important
So a loose translation might be: “being passionate and motivated is the most important thing”.
