Buy a Gentleness calligraphy wall scroll here!
Personalize your custom “Gentleness” project by clicking the button next to your favorite “Gentleness” title below...
1. Gentleness
5. Cuong Nhu
溫厚 is a Chinese, Japanese, and old Korean word for gentle or gentleness.
This can also mean “kindness” (more as an adjective like “kind person”).
The modern Japanese version of the first character looks like the one to the right. If you want this modern Japanese form, just click on that Kanji instead of the button above.
溫柔 or “gentleness” is moving wisely, touching softly, holding carefully, speaking quietly, and thinking kindly.
When you feel mad or hurt, use your self-control. Instead of harming someone, talk things out peacefully. You are making the world a safer, gentler place.
沖縄剛柔館 is the martial arts style Okinawan Gojukan or Okinawan Goju-Kan.
The meaning is “Okinawa hardness [and] softness hall.”
沖縄 = Okinawa.
剛 = Hard, firm, or strong.
柔 = Soft, softness, flexible, supple, yielding, gentleness, or pliant.
館 = Hall, building, school room, or an alternate word for a dojo.
Here is Galatians 5:22 and a bit of 23 in Chinese.
The text with punctuation:
圣灵所结的果子,就是仁爱,喜乐,和平,忍耐,恩慈,良善,信实,温柔,节制。
Hand-painted calligraphy does not retain punctuation.
This translation is from the Chinese Union Bible.
You may know it from the KJV as:
5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
5:23 Meekness, temperance...
剛柔 is a term that means hardness and softness or hard and soft.
剛柔 is also the Chinese character origin of the martial arts style known as Cương Nhu.
Cương Nhu or Cuong Nhu was founded by Grandmaster Ngo Dong in 1965 in Hue, Vietnam, and brought to the U.S. in 1971.
剛 means hard, firm, strong, and just.
柔 means soft, flexible, supple, yielding, softness, and/or gentleness.
Until it was romanized in the mid-17th century by Portuguese missionaries with later influence by French missionaries, Vietnamese was exclusively written in Chinese characters. With some research, you can still figure out the original way to write most Vietnamese words and titles in Chinese characters. That is what I did here to figure out that Cuong Nhu would have been 剛柔 if established in ancient Vietnam.
Same characters are used in Japanese for various Goju schools of Okinawan martial arts, though not the same lineage as the Vietnamese style described above.
谦逊正直温柔忍耐克己不屈 are the virtues used by Choi Kwang Do Martial Arts.
| English | Hanja | Hangul | Pronunciation |
| 1. Humility (Humble / Modesty) | 謙遜 | 겸손 | gyeom son |
| 2. Honesty (Integrity) | 正直 | 정직 | jeong jig |
| 3. Gentleness | 溫柔 | 온유 | on yu |
| 4. Perseverance (To Endure) | 忍耐 | 인내 | in nae |
| 5. Self-Control (Self-Restraint) | 克己 | 극기 | geug gi |
| 6. Unbreakable Spirit (Unyielding / Unbending) | 不屈 | 불굴 | bur gur |
The characters shown here are in the ancient Korean Hanja form of writing. If you wish for a Korean Hangul form of these tenets, we can arrange that with our Master Calligrapher Xing An-Ping (click on the Hangul next to the South Korean flag above to order this in Hangul).