How should I write "ikigai" in shodō?


I'd like to use _ikigai_ ("something one lives for; purpose in life; raison
d'être") for a calligraphy (shodō) work.

According to Tangorin there are three possible ways to write this:

  1. **生き甲斐**
  2. **生きがい**
  3. **生甲斐**

It's shodō, so I'd prefer to use a purely kanji version (i.e. #3) but I wonder
if these are absolutely interchangeable or if there is a "preferred version"
(and in that case, which one and why).




According to JWP and AEDICT (my feeling is that both use the same dictionary,
so I can't be 100% sure) the correct spelling* is the following:

生【い】き甲斐【がい】 (n) something one lives for, very important, (P)

I hope that helps.

  * I typed spelling because that's how my Japanese teacher used to refer to kanji composition and stroke order.

> This is how you spell the kanji correctly.

or

> Make sure that you use the correct kanji spelling




Searching the [_Balanced Corpus of Contemporary Written
Japanese_](http://www.kotonoha.gr.jp/shonagon/), I find the following results:

[code]

    　生きがい　　　606 results, 75% of total
    　生き甲斐　　　186 results, 23% of total
    　生甲斐　　　　20 results, 2% of total
    
[/code]

As you can see, in this corpus the most common way to write it is 生きがい. In
fact, this is the form recommended by the NHK漢字表記辞典 (the kanji 斐 isn't
included on the [official jōyō kanji
chart](http://www.bunka.go.jp/kokugo_nihongo/joho/kijun/naikaku/pdf/joyokanjihyo_20101130.pdf)).

What about the alternatives? Well, writing 生き甲斐 appears to be somewhat less
common, though I don't think there's anything actually wrong with it. Writing
生甲斐, though, appears to be significantly less common--this form has only 2% of
the total search results!

Based on the above, I'd suggest sticking to 生きがい most of the time. But since
you're doing calligraphy, I think you have to make an aesthetic choice for
yourself. I'd just like to point out that hiragana can be very attractive in
calligraphy.

* * *

The 連用形 (continuative form) of a verb can be used like a noun in Japanese, and
it's not uncommon for this form to be lexicalized as a noun or as part of a
larger compound noun. Since nouns don't inflect, these derived forms don't
really need okurigana most of the time, and there's a tendency to get rid of
them. For example, 取引 or 話 are generally written without okurigana, even
though they're clearly derived from the continuative forms 取り＋引き and 話し.

But the orthography isn't really consistent this way. And some words, like 後ろ,
use okurigana even though they don't inflect, in order to prevent misreadings.
[Tsuyoshi Ito left a
comment](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/6698/how-to-write-
ikigai?rq=1#comment17282_6698) suggesting that something similar might be the
case here as well, that 生（いき） might be avoided because of 生（なま）. I don't know
myself whether or not this is the case, but we can see from the corpus results
that even though it's a lexical compound and doesn't inflect, people usually
don't write 生き甲斐 without okurigana.

Based on the corpus data and Tsuyoshi Ito's comment, I think I would avoid
writing 生甲斐 under most circumstances.

