'The weak are meat, the strong eat.' Vivid, real — and a bleak thing to declare.

What a Japanese person actually thinks
Striking and a bit chilling. It describes a world, not a virtue — so as a personal statement it reads as 'I believe in predation', which lands harder than English 'survival of the fittest' does.

Meaning

Literally: weak + meat + strong + eat
Actually: The law of the jungle. A real classical idiom, used to describe brutal competition in business, sport or nature.

Scores

Naturalness●●●●●

Well-known idiom.

Coolness●●●●●

The characters are excellent and the image is genuinely powerful. The sentiment is what costs it — it's a description of cruelty, worn approvingly.

Watch out

mediumJapanese hears the 肉 (meat) and 食 (eat) literally. It's more visceral than the English equivalent, and less easily read as neutral realism.

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不撓不屈 futō fukutsu
indomitable

If the point was 'I survive hard environments', this says it about you rather than about the world.

On skin

弱肉強食

Orientation: vertical

Bold Mincho, vertical.