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kōkai nashi

People search for this as: no regrets regret nothing

44/ 100
Think first

'No regrets' — comprehensible, but stiff. There's a better idiom.

What a Japanese person actually thinks

Reads like a headline or a slogan on a sports towel. Punchy but not deep.

Meaning

Literally
regret + none
Actually
'No regrets.' The なし ending is a clipped literary negative — fine on a banner, a bit terse as a considered statement.

Scores

Naturalness●●●●

Correct and used, mostly in headline-style writing rather than prose.

Coolness●●●

Four characters, two of them hiragana. Reasonably balanced but not monumental.

Watch out

  • lowWriting なし as 無し here is a common non-native over-correction. Keep it in hiragana.

Get this instead

  • kui nashi
    no regrets
    The more idiomatic phrasing — 悔い is the felt regret rather than the abstract noun. Shorter and warmer.
  • ippen no kui nashi
    not one fragment of regret
    The full dramatic version. Long, but it's a genuinely famous line and it carries real force.

On skin

Orientation: vertical

Brush.

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