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独立独歩 (doku-ritsu-dop-po) "To be independent and do things one's own way"

The kanji:

独 (1st and 3rd kanji) = independence

立 = standing

歩 = walking

This phrases refers to following the path you believe in on your own, without relying on others.

The second kanji means "standing", so perhaps a more elegant English translation is "standing on one's own two feet".

独立独歩 is a special kind of Japaneses idiom known as a 四字熟語 (よじじゅくご、yo-ji-juku-go), or 4-character idiom. As the name suggests, these 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”.

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四字熟語

四字熟語 (よじじゅくご) or yojijukugo are what are known as "four-character compounds" or "four-character idioms" in Japanese.

These contain four kanji, and the meanings of the individual kanji don't usually have much to do with the meaning of the idiom as a whole. But the meaning of the idiom often comes from a story which explains the derivation of the four characters used.

Like the rest of kanji, yojijukugo come from China. Yojijukugo come specifically from the Chinese Chengyu. However, there are many Japanese-only yojijukugo as well. Each yojijukugo represent the moral of a Chinese story, a Japanese proverb, Buddhist scripture, or an old Japanese story. Therefore to really understand the yojijukugo meaning, you would need to know the story behind it.

Estimates of the number of existing yojijukugo range upwards to 20,000 which is quite a lot of stories to learn. However, some are fairly straightforward and don't require a lot of information to understand the meaning. You can learn some of the most common ones without having to learn every story behind them.