文武両道 bunbu ryōdō Literary and Military Arts
This is a philological study of 文武両道 (bunbu ryōdō), a pair that began in the Analects as two Zhou kings and became, in Japan, a rule for governing a state, then a law for the warrior houses, then Miyamoto Musashi's own definition of a samurai. It follows the phrase from 1252, when the 十訓抄 first calls it "two ways," through the shogunate's 1615 house law and Musashi's 1645 五輪書, to twelve English translators from Mishima Yukio's 1971 program to Alexander Bennett's 2023 guide, and finds that in every use the four characters mean the refusal to choose between letters and arms, never a choice between them.
Abstract
文武両道, literary and military arts, begins in the Analects and the 禮記 as 文 and 武, two Zhou kings whose combined "way" is the model of good rule. This study follows the pair into Japan, where the 十訓抄 of 1252 first calls it "two ways" for a court, Nichiren in 1265 makes it "both ways" for governing, the shogunate's 1615 house law makes it the pivot of the warrior houses, and Miyamoto Musashi in 1645 makes it his own definition of what a samurai must practice, before it settles, today, into a school's word for a student good at both books and sport. It sets out twelve English translators from Mishima Yukio's 1971 program to Alexander Bennett's 2023 guide, and finds that in every use across two and a half thousand years the four characters mean the refusal to choose between letters and arms.
Overview
The sense. One sense, moving from the state to the man to the schoolboy. In the 十訓抄 and in Nichiren the two ways are a court's two wings and a ruler's two seasons; in the Noh, the 今川 letter, the shogunate's law and Musashi they are a warrior's two duties, with the law's neither may be lacking and Musashi's complaint that most keep only one; in the Edo conduct books they are a commonplace, the two wheels of a cart; and in a modern school they are the report card and the playing field. The four characters have never meant a choice between the two; they have always meant the refusal to choose.
The words. Four characters: 文 letters, the civil, 武 arms, the martial, 両 both (the old books write 兩), 道 way. The phrase has a twin, 文武二道, the two ways, thirteen years older in the dictionaries and commoner in old print, and a cousin in the shogunate's law, 文武弓馬之道, the ways of letters and arms, bow and horse. Under all three is the Chinese pair 文武, which in the Analects and the 禮記 is not two arts but two men, Wen 文王 and Wu 武王, the founding kings of Zhou, whose way is the model of good rule; in the Book of Songs the same two characters already praise a minister as civil and martial, and the Japanese word 文武, on record from 708, is that: the two halves of a court, its 文武百官, the civil and military officials. Both ways means keeping the two halves in one person.
The text in English. Brinkley's dictionary of 1896 enters 文武 and 文武兼備 but not 両道; the earliest bilingual entry for the four characters among the dictionaries cited is Kenkyūsha's of 1974, and the American proverb collections do not carry it.
The historical record
The Analects, book 19, and the 禮記. A grandee of Wei asks Zigong 子貢 where Confucius learned. 文、武之道，未墜於地，在人: the way of Wen and Wu has not yet fallen to the ground; it lives in people; the worthy remember its great parts and the unworthy its small, so that there is no one who does not have something of the way of Wen and Wu. From whom did the master not learn? And what fixed teacher did he need? [1] In the 禮記 Confucius explains a harvest festival by the same kings and the bow: 張而不弛，文武弗能也；弛而不張，文武弗為也。一張一弛，文武之道也, always strung and never slack, Wen and Wu could not manage; always slack and never strung, they would not do; strung and then slack, that is the way of Wen and Wu [2]. The Japanese still quote 一張一弛 for the rhythm of work and rest, and the way of Wen and Wu is the ground the four characters stand on: two kings, one civil and one martial by name, whose way is the balance of the two.
1252. The 十訓抄, tenth book. A collection of moral tales for the young, and the first Japanese book in the dictionaries' record to make the two characters two ways. Of the warrior it says that in a disordered age he comes first and is not inferior to letters, and then: 朝家には、文武二道を分ちて、左右の翅とせり。文事あれば必ず武備ある謂なり, the court divides the two ways of letters and arms and makes them its left and right wings; where there is civil order there is always military preparedness, and it gives the Chinese precedents, the twenty-eight generals honored in the 麒麟閣 and the sixteen clans of scholars under Shun [3]. The two ways are a state's, not a man's.
1265. Nichiren, the 聖愚問答鈔, second part. Arguing when a Buddhist should persuade gently and when he should rebuke, Nichiren reaches for the phrase as an analogy everyone will grant: 譬ば文武兩道を以て天下を治るに武を先とすべき時もあり文を旨とすべき時もあり。天下無爲にして國土靜かならん時は文を先とすべし。東夷南蠻西戎北狄蠶起して野心をさしはさまば武を先とすべき也, it is like governing the realm by both ways, letters and arms: there are times to put arms first and times to make letters the rule; when the realm is at rest and the land quiet, letters first; when the barbarians of the four quarters rise like silkworms with ambition in their hearts, arms first [4]. To wear armor in peacetime is wrong, he goes on, and so is to set down your weapons on the battlefield and pick up the inkstone. This is the first both ways the dictionaries know, and it is a rule of timing.
1412. Imagawa Ryōshun 今川了俊's letter of precepts to his son, the 今川状. The famous first article: 文道を知らずして武道終に勝利を得ざる事, without knowing the way of letters you will never in the end win by the way of arms [5]. The letter was a copybook for centuries and a Kyoto book of 1773 could parody it. One American historian credits Imagawa Ryōshun with formulating the idea itself; the two texts above are a century and a half older than his letter, so what he formulated was the ideal for a warrior's son, not the words.
The fifteenth century. The Noh play Tadanori, read in a printed libretto of 1623. The ghost of Taira no Tadanori 平忠度, the Taira general who was also a poet of the 千載集, is introduced: 中にも此忠度は文武二道をうけ給ひて世上に眼たかし, among them this Tadanori had received the two ways of letters and arms, and the world looked up to him [6]. The two ways applied to one man, and to the man whom the tradition made the pattern of the poet-warrior.
1615. The shogunate's first law for the warrior houses, the 武家諸法度. Article one: 一文武弓馬之道專可相嗜事。左文右武古之法也。不可不兼備矣。弓馬者是武家之要樞也。號兵爲凶器。不得已而用之。治不忘亂。何不勵修鍊乎, the ways of letters and arms, bow and horse, are to be pursued above all. Letters on the left and arms on the right is the ancient rule; neither may be lacking. Bow and horse are the pivot of the warrior house. Weapons are called instruments of ill omen and are used only when there is no choice; in order, do not forget disorder; how could one fail to train? [7] The 1635 revision keeps the article word for word at its head, and by 1683 it reads letters, arms, loyalty and filial piety. The balance of the two ways was the law of the land for the whole Tokugawa peace.
1626 to 1719. The Edo commonplace. The 太閤記 (1626, read in the 1646 print) has a chapter head a lord of a province uses both ways of letters and arms (国主兼用文武両道) [8]. A conduct book of 1695, the 万世家宝, opens its article on the samurai's frame of mind with the phrase already worn: 士は文武両道を嗜事古来の諚にして。文と武とは。車の両輪のごとし。文有て武を講ぜず。武あつて文を学ばずんば士の道にあらず。凡文武両道とばかりきゝて。其實を詳かにする事なし, that a samurai cultivates both ways of letters and arms is an old command; letters and arms are like the two wheels of a cart; letters without arms, arms without letters, is not the samurai's way; but people have only heard "both ways" and do not look into what it holds [9]. A 1719 book on the way of love calls the poet-warrior 頼政 a master of both ways, as the world knows [10].
1645. Miyamoto Musashi, the 五輪書, the Book of Earth. After listing the ways men take, the Buddhist's, the Confucian's, the doctor's, the poet's, the tea master's, the archer's, Musashi says few take the way of strategy, and then: 先づ武士は文武二道といひて、二つの道を嗜む事、是道也。縱ひ此道不器用なりとも、武士たるものはおのれおのれが分際程は、兵の法をば勤むべき事也, first, a samurai is said to follow the two ways of letters and arms, and to cultivate both is the way; and even if he is clumsy at this one, a samurai must practice the art of war to the measure of his station [11]. Then the reproach: as far as I can tell what samurai have in mind, they take the way to mean nothing more than knowing how to die. This is his sentence, and he writes the older twin, two ways. Sato's and Wilson's English of the sentence are below.
1896 and 1974. The bilingual dictionaries. Brinkley in 1896, from the Chinese: Bumbu, 文武, Literature and tactics; literary and military arts or accomplishments; Bumbu kembi no shi, an accomplished soldier with a good stock of literary knowledge; Bumbu ni tomu, to be rich in military as well as literary knowledge [12]. Kenkyūsha in 1974: 文武 literary and military arts; the sword and the pen; 文事と武事, civil and military affairs … 文武両道の達人 a past master in the arts of pen and sword; 文武両道に秀でている be well up in both literary and military arts, in the arts of war and peace; have literary and military accomplishments; be equally distinguished as a soldier and a scholar [13]. Nelson's character dictionary of the same year gives bumbu literary and military arts, the sword and the pen [14].
The dictionaries today. 大辞泉: 文事と武事との両方。また、勉学とスポーツの両面, both letters and arms; also, both study and sport, and the phrase's common use is the second: a newspaper in 1997 has one who excels in both academics and athletics, bunbu ryodo, and in 2011 a headline asks whether Japan has any [15]. Tanizaki Jun'ichirō 谷崎 uses it of a lord's upbringing in 1935. The National Diet Library's index reports 3,761 books before 1945 with the four characters (3,708 rows captured in the account's table), 84 of them pre-modern, against 1,721 for two ways, 161 pre-modern [16]: the older twin was the commoner one in old print, and the four-character form is the commoner now.
What is not a source. The Chinese classics give the pair 文武 and the way of Wen and Wu; they do not give 文武両道 or 文武二道 as a phrase, and the Chinese idiom for a man good at both is a different one, 文武双全. Yamaga Sokō 山鹿素行, whom one English historian credits with originating the idea, wrote four centuries after the first two ways. The 今川 letter's way of letters and way of arms is a kinsman, not the source. And the English proverb about the pen and the sword, which most translators reach for, has its own history and is not this one.
The text in English
1971. Mishima Yukio, in translation, Literature East & West 15.2 and London Magazine 11.1. His words from the year of his death, the very day of my action in order to realize my Bunbu Ryodo, glossed synthesis of culture arts and warrior arts in one journal and fusion of literary and military arts in the other: the earliest known appearance of the phrase in English, as a dead man's program [17].
1976. Ueda Makoto, Modern Japanese Writers and the Nature of Literature, Stanford. In the Mishima chapter, p. 229: It was derived from bunbu ryodo, the highest ethical principle for the Japanese samurai in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. [18]
1984. John Stevens, The Sword of No-Sword: Life of the Master Warrior Tesshu, Shambhala. In the foreword, said of Stevens by its author, p. viii: he well embodies the samurai ideal of Bunbu Ryodo, a student of the classics as well as the martial arts. [19]
1988. Hatsumi Masaaki, Essence of Ninjutsu. Unification of literary and military arts, which he would rather read as moral and military [20].
1995. Hiroaki Sato, Legends of the Samurai, page 257. Musashi's sentence of 1645, above, in English: First, as is often said, "A samurai must have both literary and martial skills": to be versed in the two is his duty. Even if he is awkward, a samurai must train in martial arts to a degree appropriate to his status. His note names the phrase, bunbu ryodo, 'literary (civilian) and martial (military) skills', and Nakae Tōju 中江藤樹's commentary on it [21].
1995. Patrick McCarthy, The Bible of Karate: Bubishi. Of the founder of the Ryūei-ryū: he was required to learn the principles of Bunbu Ryodo (the philosophy of the twin paths of brush and sword, symbolizing the importance of balancing physical training with protracted introspection and study) from an early age [22].
1995. Fred Neff, Lessons from the Japanese Masters. Bunbu-ichi or Bunbu-Ryodo, the phrase beside its cousin 文武一致 [23].
1996. Stanley Pranin, Daito-ryu Aikijujutsu, Aiki News. 武田惣角 dismissing the dual path of the sword and the pen as nonsense [24].
1997. Jeffrey P. Mass, editor, The Origins of Japan's Medieval World, Stanford. The civil and military arts, with a chapter titled The Bunbu Ryodo Ideal and a doubt about crediting Imagawa Ryōshun with the idea [25].
1998. G. Cameron Hurst III, Armed Martial Arts of Japan, Yale. Bunbu ryodo (the civil and martial arts), in the opening chapter on the word 武, p. 9; the swordsmanship chapter reads the 1615 law as enjoining bow and horse while keeping the civil and the martial linked, and places the ideal's first statement in Imagawa Ryōshun's regulations of 1412, p. 68 [26].
2002. Kiyota Minoru, The Shambhala Guide to Kendo. Integration of martial and liberal arts [27].
2004. William Scott Wilson, The Lone Samurai, pages 79 and 106. Of Musashi's own path: this was the path that included both the arts of war and the arts of peace (bunbu no michi); and, translating Imagawa Ryōshun's Regulations, quoted in the same chapter: we warriors should rack our brains and never abandon the Two Ways of the Cultural and Martial, bunbu ryodo [28].
2014. Alexander Bennett, Hagakure, the foreword. The phrase used of the translator himself: a living embodiment of the ideal of bunbu-ryōdō — being accomplished in both the literary and military arts [29].
2016. Patrick McCarthy, Bubishi: The Classic Manual of Combat, the foreword. the old maxims Bunbu Ryodo 文武両道 (a maxim representing the twin paths of the sword and the pen) and Onko Chishin 温故知新 (a saying representing the appreciation of the old in order to better understand the new) [30].
2016. Kiri Paramore, Japanese Confucianism, Cambridge. The Dual Way of Scholar and Warrior, credited to Yamaga Sokō [31].
2023. Alexander Bennett, The Insider's Guide to the Japanese Martial Arts, Tuttle. Skilled at arms and also in the arts … often mentioned in Japan today [32].
Today. The English forms divide by shelf: the historians say the civil and military arts, the martial-arts writers literary and martial, and nearly everyone reaches at some point for pen and sword. The house's title, Literary and Military Arts, is its own plain rendering and is closest to the historians'; a common alternate, sword and the pen, is the idiom. A rendering must keep both arts as arts and must not turn the phrase into a proverb about which is mightier.
A reading
Musashi's own sentence is 先づ武士は文武二道といひて、二つの道を嗜む事、是道也, and it shows that he wrote the older twin, two ways. 文武 began as two kings and became the two halves of a court; Japan made them two ways in 1252 and both ways in 1265, as a rule for governing before it was a compliment to a man; and the shogunate wrote the balance into the first line of its first law for the samurai, and Musashi into the first pages of his book, each in its own words. The modern sense, books and sport, is what a Japanese parent means by it today.
References
- 『論語』子張第十九, at Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/論語/子張第十九
- 『禮記』雜記下, at Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/禮記/雜記下
- 高橋富兄 校, 『十訓抄校本』, 雲根堂, 1893. National Diet Library pid 877559, scan 112. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/877559/1/112
- 日蓮, 『聖愚問答鈔』下, in 日明 編, 小川孝栄 訂, 『日蓮上人御遺文』, 1904. National Diet Library pid 823848, scan 302. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/823848/1/302
- 今川了俊, 『今川状』, as quoted in three Meiji and Taishō books.
- 〔謡本〕『忠教』, 元和9 (1623). National Diet Library pid 1288038, scan 9. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1288038/1/9
- 萩野由之 等編, 『日本古代法典』, 博文館, 1892, the 元和 and 寛永 武家諸法度. National Diet Library pid 787034, scans 411 and 414. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/787034/1/411
- 小瀬甫菴, 『太閤記』, 正保3 (1646) printing. National Diet Library pid 2546252, scan 5. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2546252/1/5
- 復信子, 『万世家宝』, 元禄8 (1695). National Diet Library pid 2533146, scan 5. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2533146/1/5
- 増穂残口, 『艶道通鑑』, 享保4 (1719). National Diet Library pid 2554358, scan 19. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2554358/1/19
- 宮本武蔵, 『五輪書』地之巻, in 国書刊行会 編『武術叢書』, 1915. National Diet Library pid 945805, scan 127. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/945805/1/127
- F. Brinkley, F. Nanjō and Y. Iwasaki, An Unabridged Japanese-English Dictionary, Sanseidō, 1896, p. 94, s.v. Bumbu.
- 増田綱 ed., Kenkyūsha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, 4th ed., Kenkyūsha, Tokyo, 1974, p. 111, s.v. bunbu.
- Andrew N. Nelson, The Modern Reader's Japanese-English Character Dictionary, 2nd rev. ed., Tuttle, 1974, p. 463, character 2065.
- 「文武両道」, デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/文武両道-623528
- National Diet Library, NDL Lab full-text search, 文武両道 and related spellings, 3,761 books, counted by decade. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/
- Mishima Yukio, in translation, Literature East & West, vol. 15.2, and London Magazine, vol. 11.1, 1971.
- Ueda Makoto, Modern Japanese Writers and the Nature of Literature, Stanford University Press, 1976, p. 229.
- John Stevens, The Sword of No-Sword: Life of the Master Warrior Tesshu, Shambhala, 1984, foreword, p. viii, in the 1994 Shambhala reprint.
- Hatsumi Masaaki, Essence of Ninjutsu, 1988.
- Hiroaki Sato, translator, Legends of the Samurai, Overlook Press, 1995, p. 257 and n. 2.
- Patrick McCarthy, translator, The Bible of Karate: Bubishi, Tuttle, 1995 (e-book text; the record gives the position).
- Fred Neff, Lessons from the Japanese Masters, 1995.
- Stanley Pranin, Daito-ryu Aikijujutsu, Aiki News, 1996.
- Jeffrey P. Mass, editor, The Origins of Japan's Medieval World, Stanford University Press, 1997, the chapter "The Bunbu Ryodo Ideal".
- G. Cameron Hurst III, Armed Martial Arts of Japan, Yale University Press, 1998, pp. 9 and 68.
- Kiyota Minoru, The Shambhala Guide to Kendo, 2002.
- William Scott Wilson, The Lone Samurai: The Life of Miyamoto Musashi, Kodansha International, 2004, pp. 79, 106.
- Alexander Bennett, translator, Hagakure: The Secret Wisdom of the Samurai, Tuttle, 2014, foreword, p. 7.
- Patrick McCarthy, translator, Bubishi: The Classic Manual of Combat, Tuttle, 2016, foreword (e-book text; the record gives the position).
- Kiri Paramore, Japanese Confucianism, Cambridge University Press, 2016.
- Alexander Bennett, The Insider's Guide to the Japanese Martial Arts, Tuttle, 2023.