比翼連理 hiyoku renri Wing to Wing, Branch to Branch — the vow of two who would be one bird and one tree
This is a philological study of 比翼連理 (hiyoku renri), a wedding phrase not yet sold as a design. It follows the phrase from two older, separate images — a legendary wing-paired bird and an omen of two trees grown into one grain — through 白居易's 長恨歌 of 806, where a dead woman remembers them as a whispered vow, to a Kamakura chronicle's use of the same four characters for an adultery, and on to their ordinary use in Edo fiction and Shōwa wedding manuals, and sets out Giles's and Bynner's English.
Abstract
比翼連理, wing to wing, branch to branch, joins two older Chinese images — a legendary bird that cannot fly with only one wing, and two trees whose grain grows into one — into a single wedding vow, first stood together in Bai Juyi 白居易's 長恨歌 of 806, where a dead woman remembers a whispered promise. This study follows the four characters from that poem through a Kamakura chronicle's use of them for an adultery, an Edo stage and fiction where they become any lovers' oath, and two Shōwa wedding manuals that teach them to brides as the plain meaning of marriage, and sets out Giles's 1901 and Bynner's 1929 English. It finds one sense held for twelve centuries — two so joined they are one creature — and a shade of tragedy the phrase has never fully shed.
Overview
The sense. One sense, held steady for twelve centuries: two who are so joined they are one creature. What moves is who it is said of. In the poem and the romances it is the pledge of lovers, remembered in grief; in the Kamakura chronicle it is an adultery; on the Edo stage it is any oath between a man and a woman; in the Diet Library's books it climbs through the Meiji and Taishō novels to a peak in the 1920s and by then it is in the priests' handbooks and the brides' manuals as the ordinary picture of marriage. The dictionaries split on the word: 大辞泉 says 夫婦, husband and wife; the 日国 says 男女, a man and a woman, and its two first citations, an affair and an imperial concubine, are why. Beside it stands 比翼塚, the shared grave of lovers who died together, which keeps the poem's shade.
The words. 比翼 hiyoku is paired wings: 比 to set side by side, 翼 a wing. 連理 renri is joined grain: 連 to join, 理 the grain of wood, so two trunks whose grain has grown into one. Neither half names a bird or a tree; each is the short form of a longer phrase, 比翼の鳥 the wing-paired bird and 連理の枝 the branch of joined grain, and the four characters are the two short forms set together, sky first and earth second, in the order the poem gives them. The bird is a Chinese legend older than the poem: 南方有比翼鳥焉，不比不飛, in the south there is a wing-paired bird; unless paired, it does not fly, says the 爾雅, the oldest Chinese glossary [1], and a commentator added that each has one eye and one wing. The tree is an omen before it is a love word: Chinese histories record trees whose two trunks had grown together as signs of a virtuous reign, and the Japanese court did the same, 阿波国献木連理, the province of Awa presented a tree of joined grain, in 704 [2]. The love story under the tree is in the 搜神記, a fourth-century book of marvels: a king takes a man's wife, both die, the king buries them apart, and overnight two catalpas grow from the graves, 屈体相就，根交于下，枝錯于上, bending toward each other, roots crossing below, branches interlaced above, with a pair of mandarin ducks in them crying; the people called it 相思樹, the tree of longing [3].
The text in English. Giles gives the earliest known full English poem, in 1901; Bynner's rendering of 1929 is the one most quoted since.
The historical record
806. Bai Juyi, 長恨歌, The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, a narrative poem. The emperor Xuanzong 玄宗 has lost Yang Guifei 楊貴妃, strangled by his own soldiers on the flight from the capital; a Taoist finds her spirit on an island of the immortals, and she sends back the one thing only the two of them knew: 七月七日長生殿，夜半無人私語時。在天願作比翼鳥，在地願為連理枝。天長地久有時盡，此恨緜緜無絶期, on the seventh day of the seventh month, in the Hall of Long Life, at midnight with no one near, we whispered: in heaven let us be the wing-paired birds, on earth let us be branches of one grain. Heaven is long and earth is old, but they will end; this sorrow goes on and has no end. [4] The vow is remembered by a dead woman about a love that broke a dynasty.
927. 延喜式, the court's book of procedures, book 21. Among the auspicious signs a province must report to the Ministry of Ceremonies: 比翼鳥。狀如鳧。一翼一目。不比不飛, the wing-paired bird: shaped like a duck, one wing, one eye; unless paired, it does not fly [5]. The bird enters Japanese as a legal category of good omen.
About 1008. Murasaki Shikibu 紫式部, 源氏物語, the chapter 桐壺. The emperor grieves for Genji's mother: 朝夕の言種に、「翼をならべ、枝を交はさむ」と契らせたまひしに、かなはざりける命のほどぞ、尽きせず恨めしき, morning and evening it had been his word to her, "we shall set our wings side by side, we shall cross our branches"; that her life had not allowed it was a grief without end [6]. The whole chapter is built on the 長恨歌, and a 1673 commentary, 呉竹集, glosses this line in four characters: はねをならべ枝をかはすとは比翼連理なり。深きちぎりを云也, to pair wings and cross branches is hiyoku renri; it means a deep pledge [7].
About 1050. 浜松中納言物語, a court romance set partly in China (mid-eleventh century). A Chinese emperor, missing a dead empress, recites the line over and over on a moonlit evening: 「天にあらば比翼の鳥となり、地にあらば連理の枝とならむ」とおし返しつゝずんじ給へる, "in heaven a wing-paired bird, on earth a branch of one grain," he chanted again and again [8]. The first Japanese witness here for 連理の枝 in kana.
1202. 吾妻鏡, the Kamakura shogunate's chronicle, the fifteenth day of the eighth month. A dancer at the shogun's court takes the tonsure: 此女。日來古郡左衛門尉保忠密通。成比翼連理契之處。保忠下向甲斐國。不待歸來。有此儀。不堪悲歎之故也, this woman had lately been in a secret affair with 古郡保忠, and had made with him the pledge of wing-paired birds and joined branches; 保忠 went down to Kai, and unable to wait for his return she did this, because she could not bear her grief [9]. The first time the four characters stand together in a Japanese text, and they name an adultery.
About 1296. 宴曲集, banquet songs. In a song of the court's year: 玄宗皇帝の楊妃が肩にかゝりて比翼連理と契りし, the emperor 玄宗, leaning on 楊貴妃's shoulder, pledged wing to wing, branch to branch [10]. The phrase sung in Japanese with its Chinese lovers named.
The fourteenth century. 太平記 and 義経記, war tales. The 太平記 retells the Taoist's journey and quotes the line in Chinese, 在天願作比翼鳥、在地願為連理枝。と誓き [11]. The 義経記 uses the halves of a woman who changes her mind: 昨日までは連理の契り、比翼の語らひ浅からず … 夜の程に女心変りをぞしたりける, until yesterday the pledge of one grain, the talk of paired wings, were not shallow; in the space of a night the woman's heart changed [12].
1702 to 1813. The Edo stage and fiction. 比翼連理とちかひにし, they had sworn hiyoku renri (東海道敵討, 1702) [13]; 牽牛織女の絶ぬ契を羨て比翼連理と誓ひし, envying the unbroken pledge of the Herdsman and the Weaver, they swore hiyoku renri (双蝶記, 1813) [14]. In 1797 the first origami book names a crane design 比翼 and gives it a comic verse on the vow: 天にあらばひよくのちぎりたのしまん かすミの蒲團 雲どりの夜着, in heaven we would enjoy the wing-paired pledge, a quilt of mist and bedclothes of cloud [15]. The phrase is by now every lovers' word, high and low.
1918 and 1940. Two wedding manuals. A handbook for Shinto priests, in its chapter on marriage rites: 其の間に於いて始めて比翼連理の契りを結び, in that moment they first tie the pledge of hiyoku renri [16]. A manual for the newly married, under the heading husband and wife are one body: 又比翼連理と云ふ言葉がありますが、鳥がむつまじく翼を比べてゐる樣に、連理は他の木の枝と枝とが連なつて一しよになり、同じ木輪になる樣に、夫婦ももとは他人と他人とであるが一つになつて了ふと云ふ意味で, there is also the phrase hiyoku renri: as birds lovingly set wing beside wing, and as renri means one tree's branch joining another's and growing to the same rings, so husband and wife, who began as strangers, become one [17]. By 1940 the phrase is explained to brides as what marriage plainly means.
What is not a source. The 搜神記's tree of longing is the picture behind 連理 but not its name; the word is an omen in the Han histories and the Japanese court before it is a love word. The Herdsman and the Weaver of 七夕 are the setting of the vow, the seventh night of the seventh month, not its source, though the 1813 novel joins them. 偕老同穴, grow old together, share one grave, is the phrase's older partner from the 詩経 and is often said in the same breath; it is a different phrase with its own history, and the priests' handbook and the brides' manual give the two together.
The text in English
1898 to 1919. Not in three other collections. Fletcher's Gems of Chinese Verse (1919) has Yang Guifei poems by other hands but not this one; Waley's More Translations from the Chinese (1919) and Giles's Chinese Poetry in English Verse (1898) have nothing [18][19][20].
1901. Herbert A. Giles, A History of Chinese Literature, London: Heinemann, pp. 174–175. In his version of the poem, titled The Everlasting Wrong: How on the seventh day of the seventh moon, in the Hall of Immortality, / At midnight, when none were near, he had whispered in her ear, / "I swear that we will ever fly like the one-winged birds, / Or grow united like the tree with branches which twine together." [21] Two footnotes: Each bird having only one wing, must always fly with a mate, and Such a tree was believed to exist, and has often been figured by the Chinese. The first full English poem here, and it carries the legends in its notes.
1929. Witter Bynner with Kiang Kang-hu, The Jade Mountain, New York: Knopf, p. 124. Under the title A Song of Unending Sorrow: "On the seventh day of the Seventh-month, in the Palace of Long Life, / We told each other secretly in the quiet midnight world / That we wished to fly in heaven, two birds with the wings of one, / And to grow together on the earth, two branches of one tree." [22] The rendering most quoted since, and the one that gives the images without the footnotes.
1976. Edward G. Seidensticker, The Tale of Genji, the chapter 桐壺 and the chapter 真木柱. The vow the emperor and his lady repeated, above, in Seidensticker's English: Morning and night, over and over again, they had repeated to each other the lines from "The Song of Everlasting Sorrow": "In the sky, as birds that share a wing. / On earth, as trees that share a branch." It had been their vow, and the shortness of her life had made it an empty dream. And in the chapter 真木柱, Prince Hotaru's poem to Tamakazura, You fly off wing to wing through mountain forests, / And in this nest of mine it is lonely spring, the paired wing as a lover's reproach [23].
1996. Stephen Owen, An Anthology of Chinese Literature. Two Chinese uses of the pair in English. Cao Pi 曹丕's yuefu: Two birds, wing to wing, soar through upper air, / no fowler can take them in his toils. And Hong Sheng 洪昇's 長生殿 of 1688, the play of the same emperor and lady, twice: the vow, May we be like those phoenixes, / in flight together, wing to wing; / may we be linked like the box pattern, / an interlocked love-knot of rings, and its fulfilment, the intertwined boughs / and birds that flew wing to wing / are joined again as they were before [24].
2002. James R. Brandon, Kabuki Plays on Stage, volume 1. On Yaegaki's entreaty in 本朝廿四孝: when she speaks of birds with wings the same color, she refers to a mythical pair of lovebirds whose bodies were joined, sharing the same pair of wings (hiyoku no tori) [25].
2003. Red Pine, Poems of the Masters. On Zhu Shuzhen 朱淑真's Falling Flowers, Whenever intertwined branches bloom / the jealous wind and rain strip away their flowers, his note: The intertwined branches represent the union of lovers [26].
Today. JMdict gives marital vows, which names the use and not the picture. One suggested gloss for the phrase is two birds that fly only together, two trees with one root; that is the legend under each half, and it is fair. A rendering must keep both images and their order, sky then earth: wing to wing, branch to branch, or Bynner's two birds with the wings of one, two branches of one tree. The house has no English for it yet.
A reading
The characters say paired wings, joined grain; the legends under them are a bird that cannot fly alone and two trees that grew into one over a grave; the poem that joined them is a dead woman's memory of a whispered promise; and the first Japanese to write the four characters together was a Kamakura clerk explaining why a dancer had cut off her hair over a man who did not come back. For seven hundred years the tradition has used it for any two people who mean to be one, and by 1940 it was being taught to brides as the plain meaning of marriage. The sky-then-earth pair is as good a picture of two lives as the language holds, and it reads without ambiguity in four characters.
Notes
- The order. 比翼連理 outnumbers 連理比翼 eighteen to one in the Diet Library's books.
- The 吾妻鏡 in Edo print. The 1626 and 1661 Edo prints show the passage in the index, but the page API did not find the four characters on them, so the 1905 typeset above is the witness [9].
- The 1797 origami book. Its design 比翼 is the same book that gives 千羽鶴 its early history [15].
- 羽 for 翼. The 桐壺 line is quoted above as the Wikisource text gives it, 翼をならべ、枝を交はさむ; a 1925 typeset of 中古文学選 prints 羽をならべ枝をかはさむ, 羽 for 翼, one word hane in either character, and the 1673 呉竹集 glosses it in kana as はねをならべ [6][7].
References
- 爾雅, 釋地, at the Chinese Text Project. https://ctext.org/er-ya/shi-di
- 続日本紀, 慶雲元年 (704) 六月己巳, as 精選版日本国語大辞典 quotes it, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/連理
- 干宝『搜神記』第十一卷, the story of 韓憑, at Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/搜神記/第11卷
- 白居易『長恨歌』, at Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/長恨歌
- 『延喜式』下巻, 校訂, 1931. National Diet Library pid 1442231, scan 6. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1442231/1/6
- 紫式部『源氏物語』桐壺, at Japanese Wikisource. https://ja.wikisource.org/wiki/源氏物語/桐壺
- 『呉竹集』, 1673. National Diet Library pid 2550686 (by highlight). https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/
- 『浜松中納言物語』, in 『国文大観』物語部三, 1903. National Diet Library pid 991355, scan 78. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/991355/1/78
- 『吾妻鏡』, in 『国史大系』第四巻, 1905, 建仁二年八月十五日. National Diet Library pid 991111, scan 320. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/991111/1/320
- 『宴曲集』, in 『日本歌謡集成』巻五, 1942. National Diet Library pid 1883716, scan 47. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1883716/1/47
- 『太平記』巻第三十七, at Japanese Wikisource. https://ja.wikisource.org/wiki/太平記/巻第三十七
- 『義経記』, at Japanese Wikisource. https://ja.wikisource.org/wiki/義経記
- 『東海道敵討』, 1702. National Diet Library pid 2542782 (by highlight). https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/
- 『双蝶記』, 1813. National Diet Library pid 2554015 (by highlight). https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/
- 『秘傳千羽鶴折形』, 1797, at Japanese Wikisource. https://ja.wikisource.org/wiki/秘傳千羽鶴折形
- 『神職宝典』, 1918. National Diet Library pid 943650, scan 358. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/943650/1/358
- 『結婚前後の修養』, 1940. National Diet Library pid 1282243, scan 37. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1282243/1/37
- W. J. B. Fletcher, translator, Gems of Chinese Verse, 1919. Internet Archive gemsofchinesever00fletiala. https://archive.org/details/gemsofchinesever00fletiala
- Arthur Waley, More Translations from the Chinese, 1919. Internet Archive moretranslation00baigoog. https://archive.org/details/moretranslation00baigoog
- Herbert A. Giles, Chinese Poetry in English Verse, 1898. Internet Archive cu31924008867222. https://archive.org/details/cu31924008867222
- Herbert A. Giles, A History of Chinese Literature, Heinemann, London, 1901, pp. 174–175. Internet Archive historyofchinese0000herb_v0s8. https://archive.org/details/historyofchinese0000herb_v0s8
- Witter Bynner and Kiang Kang-hu, translators, The Jade Mountain, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1929, p. 124. Internet Archive jademountain0000witt. https://archive.org/details/jademountain0000witt
- Edward G. Seidensticker, translator, The Tale of Genji, Knopf, 1976; read in the Tuttle two-volume printing, vol. 1, chapter 1 (Kiritsubo) and chapter 31 (The Cypress Pillar), p. 505 for the poem (the chapter 1 page is not visible in the text layer; the record gives the position).
- Stephen Owen, editor and translator, An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911, W. W. Norton, 1996 (e-book text; the record gives the three positions).
- James R. Brandon and Samuel L. Leiter, editors, Kabuki Plays on Stage, vol. 1, University of Hawai'i Press, 2002 (e-book text; the record gives the position).
- Red Pine, translator, Poems of the Masters: China's Classic Anthology of T'ang and Sung Dynasty Verse, Copper Canyon Press, 2003 (e-book text; the record gives the positions).