一心同体 isshin dōtai One in Mind and Body
一心同体 (isshin dōtai), one heart, one body, is the phrase the Japanese dictionaries now illustrate with husband and wife. It began in Chinese as a word for sworn brothers and for a master and his disciples; its oldest dated Japanese use known is an 1874 Tokyo police regulation, and its first known use for a couple is an Orthodox catechism of 1883.
Abstract
一心同体, isshin dōtai, one heart, one body, is a Chinese phrase for sworn brothers and for a master and his disciples, which Meiji Japan gave first to its police and its soldiers, then, under the Christian one flesh, to husband and wife from 1883. The older Japanese word for a couple's oneness is Nichiren's 異体同心, bodies apart, one heart.
Overview
The sense. One heart, one body: a Chinese phrase for sworn brothers and for a master and his disciples, which Meiji Japan gave first to its police and its soldiers and then, under the Christian one flesh, to husband and wife.
The words. 一心 is one heart: the Buddhist one mind, the single-mindedness of a man at prayer, and the hundred million hearts as one of a wartime proclamation. 同体 is one body, a tenth-century Buddhist word for the Buddhas' single body. Together the dictionaries gloss them two or more people acting with one heart, bound like one person, and every one of them illustrates the phrase with husband and wife are one heart and one body [1]. The Meiji spelling was often 一身, one person, rather than 一心, one heart; the big dictionary's own first citation is spelled that way, and its note says so. The modern 一心 is the ruling form.
The older Japanese word for the couple's oneness is 異体同心, bodies apart, one heart. It is Nichiren's word for his community, and by 1905 漱石's cat could laugh at it as the old way of talking about marriage [1].
The text in English. The English of 一心同体 is one flesh, Genesis 2:24, from the 1908 idiom dictionary through 武信 to the modern 研究社.
The historical record
Song to Qing. A Ming novel, a Song commentary, a secret society. Chinese Wikisource has 一心同體 in three kinds of text. In the 西遊記, chapter 32, the Tang monk had got Sun Wukong back, and master and disciples, one heart and one body, went on together toward the West; in the 1696 annotated edition the National Diet Library holds. A Song commentary on the 書経 says the Grand Protector and the young king were one heart and one body. And the initiation oath of the 天地會, the Heaven-and-Earth Society, as a Qing miscellany records it, runs: once in the Hong gate, be of one heart and one body, support one another, allow no distinction of you and me. The phrase names a brotherhood. The commoner Chinese phrase for the same idea, 異體同心, is older: a Tang ode on a tree whose two trunks grew into one, and a prose-poem on two yellow men guarding the sun, bodies apart and one heart, two forms joining their strength like the left and right hand, in a print of 1567. Neither is a phrase for a couple. The Chinese couple's phrase is 形影相隨, form and shadow following each other [2].
1275 to 1905. Nichiren's word. 異体同心 came to Japan as a Buddhist word. Nichiren's letter to the believers of Atsuhara, dated 1275 in the collected writings, says: with bodies apart and one heart every thing is achieved; with one body and hearts apart nothing is accomplished — so it stands in three thousand volumes of the outer canon. King Zhou of Yin had seven hundred thousand horse but hearts apart, and lost; King Wu of Zhou had eight hundred men but one heart, and won. Another letter makes it the definition of his community: all my disciples and patrons, with no thought of self and other, as fish think of water, chanting the daimoku with bodies apart and one heart — that is the lifeblood. Four monks who printed a Buddhist chronicle in 1612 signed their colophon four monks gathered, bodies apart and one heart, cut the blocks. This is the word the cat remembers in 1905: in the old days there was no argument; they said 異体同心, and though you saw two people you had in fact one; and so they called it "old together, one grave," and even dead turned into badgers in one hole. Barbarous. [3]
1874: the police. The oldest dated Japanese use of 一心同体 known is a Tokyo police regulation of the seventh day of the second month of 1874, printed with its date in a police handbook of 1878: Article 3. Those on duty together shall consider themselves one heart and one body, make mildness and gentleness their rule, do their duty to one another with sincerity, and encourage one another not to slacken. The same year 西郷隆盛 wrote, in Chinese, a memorial for the volunteers who died in the Taiwan expedition: in our levied company we were one heart and one body, as when the right hand is in trouble the left hand answers without thinking. In 1877 a translator of Rousseau used it for the social contract's single body: when many men gathered together regard themselves as one heart and one body. In 1880 a translated church history had Francis Xavier write to a friend, my soul is your soul and your heart is my heart, truly a feeling of one heart and one body. Through the 1870s and 1880s the phrase belongs to the state, the army, the church and the philosophers, and the commentaries on the emperor's rescript to soldiers gloss his limbs and head with it [4].
1883: the couple, under "one flesh." The first use for husband and wife known is the Orthodox Church's catechism of 1883, on the sacrament of marriage: that they may obtain the grace to bear and raise children in a pure one-heart-one-body. The novels follow: a political novel of 1888, the two's love was doubled from the day before, and they felt ever more one body and one heart (spelled one person); a novel of 1891, the two grew ever closer, the one-heart-one-body of the mountain; a conduct book of 1899, the couple's affection was enviable to onlookers, always as if one heart and one body. 福沢諭吉's New Greater Learning for Women of the same year makes it the marriage contract's clause and then limits it: husband and wife being one heart and one body, the contract to share pain and pleasure may not be broken at the cost of life; yet apart from the division of household labor into inner and outer, there is no rank of high and low between them, and each should hold to equality in all things. In 1908 an English idiom dictionary printed the equation: She and I are one flesh — 一心同体だ, with (husband and wife) in brackets. 武信's Japanese-English dictionary of 1918 has to become one flesh and, for a friend, one's second self. By 1910 the proverb dictionary lists husband and wife are one heart and one body among the sayings on marriage, and the 1919 national dictionary files it under 夫婦 as a proverb. The Library's count of books goes from eighteen in the 1870s to nearly a thousand in the 1930s [5].
The sense across time. 一心同体 kept one sense, many acting as one, and changed its subject: brothers and disciples in China, police and soldiers and a nation in Meiji Japan, the couple from 1883 on. The dictionaries now illustrate it only with the couple, as if it had always been theirs.
What is not a source. 一心同体 is not an old Japanese saying about marriage; the old one was 異体同心.
Today. The open dictionary glosses 一心同体 being one in body and soul; of one flesh; two hearts beating as one [6]; one's second self, for a friend, is 武信's of 1918 [5].
A reading
一心同体 is the couple's word today, and it came from a Ming novel's master and disciples, a police regulation of 1874, Saigō's volunteers, and the Christian one flesh by which it became a marriage word in 1883. One heart, one body is the literal; of one flesh is what a Japanese reader hears. The old Japanese word for two bodies and one heart is Nichiren's 異体同心.
References
- 「一心」・「同体」・「一心同体」・「異体同心」, 精選版日本国語大辞典・デジタル大辞泉・字通, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/一心同体
- 西遊記, ch. 32 (吳承恩), in 陳士斌 (annot.), 西遊眞詮, 1696 print, scan 38; 尚書說, 卷7 (Song); 清稗類鈔, 070 (the 天地會 oath); 文苑英華, 卷2, 1567 print, scan 166 (異體同心); at zh.wikisource and NDL Digital Collections. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2566696/1/38
- 日蓮, 異体同心事, in 日蓮上人御遺文, 1904, scan 543; 生死一大事血脈抄, in 日蓮大士言行録, 1915, scan 66; 佛祖歴代通載, colophon, 1612, National Diet Library Digital Collections; 夏目漱石, 吾輩は猫である, 1905–06, at ja.wikisource. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/823848/1/543 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/953296/1/66
- 警視庁, 巡査心得, 1874, in 警察類聚, 1878, scan 22, and 東京警吏須知, 1878, scan 8, and 本朝民鑑, 1877, scan 416; 西郷隆盛, 祭臺灣戰死者文, in 南洲遺稿, 1877, scan 14; 服部徳 (trans.), 民約論 (Rousseau), 1877, scan 142; 日本西教史 (Crasset, trans.), 1880, scan 661. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/790973/1/22 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/894346/1/14 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/783743/1/142 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/824974/1/661
- 初実の果, 正教会, 1883, scan 137; 末広鉄腸, 花間鶯, 1888, scan 96; 花守, 金港堂, 1891, scan 69; 家庭の鑑, 国光社, 1899, scan 27; 福沢諭吉, 新女大学, 1899, at ja.wikisource; 英和熟語慣用句辞典, 三省堂, 1908, scan 157; 武信, 武信和英大辞典, 1918, scan 331; 諺語大辞典, 1910, scan 459; 大日本国語辞典, 1919, scan 246. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/824573/1/137 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/885846/1/96 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/887832/1/69 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/848330/1/27 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/870072/1/157 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/925665/1/331
- JMdict (EDRDG), 「一心同体」, at jisho. https://jisho.org/word/一心同体