形影一如 keiei ichinyo Inseparable as Form and Shadow
形影一如 (keiei ichinyo), form and shadow as one, followed through Japanese print from 1911 and set beside the Chinese idioms and the commoner Japanese 形影相伴う.
Abstract
形影一如, keiei ichinyo, form and shadow as one, is a four-character word, rare in print, for two that go together as a body and its shadow. The National Diet Library's full-text index finds it first in 1911, where a Zen writer sets it on the moment the master 洞山良价 saw his reflection in the water; the Chinese Buddhist canon does not carry the four characters. From the 1930s writers use it of people who go together, friends, brothers, comrades, parents and children, as often of things that go together, and in the Buddhist sense of not-two. The one dictionary entry read here gives husband and wife as its second sense, and Japanese says that more often with 形影相伴う.
Overview
The sense. Form and shadow as one: two that go together as a body and its shadow, said of friends, brothers, comrades, parent and child, of things that go together, and, in the one dictionary entry read here, of the couple.
The words. 形影 is form and shadow, the pair that never parts: 良岑安世's poem on 王昭君, the Han palace lady sent as a bride to the Xiongnu, in the 文華秀麗集 of 818, says that her soul goes back to the Han palace, her form and shadow face the barbarian field, and the 列子 says that when the form bends, the shadow bends. 一如 is the Buddhist not-two, the one truth under its many appearances, and then simply one and the same. Of the dictionaries kotobank serves, only デジタル大辞泉 has the four characters together, and from the way a thing's form and its shadow always keep together it gives two senses: that the good or evil of the heart shows in what a person does, and that husband and wife are close. The 精選版 日本国語大辞典 there has no entry [1]. The printed four-character dictionaries carry it from 1990 on, and their entries were not read here [2].
The text in English. The open dictionary alone renders it, with three glosses, the third husband and wife being never apart [3]; its second and third match 大辞泉's two senses. No Japanese-English dictionary among the Library's hits lists it [2]. The English phrase inseparable as form and shadow glosses a different phrase, the Chinese 形影不離, in the earliest copy the Internet Archive's full-text index holds, of 1982 [4].
The historical record
1911. A Zen writer's gloss. The Library's full-text index, which reads the books still in copyright as well as the free ones, finds 形影一如 in seventy-nine volumes. The oldest, a 1711 print of 朱子's works, is a false hit: the leaf reads each has its form and shadow, as if it could be grasped; the 一 the index matched is a reading mark, and 如 begins the next phrase. The oldest real one is a Zen book of 1911 by 加藤咄堂, retelling the awakening of 洞山良价, the ninth-century founder of the Caodong line: one day, crossing water, he saw his reflection and was greatly awakened, and made the verse "Do not seek from another, or you will be far from yourself; today I walk alone, and everywhere I meet him; he is now just me, I am now not him; you must understand it so, to accord with thusness" — crossing the water, form and shadow one, here he was suddenly and greatly awakened. 加藤 printed the paragraph again, nearly word for word, in 1936 [2]. The story is old: the 景德傳燈錄 of 1004 says that 洞山, still in doubt, later, crossing water, saw his reflection and was greatly awakened to the former meaning, and gives the verse [5]. The Chinese Buddhist canon does not carry the four characters [6], and nothing in the index puts them before 加藤; whether he made them or took them up is not known.
1934 to 2000. People, things, and the not-two. From the 1930s the word is used of almost any close pair. Of people: a 1934 book on education, a sketch of Yamagata's prefectural folk high school, says ruler and people stand as water and wave, not two; as form and shadow, one. A 1942 book on the family has parents living with their children as form and shadow, one. It is said of two friends who for more than twenty years kept the closest friendship, form and shadow as one, striving together toward the one road of children's literature (1943), of a lover cast off overnight (1950), of two Zen masters (1962), and from the 1960s to the 1990s of brothers, sworn comrades, teachers and friends, and an author and his character. An oratory magazine of 1935 glosses it at once with 一心同體, one heart, one body. Of things, as often: a company man writes in 1937 that there is a thing people call form and shadow as one: I am like the shadow of a form, and I exist because the company does; it is said of the railways of Manchuria and the South Manchuria Railway Company (1942), of two things a patent journal says ordinary people confuse (1942), of something and the raising of shipping efficiency, the first of the pair before the window (1943), of a man and his thought (1976), and of a city and its military (1988). And it keeps the Buddhist sense of not-two: a magazine article of 1934 sets it beside 色即是空, form is emptiness, and a 1953 study of the 正法眼蔵 has awakening at root not two and form and shadow one [2]. The use printed most often is one sentence of 石坂洋次郎's novel 『若い人』, a life of form and shadow as one, content from moment to moment, in the magazine 三田文学 in 1935, the earliest printing in the index, and in fourteen later volumes to 2000, five of them the novel alone and nine collected works, one with the reading in ruby [2].
The dictionaries. From 1990 the four-character dictionaries carry it, among them 三省堂's 新明解四字熟語辞典 of 1998; their entries were not read here. A 1998 book of four-character words sets it in a run with 一心同体, 関雎之化, 比翼連理, 夫唱婦随 and 偕老同穴, the last three words for husband and wife in the dictionaries [7]; the window does not show the heading over the run [2].
Beside its neighbors. The Chinese Buddhist canon at CBETA and Chinese Wikisource do not carry 形影一如 [6]. The canon has 形影相隨, said of two monks who kept together for twenty years, 形影不離, 形影相弔 for the lonely man whose only company is his shadow, and 如影隨形, as the shadow follows the form, for the merit that follows a gift in the 長阿含經 [8]. Japanese settled on its own form, 形影相伴う, form and shadow keep company, which three dictionaries give for two always together, husband and wife or friends, the 日本国語大辞典 first from 1910 [7]. On the same index 形影相伴 is in 8,804 volumes, 形影相弔 in 2,125, 形影相随 in 577 and 形影不離 in 154, against seventy-eight for 形影一如, fifteen of them one novel [2].
The sense across time. In the one dictionary entry read here 形影一如 has two senses, the moral and the marital. In print it was first set on a monk's awakening, and after that on two of almost anything that go together, people and things alike, with the Buddhist not-two running beside.
What is not a source. No source read calls 形影一如 a common idiom; a company man in 1937 introduces it as a thing people say.
A reading
形影一如 is a four-character word, rare in print, for two that go together as a body and its shadow. A Zen writer set it on 洞山's reflection in the water in 1911, and whether the four characters were his is not known. From the 1930s it was said of whatever pair the writer needed, people and things alike, and in 1976 of a man whose person and thought had become one, which is as near as the print I read comes to the dictionary's first sense. The couple is the dictionary's second sense and a small part of the print; Japanese says that more often with 形影相伴う, and the canon's phrase for two who never part is 形影相隨. It suits a marriage, and its history is wider than one.
References
- 「形影」・「一如」・「形影一如」, 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/形影一如 · https://kotobank.jp/word/形影
- National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text search on 形影一如, oldest first, seventy-nine hits; comparison totals on the same search for 形影相伴, 形影相弔, 形影相随 and 形影不離. Cited: 晦庵先生朱文公文集, 1711 print, scan 59; 加藤咄堂, 文字禅, 東亜堂書房, 1911, scan 83; 加藤咄堂, 涼心禅話, 春潮社, 1936, scan 60; 角南元一, 教育転換点に立つての回顧と新展望 上 (山形県立国民高等学校の素描), 1934, scan 93; 中央公論 49(9), 1934, scan 162; 雄弁 26(1), 1935, scan 221; 三田文学 10(4), 1935, scan 11 (石坂洋次郎, 若い人); れいえん 55, 1937, scan 17; 富野敬邦, 日本の家と教育, 1942, scan 164; 東亜経済展望, 1942, scan 76; 特許と商標 11(10), 1942, scan 18; 木村小舟, 少年文学史, 明治篇, 童話春秋社, 1943, scan 145; 海運 251, 1943, scan 75; フィルハーモニー 22(9), 1950, scan 18; 岡田宜法, 正法眼蔵思想大系 3, 1953, scan 46; 株式会社喜多村石油本店50年史, 1961, scan 22; 日置黙仙禅師伝, 1962, scan 60; 井原市史, 1964, scan 139; 日本の文学 58, 中央公論社, 1964, scan 127; 人間・空間・時間 (常盤敏太博士喜寿記念論集), 1976, scan 288; 川端康成 (新潮日本文学アルバム 16), 1984, scan 44; 特別甲種幹部候補生の記, 1986, scan 233; 日本人の戦争, 1988, scan 311; 四字熟語に強くなる本, 1998, scan 81 (the text layer reads 関雌之化); 新明解四字熟語辞典, 三省堂, 1998. The 1711, 1911 and 1943 leaves are read at the page and the 1936 book at its text layer; every other book is read at the search's snippet, snippet view, and its full text is open only in Japan. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=形影一如&fulltext=true&sortKey=ISSUED_ASC · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2583193/1/59 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/823531/1/83 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1223128/1/60 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1090640/1/93 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/10232245/1/162 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/11006874/1/221 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2303500/1/11 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/8099978/1/17 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1039364/1/164 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1108841/1/76 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1586220/1/18 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1127298/1/145 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1558442/1/75 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2258757/1/18 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2972484/1/46 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/8312627/1/22 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2968296/1/60 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/3008692/1/139 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1664950/1/127 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/11896324/1/288 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12462823/1/44 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/12012790/1/233 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/13203906/1/311 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/14110020/1/81 · https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/14092608
- JMdict (EDRDG), 「形影一如」, at jisho. https://jisho.org/word/形影一如
- P. C. T'ung and D. E. Pollard, Colloquial Chinese, character text, 1982: 形影不离 xíng-yǐng bù lí (set phrase) inseparable (as form and shadow), read at the Internet Archive full-text highlight. https://archive.org/details/charactertextfor0000tong
- 景德傳燈錄 (1004), book 15, 洞山良价, T51n2076_p0321c19–24, at CBETA. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T2076&juan=15
- CBETA full-text search on 形影一如 and 形影如一, no hits; Chinese Wikisource search on the same, no hits. https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/search?q=形影一如 · https://zh.wikisource.org/w/index.php?search=形影一如
- 「形影相伴う」 (デジタル大辞泉, 精選版日本国語大辞典 with its first example, 竹越与三郎, 南国記, 1910, and 故事成語を知る辞典), 「比翼連理」, 「夫唱婦随」, 「偕老同穴」, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/形影相伴う · https://kotobank.jp/word/比翼連理 · https://kotobank.jp/word/夫唱婦随 · https://kotobank.jp/word/偕老同穴
- CBETA full-text search on 形影相隨 (24 hits), 形影不離 (6), 形影相弔 (29) and 如影隨形 (382); 靈峰宗論, book 8, B0130 p0758b13 (二師同堂相聚 … 從是形影相隨者，二十餘年); 長阿含經, book 2, T01n0001_p0015a02 (施持戒人，則獲大果。此為真伴，終始相隨，所至到處，如影隨形). https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/search?q=形影相隨 · https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/search?q=如影隨形 · https://cbdata.dila.edu.tw/stable/juans?work=T0001&juan=2