形影一如 keiei ichinyo Inseparable as Form and Shadow
形影一如 (keiei ichinyo), form and shadow as one, is a Zen image: in a 1911 retelling, the ninth-century master 洞山良价 crosses water, sees his reflection, and is awakened. One dictionary files the phrase under husband and wife, and only three of the National Diet Library's public-domain books carry it, from 1911 to 1943.
Abstract
形影一如, keiei ichinyo, form and shadow as one, is a Zen image of a man and his reflection in the water. One dictionary files it under husband and wife; the National Diet Library's public-domain books carry it three times, from 1911 to 1943, first for a monk's enlightenment.
Overview
The sense. Form and shadow as one: a Zen image of a man and his reflection that one dictionary files under the couple.
The words. 形影 is form and shadow, the pair that never parts: a court poet of 818 wrote of the exiled princess 王昭君 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. Only one dictionary has the four characters together, and 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 big dictionary has no entry [1].
The text in English. The open dictionary alone renders it, with three glosses, the third husband and wife being never apart [2]. No Japanese-English dictionary in the Library's index lists it [3].
The historical record
1911 to 1943. A Zen image, three books. The Library's full-text index finds 形影一如 in four books. 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, and the fourth character begins the next phrase. The oldest real one is a Zen book of 1911 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" — crossing the water, form and shadow one, here he was suddenly and greatly awakened. A Zen book of 1936 repeats the paragraph nearly word for word. The third, a history of children's literature of 1943, uses it of two men 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. Chinese has no such phrase: it says 形影相隨 and 形影不離 for two who are never apart, 形影相弔 for the lonely man whose only company is his shadow, and 如影隨形 for the retribution that follows a deed as the shadow follows the form, which is where the dictionary's first sense comes from. Japanese books use those Chinese idioms too, in the hundreds. 形影一如 is a four-character-dictionary word: real, listed, and in the Library's books nearly unused [3].
The sense across time. 形影一如 had two senses on paper, the moral and the marital, and in print has been a monk's enlightenment and two friends' work.
What is not a source. 形影一如 is not a common idiom: no source calls it one; the phrase is a dictionary word, not a saying.
A reading
形影一如 is a Zen image, the man and his reflection in the water, listed by one dictionary for the couple and carried by three books in the Library, from 1911 to 1943: a beautiful phrase, not a common one, and not an idiom. The classical phrase for never being apart is 形影相随.
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
- JMdict (EDRDG), 「形影一如」, at jisho. https://jisho.org/word/形影一如
- National Diet Library Digital Collections, next-generation full-text search on 形影一如, four books: 晦庵先生朱文公文集, 1711 print, scan 59; 文字禅, 東亜堂書房, 1911, scan 83; 涼心禅話, 春潮社, 1936, scan 60; 少年文学史, 明治篇, 童話春秋社, 1943, scan 145. 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/1127298/1/145