心の儘 kokoro no mama Follow Your Heart
心の儘 (kokoro no mama), as the heart wills, is a Heian phrase a thousand years old, in the 竹取物語 of about 900 and the 源氏物語. It says freedom, and already in the 源氏物語 it can also say license, doing as one pleases, which is the edge worth knowing.
Abstract
心の儘, kokoro no mama, as the heart wills, is a classical Japanese phrase and a headword of the 日本国語大辞典. It is Heian, in the 竹取物語 of about 900 and in the 源氏物語, where it can already carry license as well as freedom, doing as one pleases. It runs through the 今鏡 and the 太平記, a tea manual prefaced 1686 and 本居宣長, and the National Diet Library's digital collections find it in over 24,000 items.
Overview
The sense. As the heart wills: freedom to act on what one feels, and, in the older texts, sometimes the license to do as one pleases.
The words. 心の儘 kokoro no mama is as the heart wills: まま, from まにま, the state as it is [1], and the 日本国語大辞典 heads the whole phrase, 心に思う通り。心まかせ。思う存分 [2].
The text in English. Follow your heart is some fifty times as common in English books of the 2010s as in those of the 1970s [3]. Japanese renders it as an instruction, 君の思うようにしなさい, 自分の心に従えばいいんだよ, 貴方の心に従いなさい [4], and 心のまま is a description, as the heart wills, where the English is an instruction.
The historical record
About 900. 心の儘, in the classics. It is Heian. In the 竹取物語 the emperor sends a lady-in-waiting to see Kaguya-hime, who will not come out, and the old woman who raised her 心の儘にもえせめず, could not press her as she wished [5]. In the 源氏物語 the edge is already there. In 篝火 Genji, for all his unwelcome desire, does not force himself on Tamakazura as his heart wills (憎き御心こそ添ひたれど、さりとて、御心のままに押したちてなどもてなしたまはず); in 常夏 he fears the world's censure if he acts as his heart wills (心のままにもあらば、世の人のそしり言はむ), and the young men in the garden do not pick the pinks as they please (心のままにも折り取らぬを) [6]. The 今鏡 has a retired emperor who means to rule as he pleases, 御心のままに世をまつりごたん [7]. In the 太平記 it is a prince's excess, 御心の侭に極侈, indulged himself at will, and a minister's tyranny, 趙高が心の侭にぞ行ひける, Zhao Gao ran the state as he pleased [8]. It is in a tea manual prefaced 1686 (下火を心の侭に直し) [9] and in 宣長's commentary on the 古事記 (古語を違へじと思ふ心のままには) [10], and the National Diet Library's full-text search finds it, as 心の儘 or 心の侭, in 24,011 items on 30 September 2026 [11].
1867. Into English. The dictionaries brought it in: Hepburn in 1867 glossed kokoro no mama as just as one thinks, or likes [12], and in 1873 gave it under liberty [13]. Dickins, translating the 竹取物語 in 1888, rendered the line nor might the Ancient nor his goodwife constrain her, giving the old woman's act to the couple [14].
What is not a source. The Chinese 心之所向 is a different phrase.
A reading
The classical phrase, a thousand years old: it says as the heart wills, freedom, and from the 源氏物語 on sometimes license, which is the edge worth knowing. The English follow your heart turns the description into advice; the Japanese only says how a thing was done.
Notes
儘 is the full glyph, which Edo print often writes 侭 and the dictionaries write in kana; all three are one word.
References
- 「儘」, デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/儘
- 「心のまま」, 精選版日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/心のまま
- follow your heart, Google Books Ngram Viewer, English corpus. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=follow+your+heart&year_start=1800&year_end=2022&corpus=en&smoothing=0
- "follow your heart", Weblio 英和辞典 example sentences (Tanaka Corpus, Tatoeba, and the Japanese-English Subtitle Corpus). https://ejje.weblio.jp/sentence/content/"follow your heart"
- 竹取物語, at Wikisource (群書類從 text). https://ja.wikisource.org/wiki/竹とりの翁物語_(群書類從)
- 源氏物語, 篝火 and 常夏, at Wikisource. https://ja.wikisource.org/wiki/源氏物語/篝火 · https://ja.wikisource.org/wiki/源氏物語/常夏
- 続世継 (今鏡), c. 1170, printed edition, undated, National Diet Library Digital Collections, scan 18. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2546534/1/18
- 太平記, 巻第十二 and 巻第二十六, at Wikisource. https://ja.wikisource.org/wiki/太平記/巻第十二 · https://ja.wikisource.org/wiki/太平記/巻第二十六
- 山田宗徧, 茶道便蒙抄, preface 1686, a manuscript copy, National Diet Library Digital Collections, scan 40. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2575277/1/40
- 本居宣長, 古事記傳, 巻2, the final draft in manuscript, 1785–88, National Diet Library Digital Collections, scan 20. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2545185/1/20
- National Diet Library Digital Collections, full-text search for 心の儘. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/search/searchResult?keyword=心の儘&fulltext=true
- J. C. Hepburn, A Japanese and English Dictionary, 1867, under mama, at archive.org. https://archive.org/details/ajapaneseandeng00hepbgoog
- J. C. Hepburn, Japanese-English and English-Japanese Dictionary, 1873, under Liberty, at archive.org. https://archive.org/details/japaneseenglishe00hepb
- F. V. Dickins, The Old Bamboo-Hewer's Story, 1888, at archive.org. https://archive.org/details/oldbamboohewerss00dick