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水に流す mizu ni nagasu Forgive and Forget

This is a philological study of the Japanese proverb 水に流す (mizu ni nagasu). It spans a purification rite where a paper figure carries away the year's defilement on a river, a Chinese false friend whose water carries the opposite meaning, and a kabuki taunt of 1874 spoken to two men who never forgave.

Japanese Scroll of Forgive and Forget (mizu ni nagasu) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Forgive and Forget (mizu ni nagasu)

Forgive and Forget (mizu ni nagasu) on a traditional Japanese Scroll by Master Eri Takase.

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Abstract

水に流す, let it drift away on the water, is a Japanese idiom for treating a past wrong as if it had never happened: set the grudge adrift and let the river take it. Its water is the purification rite's water, where a paper figure carrying the year's defilement is floated down a river or the sea; a Chinese idiom that looks the same is a false friend, since in Chinese the same river carries away a hope, not a grievance. The idiom's parent, 水にする, make water of it, meant waste from the early 1600s and forgive by 1806; the full idiom itself is first recorded in 1874, in a kabuki play, spoken as a taunt to the two men in the whole story who never let a grudge go.

Overview

The sense. The phrase moves from waste to forgive inside one picture. Its parent 水にする means bring to nothing in the 1600s and forgive by 1806, and 水に流す is born in the second sense and keeps it. What changes after 1874 is the frame. 黙阿弥 twice uses it as a trap, a reconciliation offered by men who mean harm. The 1901 dictionary hears an occasion, the moment two parties make up. The 1906 dictionary hears two things, forgiving an old wrong and simply letting the past go. 上田 in 1915 hears a rule of conduct, and 竹原 in 1946 files it under the English idea of bygones. No source reads it as forgetting: the Japanese verb is set adrift, an act done to the grudge, not a lapse of memory.

The words. Three words. 水, mizu, is water; に, ni, marks where the thing goes; 流す, nagasu, is the transitive verb: not to flow but to set adrift, to let the current carry off. What is set adrift is the past. The dictionaries name it as 過去にあったこと, what happened, 恨み, a grudge, いざこざ, a quarrel, わだかまり, the knot left in the heart; in every stage witness it is a 恨み or 遺恨, an old grievance. 精選版日本国語大辞典: 過去にあったことを、すべてなかったこととする。過ぎ去ったことをとがめないことにする, to make everything that happened as if it had not; to hold nothing against what is past. デジタル大辞泉: 過去のいざこざなどを、すべてなかったことにする, with the example これまでのわだかまりを水に流す [1]. On or down the water is the nearer sense than in, since the verb sets a thing adrift and does not submerge it. The modern Japanese explanations guess that flowing water carries things off and purifies, and the older witnesses say it literally. At the purification rite, the 祓, a paper figure called a 形代 is rubbed on the body to take its 罪・けがれ・災い, its sins, defilements and misfortunes, and then 川や海に流す, is set adrift on a river or the sea; an Edo almanac describes it at the summer rite, 神前に紙にて小き形代を拵是にて骸を撫ひて水に流すなり, and an 1891 encyclopedia traces the floated doll to the Tale of Genji and the girls' festival dolls that still go down the river at 流し雛 [2][3]. The idiom's water is that water: the Japanese does not say forget, it says send it down the river, and the river is the one the year's defilement went down. Behind 水に流す stands a shorter phrase, 水にする, make water of it, which meant waste, bring to nothing in the 甲陽軍鑑 of the early 1600s, 跡の勝利を水にせぬやうに, so as not to make water of the victory that follows, and forgive by 1806 [4]. The two senses share a picture: what goes into the water is gone. The idiom kept the second sense and let the first go to its parent. The reading is mizu ni nagasu, and the wording has never varied.

The proverb in English. Hepburn's dictionary of 1872 has 水 and its compounds and no idiom, which fits a phrase the Japanese sources date to the 1870s [5]. An 1909 phrase dictionary gives the earliest known equation, to forget and forgive [6]; 斎藤 in 1918 gives three English idioms for the one Japanese phrase [7]; 竹原 in 1946 gives let bygones be bygones [8]. Buchanan in 1965 files the literal, let the things of long ago drift away on the water, under a longer form of the saying, and the same English stands under two other Japanese sayings in his book [9]. Galef's 2012 collection does not carry the phrase, and water under the bridge is on no Japanese-English shelf before 1946.

The historical record

Early 1600s. 甲陽軍鑑, the Takeda military chronicle. 跡の勝利を水にせぬやうにさへあれば、末代迄名は殘る者也 (so the 1935 typeset; kotobank prints あとの勝利 … 末代まで名は残る者也), so long as you do not make water of the victory to come, your name will last to the end of time. The parent phrase, in its parent sense, waste. The dictionary gives it as the first attestation of 水にする [10].

1651. Matsunaga Teitoku 松永貞徳, in the haikai anthology 崑山集. 名月を水になしたる雨夜哉, a rainy night that made water of the harvest moon: the sister phrase 水になす, again waste [11].

1806. 酩酊気質, a comic book of drunkards. すっぱりと水にしてお前ッちに遣りやせう, I'll make clean water of it and hand it over to you: the first time the dictionaries find 水にする meaning forgive, a generation before the full idiom [4].

1874. 河竹黙阿弥, 夜討曾我狩場曙, a kabuki play about the Soga brothers' vendetta, act two. The first recorded 水に流す, and it is said as a sneer. The brothers, who have spent their lives waiting to avenge their father on Kudō Suketsune 工藤祐経, have come in rags to the enemy's house, and 祐経's men lecture them. One says their grudge misreads the situation and their father's house would be better rebuilt by begging 祐経's patronage; another that his own lands were restored by such begging and not knowing greed is folly; then, in one sentence passed from mouth to mouth: 喜藏 こりや成景殿の言はるゝ通り、身貧に暮らしてこれ迄に、無駄に月日を送るより、 權平 多年の恨みさつぱりと、水に流して折々は、お鬚の塵をとりぐに、 源八 兄弟揃つて尻尾を振り、お臺所へお廻りなされい、鹽鰹の頭ぐらゐはくれてもやらう, as he says, rather than waste more months and years in poverty, wash the old grudge clean down the river and come now and then to pick the dust off our lord's beard; wag your tails together, come round to the kitchen door, and you may get a salt-bonito head. The line that became Japanese for forgive and forget is first spoken, mockingly, to the two men in the whole story who never let a grudge go [12].

1881. 黙阿弥, 極付幡随長兵衛. 深き遺恨を水に流し懇意を結ぶと仰せあるゆゑ (the text layer reads ゆる), since you said you would wash the deep grudge down the river and make friends: the same playwright uses the phrase straight, seven years later, and again it is a trap, since the friendship offered is a plot to kill [13].

1888. 宇田川文海, 汝所好, a novel [14]. 溪泉の水に流して、行末長く見捨て下さるな「雨降て地固るとは此事ぢや (the text layer reads とと), wash it down the valley stream and do not forsake me in the years to come: this is what they mean by "after rain the ground hardens". The earliest known such use in print, and it pairs two Japanese proverbs in one breath.

1888 to 1899. The Tokyo stage, storytellers and songs. San'yūtei Enchō 三遊亭円朝's stories, 是迄の事は水に流して此後は, let what is past go down the river, and from now on; an 1889 song, 主ゆゑならば水に流して胸のうち; Ishibashi Ningetsu 石橋忍月 in 1894, 平生の怨みはサラリと今水に流して; the stage scripts of 1896, 此塲のいさかひも宮戶川の水に流して … 丸く納まる一家の因み, this quarrel too down the Miyato river, and the house is reconciled; 1897, 恨みを水に流して負るが勝, grudge down the river, losing is winning. Every witness is Tokyo popular literature, and the phrase is already the stock line for a quarrel settled [15].

1889 to 1933. The dictionaries. 大槻文彦's 言海 of 1889, the first modern dictionary, has no 水に流す [16]. 山田美妙's 日本大辞書 of 1893 explains 水 as nothing through the phrase, 水ニ流ストノ義カラ皆無, and the 帝国大辞典 of 1896 copies it [17]. The 俗諺辞林 of 1901 gives the occasion: 從來纏絡したる葛藤の和解したる時などにいふ (the text layer reads 発來), said when a long entanglement is reconciled [18]. The 俚諺辞典 of 1906 gives two senses side by side, to forget an old ill-feeling and simply to forget the past altogether [19]. 藤井乙男's great proverb dictionary of 1910 files 【水ニ流ス】從來の感情を忘却し去ること and, alone among its neighbors, gives no source [20]. 上田萬年 in 1915: 旣往の事はすべて心にとめない, keep nothing of the past in mind [21]. 中野's 俚諺大辞典 of 1933 repeats 藤井 [22].

The dictionaries today. The two dictionary glosses quoted under Overview's The words; the 日国's first attestation is the 1874 play, and the 大辞泉 gives none [1]. The National Diet Library's public-domain books carry the phrase in its three common forms in over a thousand books, most of them literal, a paper figure, a lantern or a body floated on water.

What is not a source. The purification rite is what the phrase's water means, not a text it comes from; no witness quotes the 祓 when it says 水に流す. The Chinese idiom that looks the same is a false friend. The Japanese-Chinese dictionary of 1908 renders 水ニ流ス as 付之東流, consign it to the eastward river; but in Chinese that idiom means lost, wasted, come to nothing, the sense of the Japanese parent and not of the idiom, as when a magistrate throws his cap of office into the water in 比目魚, the novel made from Li Yu 李漁's play of that name [23][24]. Same river, and what floats away is a hope in Chinese and a grievance in Japanese. The Confucian sentence for forgiving the past is another line altogether: 既往不咎, do not blame what is past, from the Analects, which the 1946 dictionary and Buchanan pair with the same English [25]. And forgive and forget itself has its famous English instance in Lear, Pray you now, forget and forgive.

The proverb in English

1909. 英和双解熟語大辞典, an English-Japanese phrase dictionary. To forget and forgive. 忘れ且つ赦す, 水に流す. The earliest known equation: the English phrase glossed literally and then given its Japanese idiom [6].

1909. 井上十吉, 和英辞典, page 1049. Under 水: 今迄の事はそっくり水に流してしまいませう. We will let bygones be bygones [26].

1918. 斎藤秀三郎, 熟語本位英和中辞典. To forgive and forget, 水に流して了ふ; to cast behind one's back, 水に流して了ふ; what has happened shall be buried in oblivion, 是迄の事は水に流して了ふ. Three English idioms, one Japanese [7].

1946. Takehara Tsunetaō, スタンダード和英大辞典. 済ンダ事ハ水ニ流シテ了へ, Let bygones be bygones; and the same English under 既往ハ追ハズ, with 済ンダコトハ仕方カナイ (the text layer reads カ for カナイ's カ), What is done is done, beside them [8].

1958. Okada Rokuo, Japanese Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, page 187. In his English index: Let bygones be bygones. (Mukashi no koto wa mizu ni nagase.) [27]

1965. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, page 178, chapter PRACTICALITY. Not under this headword but under a longer form: Mukashi no koto wa mizu ni nagase: "Let the things of long ago drift away on the water." That is, do not hold tenaciously to ways and ideas that are no further use. English parallel: Let bygones be bygones. His literal is good, drift away on the water; his reading is the parent's sense, let go of what is useless, and not the reconciliation every Japanese witness carries. The same English stands under 既往は咎めず on page 109, glossed Let us forgive and forget faults committed against us, and under a grudge proverb on page 146 with Forgive and forget. So both of the equations here were in print in English by 1965, for three different Japanese sayings [9].

1968. Charles Corwin, A Dictionary of Japanese and English Idiomatic Equivalents. mizu ni nagasu 水に流す You were in the wrong, but let's let bygones be bygones (let's forget it) [28].

1974 and 1980. 研究社. The Japanese-English of 1974, under 過去, 過去のことは水に流そう. Let bygones be bygones [29]; the English-Japanese of 1980, under let, Let bygones be bygones. (俚) 昔のことは水に流してしまえ (Forget and forgive.) [30]; the school dictionary, under forget, forgive and forget … 水に流してしまふ [31].

Today. JMdict: to forgive and forget; to let bygones be bygones; to sweep under the carpet; to wipe the slate clean [32]. The house title, Forgive and Forget, is the 1909 equation, a century old and sound. What a rendering must keep: the grudge as the thing acted on, so forgive before forget; the river, which is a rite and not a metaphor; and no suggestion that the line is ancient.

A reading

The phrase is Meiji, and its first recorded use is a sneer at the Soga brothers. The water is the purification's water, the river that takes the paper figure and the year's defilement, and that is why Japanese says set it adrift where English says forget. The Chinese idiom that looks the same means the opposite. My own reading is that 黙阿弥 knew exactly what he was doing: he gave the line first to men who use it as bait, twice, and the language took it from them anyway, which is how a phrase for reconciliation should be tested.

References

  1. 「水に流す」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典・デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/水に流す
  2. 「形代」, at kotobank; 『東都歳事記』, National Diet Library pid 2561076, scan 34. https://kotobank.jp/word/形代
  3. 「流し雛」, at kotobank; 1891 encyclopedia, National Diet Library pid 898057, scan 132. https://kotobank.jp/word/流し雛
  4. 「水にする」, at kotobank; 『甲陽軍鑑』, 1935 typeset, National Diet Library pid 1240963, scan 271. https://kotobank.jp/word/水にする
  5. James Curtis Hepburn, 『和英語林集成』, 1872. National Diet Library pid 993689, scan 175. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/993689/1/175
  6. 『英和双解熟語大辞典』, 1909. National Diet Library pid 990169, scan 136. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/990169/1/136
  7. 斎藤秀三郎『熟語本位英和中辞典』, 1918. National Diet Library pid 1681530. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1681530
  8. 竹原常太『スタンダード和英大辞典』, 1946. National Diet Library pid 1126792, scans 237, 311 and 502. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1126792/1/237
  9. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1965, pp. 109, 146 and 178.
  10. 『甲陽軍鑑』, early 1600s; 1935 typeset. National Diet Library pid 1240963, scan 271. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1240963/1/271
  11. 「水になす」, at kotobank; 松永貞徳『崑山集』, 1651. https://kotobank.jp/word/水になす
  12. 河竹黙阿弥『夜討曾我狩場曙』, 1874; 1925 collected edition, p. 298. National Diet Library pid 1884454, scan 168. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1884454/1/168
  13. 河竹黙阿弥『極付幡随長兵衛』, 1881. National Diet Library pid 1884529, scan 276. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1884529/1/276
  14. 宇田川文海『汝所好』, 1888. National Diet Library pid 886950, scan 69. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/886950/1/69
  15. 三遊亭円朝's stories and the Tokyo stage scripts and songs, 1888–1899. National Diet Library pids 891299, 891398, 855836, 887783, 876839, 876845, 876852 and 885614.
  16. 大槻文彦『言海』, 1889. National Diet Library pid 992954 (absence).
  17. 山田美妙『日本大辞書』, 1893, National Diet Library pid 902835, scan 663; 『帝国大辞典』, 1896, pid 2387590, scan 657. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/902835/1/663
  18. 『俗諺辞林』, 1901. National Diet Library pid 863228, scan 185. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/863228/1/185
  19. 『俚諺辞典』, 1906. National Diet Library pid 900343, scan 251. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/900343/1/251
  20. 藤井乙男『諺語大辞典』, 有朋堂, 1910. National Diet Library pid 862766, scan 496. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/862766/1/496
  21. 上田萬年『ローマ字びき国語辞典』, 1915. National Diet Library pid 1900620, scan 317. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1900620/1/317
  22. 中野『俚諺大辞典』, 1933. National Diet Library pid 1453041, scan 454. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1453041/1/454
  23. Japanese-Chinese dictionary, 1908. National Diet Library pid 1087757, scan 393. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1087757/1/393
  24. 『比目魚』, at Chinese Wikisource, chapter 10. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/比目魚
  25. 『論語』八佾第三, at Chinese Wikisource. https://zh.wikisource.org/wiki/論語/八佾第三
  26. 井上十吉『和英辞典』, 三省堂, 1909, p. 1049, s.v. 水.
  27. Rokuo Okada, Japanese Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases, Japan Travel Bureau, Tokyo, 1958, p. 187.
  28. Charles Corwin, ed., A Dictionary of Japanese and English Idiomatic Equivalents, Kodansha International, 1968, s.v. mizu ni nagasu.
  29. 増田綱 ed., Kenkyūsha's New Japanese-English Dictionary, 4th ed., Kenkyūsha, 1974, p. 686, s.v. 過去 (the layer interleaves 苛酷 beside it).
  30. 小稲義男 ed., Kenkyūsha's New English-Japanese Dictionary, 5th ed., Kenkyūsha, 1980, p. 1026, s.v. let.
  31. 岡倉由三郎 ed., Kenkyūsha's New School Dictionary, English-Japanese, Kenkyūsha, undated printing, s.v. forget (the shelved copy, its own page 305).
  32. JMdict, 「水に流す」, at gokanji. https://new.gokanji.com/word/水に流す

Authors

Tim Jackowski (Systems Architect, Takase Studios, LLC) · 典 Ten (Anthropic Claude Fable 5.1, Takase Studios LLC)

AI written · Ten wrote the history. Tim Jackowski commissioned it and answers for it.

Checked · grok-4.6 (xAI), 2026-09-05, citations · gpt-6-astra (OpenAI), 2026-09-05, citations