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水の心 mizu no kokoro Heart Like Water

水の心 (mizu no kokoro), the heart of water, is not a dictionary headword, but the image behind it is: Japanese has likened the heart to water since the twelfth century, and the phrase holds a range no single reading closes, from the still mirror and the formless water to a school poem's water that can only be held, gently, in two hands.

Japanese Scroll of Heart Like Water (mizu no kokoro) — Calligraphy by Eri Takase
Heart Like Water (mizu no kokoro)

Heart Like Water (mizu no kokoro) on a traditional Japanese Scroll by Master Eri Takase.

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Abstract

水の心 is not a dictionary headword, but the image behind it is: Japanese has compared the heart to water since the twelfth century, and the phrase carries a range of meanings that no single reading closes — the water's own clear nature in the 万葉集, the believer's muddy heart that holds the moon anyway, the still surface that mirrors what comes, the formless water that takes any vessel's shape, and the water that cannot be grasped but only held with care, in a poem every Japanese child has read since 2001. The karate mind like water, which reached English in 1960, is the latest and narrowest of these and the one most English-speaking readers meet first. The English Heart Like Water is right because it holds all of them and chooses none.

Overview

The sense. The phrase has carried at least five senses, all of them live. The water's own nature, to the 万葉 poet [1]. The heart as water, clear or muddy, deep or shallow, still or moved, which is a headword in the national dictionary under the reversed particle, 心の水, from a poem of 1151 [2]; the Pure Land poem of 1320 that lodges the moon in a muddy heart belongs to this family [3]. The still surface that reflects whatever comes and is broken by a single act: this is the 荘子's image, which says that no one uses running water for a mirror, only still water [4], and that the sage's still mind is the mirror of heaven and earth [5]; Japanese fixed it as the four characters 明鏡止水, the bright mirror and the still water [6], and the 禅林句集 gives its sister phrase, 心如水中月, the mind like the moon in water [7]. The water that flows through every season and takes every vessel's shape, which is the 老子's highest good, benefiting all things and not contending [8], and Musashi's. And the water that cannot be grasped: 高田敏子's poem 水のこころ, in which water is scooped with fingers held together and cupped in two hands, gently, and so is a person's heart [9]. The still water and the flowing water are not the same image and cannot be made one; the poem's water is a third thing, neither still nor formless but held. Which of these a reader brings to the four characters is the reader's.

The words. 水 is water, 心 the heart, the mind, the seat of attention; の joins them. The particle is load-bearing. Without it the same two characters are a different word twice over: 水心 mizugokoro is a swimmer's feel for the water [10], and it is also the short form of 魚心あれば水心, if the fish has a heart for the water, the water has a heart for the fish, goodwill returned [11]. A Japanese reader steps around both without noticing; the scroll's の keeps the phrase clear of them. Reversed, 心の水, the heart's water, is the lexicalized image: 心の状態を水にたとえていう, the state of the heart likened to water, in its clarity or muddiness, depth or shallowness, stillness or motion [2]. The oldest Japanese use of the phrase in the scroll's order is the water's own nature: the 万葉集 has a poet clear-minded with the heart of cold water, 寒水の心もけやに [1].

The text in English. The phrase travels in English under two renderings from two worlds. As a karate teaching it reached print in 1960, in Nishiyama Hidetaka and Richard Brown's Karate: The Art of "Empty Hand" Fighting, which gives mizu no kokoro (a mind like water) and pairs it with tsuki no kokoro (a mind like the moon) [12]; every later English rendering in the martial books descends from that pairing. As a poem it reached English in 2007, when Arthur Binard translated 高田敏子's 水のこころ as Water Way, refusing heart, feeling and mind alike because each personified what the Japanese leaves plain [13]. Between them stands the water most English speakers now hear behind the phrase, the formless water of the 老子 and Musashi, which arrived by a 1971 television interview rather than by any book.

The historical record

Eighth century. The 万葉集. The oldest Japanese use is not a mind at all but water's own quality. A poem in book 16 has 寒水の心もけやに, the heart of cold water, standing for a clarity the poet claims for himself [1]. The phrase here is descriptive: water has a heart, as a mountain has one, and a person may share it.

1151. The heart as water becomes a word. The 詞花和歌集 carries 藤原実行's 思ひやれ心の水の浅ければかき流すべき言の葉もなし, think of it: the water of my heart is so shallow that there are no words for it to carry away, and the 日本国語大辞典 makes that poem the first attestation of 心の水, the heart's water, defined as the state of the heart likened to water in its clarity or muddiness, its depth or shallowness, its stillness or motion [2]. 西行's 山家集, later in the same century, has the still-water sense in a Buddhist key: 波の立つ心の水を鎮めつつ咲かん蓮を今は待つかな, stilling the waves of my heart's water, now I wait for the lotus to bloom [2]. Between the 万葉 poet and Musashi, then, the image was already a word, and its water was the heart's own.

1320. A Pure Land poem, and the kindest reading the phrase has had. The oldest Japanese poem to set the heart of water beside the moon, in the scroll's own word order, is in the 続千載集, the imperial anthology of 1320, among its Buddhist poems: にごりえの水の心はすまずとも やどれる月の影はくもらじ, though the heart of the muddy inlet's water never clears, the moon lodged in it is not dimmed [3]. The Pure Land commentators read it as the nenbutsu said inside deluded thoughts: the water is the believer's heart, which does not clear, and the moon is Amida's light, which does not need it to. It forgives the mind for not being still. Zen keeps the same image as a capping phrase: 心如水中月, the mind like the moon in water, reflected in clear water and muddy alike, moving with the water and leaving no trace [7].

1641 and 1645. 宮本武蔵. Musashi wrote the flowing water into the sword. His 兵法三十五箇条 says of the mind: 心を水にして折にふれ事に應ずる心也、水にへきたんの色あり、一滴もあり滄海も在り, make the mind water, a mind that answers each thing as it comes; water has the color of the deep pool, and it is a single drop and it is the ocean. The 五輪書 names its second book for it: 第二水の卷、水を本として心を水になすなり、水は方圓の器にしたがひ、一滴と成り蒼海と成る, the Water Book: taking water as the model, one makes the mind water; it follows the square or the round vessel, becomes a drop and becomes the blue sea [14]. Between 1917 and 1944 seven Japanese books quote the line, their authors two Zen writers, a kendō historian and a novelist — 釈宗演, 堀内文次郎, 山田次郎吉, 菊池寛. Musashi's water was the water-mind the Japanese reader of those decades knew, and it is the flowing one.

Edo, printed 1894 and 1931. The archers' term, and the oldest martial use. The oldest known martial use of the phrase is not karate but kyūdō. The 竹林派 school names its highest release 紫部の離, and an Edo manuscript, 射學雜纂, teaches it so: 胸の詰を真中にして水の心を持て五臓五体の精を胸に収る時は其色紫と成此紫の胸の中へ大石を打込如く離の心を付て双四つに搦たる物さつと切て離るゝ心そ, hold the center of the chest as the heart of water, gather the body's essence there until its color is purple, and then, as if a great stone were thrown into it, let the four bindings of the draw part at once [15]. The passage is printed in 1894 [16] and again in 1931 for the Dōshisha kyūdō club, 胸の眞中を水の心にて、其眞中へ大石を打ち込んで [17]. Water here is the still surface that a single act breaks — the mirror sense, three centuries before the karate books.

1892 to 1941. The phrase in three traditions at once. A dream manual of 1892 [18] and a Zen sermon of 1900 use the old sense, water's own nature; the sermon, preaching on 道元's 山水経, has 水の水たる妙用を發揮せんと欲せば。水の心を覺らざるべからす, to bring out the marvelous working of water, one must awaken to the heart of water, beside 山に山の心あり。水に水の心あり, the mountain has the mountain's heart, the water the water's [19]. A Pure Land tract of 1909 uses it for entrusting oneself to Amida, in the swimmer's image: 水の心を知りて、水に任すれば、怒濤の上も尙ほ疊の上に在るが如し, knowing the heart of water and giving oneself to it, one is on raging waves as if on the tatami [20]. And a judo textbook of 1920, telling students how often to train, takes Musashi's water: 春夏と秋と冬との區別無く流れて止まぬ水の心, the heart of water that flows without stopping, spring, summer, autumn or winter [21]. The same decades carry it in Pure Land collected works [22][23], in a later judo manual of 1935 [24], in an Edo-documents series of 1937 [25] and in the 浄土宗全書 of 1941 [26]. The kendō manuals of those years teach the mirror-mind under its four Chinese characters, 明鏡止水, and never shorten it to 水の心. Of the Japanese books printed before 1946 that the National Diet Library's full-text index holds, 2,221 contain the string 水の心; nine of those are martial, and not one is karate. The two pre-war karate books the library holds, 船越義珍's of 1922 and 本部朝基's of 1926, were searched whole and do not contain the phrase.

1975. The poem, and the sense a Japanese reader now meets first. 高田敏子 (1914–1989) published 「水のこころ」 in 『可愛い仲間たち』, a book of poems with photographs by 西川治 [9]: 水は つかめません／水は すくうのです／指をぴったりつけて／そおっと 大切に——／水は つかめません／水は つつむのです／二つの手の中に／そおっと 大切に——／水のこころ も／人のこころ も, water cannot be grasped; water is scooped, fingers pressed together, softly, with care. Water cannot be grasped; water is enfolded, in two hands, softly, with care. The heart of water, and the heart of a person. Since the textbooks approved in 2001 it has been read in the fifth grade [27], and it is the poem a Japanese adult is likeliest to remember at these words. Its water is neither still nor formless. It is held: a heart, like water, slips from a hand that closes on it and stays in hands that cup it. Bereaved families read it for holding the memory of the dead without losing a drop [28]; counselors and teachers read it for how one person meets another. Among the books the National Diet Library catalogues today under the titles 水の心 and 水のこころ are collections of poems, tanka and haiku, Zen books from 永平寺 and on 明鏡止水 and 行雲流水, a book on the water of faith, a book on dry gardens and the readers' recordings; not one is a martial-arts book [29].

What is not a source. 沢庵's 不動智神妙録 does not contain the phrase, and its water is the flowing kind: a ball thrown on a rushing stream that rides the waves and never stops, 急水上打毬子念々不停留, and a swimmer who forgets the water as a fish does [30]. The kendō manuals say 明鏡止水, which is a different expression with a fixed form. The proverb 魚心あれば水心 and the swimmer's 水心 are the same characters and a different word [10][11]. The Bruce Lee monologue is a screenwriter's, from recorded conversation, and belongs to reception rather than to the phrase's sources. A video game of 2023 names a beginner's water skill 水の心, which is where a young reader may first have met the words [31]. None of these is an origin, and each has been offered as one.

The word in English

1960. Nishiyama Hidetaka and Richard Brown, Karate: The Art of "Empty Hand" Fighting, Tuttle: mizu no kokoro (a mind like water) … refers to the need to make the mind calm, like the surface of undisturbed water, with its pair, tsuki no kokoro (a mind like the moon) [12]. Nishiyama was 船越's student and the Japan Karate Association's; the pairing of water and moon in these English words is this book's, and it is the origin of the phrase's martial life in English.

1963. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction for November carries it in fiction within three years of the Tuttle book — I tried hard to force my mind tsuki no kokoro, like the moon [32] — which is how fast the pair travelled outside the dōjō.

1967 to 1998. H. D. Plée's Karate: Beginner to Black Belt glosses MIZU NO KOKORO: "the mind like water" [33]. Ratti and Westbrook carried the pair into Secrets of the Samurai in 1973, where tsuki-no-kokoro is rendered "a mind as calm as the moon" [34] — a mistranslation, since the moon's mind in Nishiyama is awareness that lights everything at once, not calm, and the error puts both halves of the pair on the same side. Randall Hassell's Karate Ideals of 1995 [35] and Robin Rielly's Complete Shotokan Karate of 1998 [36] teach the pair as Shotokan's own.

1971, and the other water. Bruce Lee's Empty your mind. Be formless, shapeless, like water was written for him by Stirling Silliphant for Longstreet, out of their own conversations, and Be water, my friend was said on the Pierre Berton Show of 9 December 1971 [37]. This is the 老子's and Musashi's water, not karate's mirror, and it is the water many English speakers now hear behind these characters.

2001. David Allen's Getting Things Done took mind like water into office productivity, crediting karate for it [38]. It is the phrase's largest English audience and its furthest from the sources.

2007. The poem in English. Arthur Binard, an American poet writing in Japanese, put 高田敏子's poem into English in 『日本の名詩、英語でおどる』 as Water Way: You can't snatch water. Water needs to be scooped by fingers held together in close accord, uplifting with care … Water is that way, and so is a person's heart [13]. His note on the title is the translator's whole problem in one line: heart, feeling and mind each made the water a person, and the poem does not. It is the one English the phrase has that owes nothing to the dōjō.

Today. JMdict has no entry for the phrase; it is not lexicalized in Japanese under this word order, and 心の水 is [2]. The title Heart Like Water names none of the five senses and so keeps all of them: an English that said only still would lose Musashi, Lee and the poem; one that said only formless would lose the mirror and the 1320 moon; one that said only gentle would lose the archers and the karateka. Japanese dōjō pages teach the karate sense in these words today — 水の心とは、水は自ら動くことなく、相手の動きに従い、相手に応じて動く — without naming a source, which is consistent with a teaching that entered Japanese karate writing after it entered English; and Japanese classrooms teach the poem's sense to ten-year-olds, which is consistent with a phrase that belongs to no one school.

A reading

There are five waters in these three characters and the tradition has never chosen among them, so neither should a reading. The heart's water of 1151 is the root: a heart that is clear or muddy, shallow or deep, and can be stilled, which is what 西行 waits on and what the 1320 poet forgives. The mirror, 明鏡止水, is that stillness made a discipline, and the archers and the karateka inherit it. The flowing water is Musashi's answer to the mirror, a mind that meets each thing as it comes and has no shape to defend. The poem's water is the newest and, in Japan today, the widest: a heart that cannot be seized and must be held. And the karate mind like water is the sense the English-speaking world learned first, in 1960, and the narrowest of the five. The poem I would give a Japanese reader is still the 1320: the heart of the muddy inlet's water never clears, and the moon in it is not dimmed. The poem I would give anyone else is 高田敏子's, because it is the one that asks something of the person who reads it, and asks it gently. Which water a person carries in these characters is theirs to decide; the philology's part is to show that every one of them is really there.

Notes

The phrase is not a dictionary headword in any modern Japanese dictionary under this word order, and 水心 — the same two characters without the particle — is. Anyone searching a dictionary for 水の心 is therefore returned the swimmer's word or the fish proverb, which is the likeliest route by which the phrase gets explained wrongly in English. The reversed phrase 心の水 is the headword to open instead.

The attribution of the 1320 poem to 従三位宣子 comes from the Pure Land commentators who quote it, not from a 校注 edition of the 続千載集 with its headnote, which would settle it.

高田敏子's poem is quoted from three published readings of it that print it whole and agree to the letter, and Binard's English from a reader's transcription; the poem at its own page in the 1975 book, and Binard's book, remain to be opened.

References

  1. 『万葉集』巻十六, 3875, at Japanese Wikisource. https://ja.wikisource.org/wiki/万葉集/第十六巻
  2. 「心の水」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典 · デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank, with the 詞花和歌集 (1151頃) 雑下 369 and 山家集 examples. https://kotobank.jp/word/心の水-500710
  3. 『続千載和歌集』, 1320, poem 998, Nichibunken waka database. https://lapis.nichibun.ac.jp/waka/waka_i017.html
  4. 莊子, 德充符, ¶1, at the Chinese Text Project. https://ctext.org/zhuangzi/seal-of-virtue-complete
  5. 莊子, 天道, ¶1, at the Chinese Text Project. https://ctext.org/zhuangzi/tian-dao
  6. 「明鏡止水」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典 · デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/明鏡止水
  7. 「心如水中月」, 禅林句集, at 臨黄ネット, the Rinzai and Ōbaku schools' site. https://rinnou.net/language/2604/
  8. 老子, 道德經, ¶8, at the Chinese Text Project. https://ctext.org/dao-de-jing
  9. 高田敏子, 「水のこころ」, in 『可愛い仲間たち』 (詩: 高田敏子, 写真: 西川治), サンリオ出版, 1975, 63 pp. National Diet Library catalogue record. https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/api/opensearch?title=可愛い仲間たち&creator=高田敏子
  10. 「水心」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/水心
  11. 「魚心あれば水心」, 精選版 日本国語大辞典 · ことわざを知る辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/魚心あれば水心
  12. Hidetaka Nishiyama and Richard C. Brown, Karate: The Art of "Empty Hand" Fighting, Charles E. Tuttle, 1960, Internet Archive karateartofempty00nish. https://archive.org/details/karateartofempty00nish
  13. Arthur Binard, 『日本の名詩、英語でおどる』, みすず書房, 2007, the poem as Water Way; quoted here as a reader's blog of 13 July 2012 transcribes it. https://kensakumaigo.hatenablog.com/entry/20120713/p1
  14. 『武術叢書』, 国書刊行会, 1915, scans 124 and 128 (宮本武蔵『兵法三十五箇条』and『五輪書』), National Diet Library pid 945805. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/945805/1/124
  15. 『射學雜纂』, Edo manuscript, scan 24, National Diet Library pid 1246396. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1246396/1/24
  16. 『四巻之書』, 1894, scan 23, National Diet Library pid 859995. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/859995/1/23
  17. 『竹林射法七道』, 同志社弓道部, 1931, scan 56, National Diet Library pid 1175325. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1175325/1/56
  18. 『夢の知識』, 1892, scan 61, National Diet Library pid 822655. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/822655/1/61
  19. 『活禅談』, 1900, scans 157 and 160, National Diet Library pid 822910. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/822910/1/157
  20. 『他力信仰論』, 1909, scan 67, National Diet Library pid 822152. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/822152/1/67
  21. 『学校柔道』, 1920, scan 35, National Diet Library pid 939760. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/939760/1/35
  22. 『的門上人全集』, 1921, scan 41, National Diet Library pid 953013. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/953013/1/41
  23. 『禅門法語全集』, 1921, scan 17, National Diet Library pid 968098. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/968098/1/17
  24. 『昭和の柔道』, 1935, scan 133, National Diet Library pid 1212027. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1212027/1/133
  25. 『秘籍大名文庫』, 1937, scan 63, National Diet Library pid 1074542. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1074542/1/63
  26. 『浄土宗全書』, 1941, scan 43, National Diet Library pid 1140494. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1140494/1/43
  27. 『新しい国語 五上』, 東京書籍, and 『みんなと学ぶ 小学校国語 五年上』, 学校図書, both 平成13年 (2001) 文部科学省検定済, National Diet Library catalogue records. https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/api/opensearch?any=高田敏子 水のこころ
  28. 遺族会 はすの会, 「水のこころ」, the poem read for the bereaved. https://hasuno-kai.org/mizunokokoro
  29. National Diet Library Search, the catalogue on the titles 水の心 and 水のこころ, thirty records each, read by title, author and publisher. https://ndlsearch.ndl.go.jp/api/opensearch?title=水のこころ
  30. 『新釈沢庵和尚法語』, 1934, scans 44, 60 and 76, National Diet Library pid 1259004. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/1259004/1/44
  31. 「水の心」, ドラゴンクエスト大辞典 (wiki), the Dragon Quest Monsters 3 skill. https://wikiwiki.jp/dqdic3rd/【水の心】
  32. The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, vol. 25 no. 5, November 1963, Internet Archive Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v025n05_1963-11. https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v025n05_1963-11
  33. H. D. Plée, Karate: Beginner to Black Belt, W. Foulsham, 1967, Internet Archive karatebeginnerto0000plee. https://archive.org/details/karatebeginnerto0000plee
  34. Oscar Ratti and Adele Westbrook, Secrets of the Samurai: The Martial Arts of Feudal Japan, Charles E. Tuttle, 1973, Internet Archive SecretsOfTheSamuraiTheMartialArtsOfFeudalJapan. https://archive.org/details/SecretsOfTheSamuraiTheMartialArtsOfFeudalJapan
  35. Randall G. Hassell, Karate Ideals, Focus Publications, 1995, Internet Archive karateideals0000hass. https://archive.org/details/karateideals0000hass
  36. Robin L. Rielly, Complete Shotokan Karate, Charles E. Tuttle, 1998, Internet Archive complete-shotokan-karate-robin-l.-rielly. https://archive.org/details/complete-shotokan-karate-robin-l.-rielly
  37. Bruce Lee, interview on the Pierre Berton Show, 9 December 1971 (television; no printed edition).
  38. David Allen, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, Viking, 2001, Internet Archive GettingThingsDoneTheArtOfStressFreeProductivity_201712. https://archive.org/details/GettingThingsDoneTheArtOfStressFreeProductivity_201712

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 · Claude Sonnet (Anthropic), 2026-09-15, citations — every item tested at its address; most resolve; one resolves but differs — the account's own count of quoters had included two copies of the source text itself; one does not resolve — an unnamed book in the account's own tally, both now fixed; the rest not openable; the check's archery page image a wrong file on its side