千里の道も一歩より senri no michi mo ippo yori A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins with a Single Step
This is a philological study of 千里の道も一歩より (senri no michi mo ippo yori), the Japanese proverb made of a line from the Laozi. It follows the line from a chapter on acting before things have grown, through a Japanese moral reader of 1755 and a run of schoolbooks and sermons, to its English translators from Legge in 1891 to the popular thousand miles, and finds that the proverb has been a maxim about small beginnings and character since before Laozi's name was attached to it in a dictionary.
Abstract
千里の道も一歩より, even a road of a thousand ri begins from one step, is a Japanese proverb made from the third of three images in a chapter of the Laozi on acting before things have grown. This study follows the Chinese line through a Japanese moral reader of 1755 and a run of schoolbooks, sermons and a biography, to its English translators from Legge in 1891 to the popular A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. It finds that the Japanese proverb has been a maxim about small beginnings and the building of character since before a dictionary attached Laozi's name to it, and that the popular English keeps the pairing of the very long and the very small that both the Chinese and the Japanese share.
Overview
The sense. The tradition holds one sense, and it is the sense the 1755 homily already gives: great things are built from small beginnings, close at hand, and character above all. What changes is the frame around it. In the Laozi the image is one of three in an argument about the sage who acts before trouble has grown and who takes as much care at the end as at the beginning; the Japanese proverb has none of that, and in every Japanese source here it is a moral maxim, for a woman's conduct, a child's lessons, a sermon's self-examination, an admiral's first command. The dictionaries name Laozi as the source and the proverb's users do not. The three Japanese forms carry one sense, and the particle changed around 1900.
The words. The Chinese line is 千里之行，始於足下: a journey of a thousand li begins beneath the feet. It has no road and no step. The Japanese proverb has both. 千里 is a thousand ri, a very long way; the Japanese ri and the Chinese li are different lengths and neither is a mile. 道, road, stands where the Chinese has 行, journey, the same image seen from the other end. も is even: even a road of a thousand ri. 一歩, one step, stands where the Chinese has 足下, beneath the feet; the Japanese proverb supplies the step, where the Chinese says only where you already stand. より is from, and it is the older particle; the modern proverb says から, and every current dictionary headword has から. The verb, はじまる, begins, is often dropped, as the proverb usually drops it. So there are three Japanese forms: the reading of the Chinese as Chinese, 千里の行も足下に始まる, which is a dictionary headword and what a biographer writes in 1915; the proverb with より, in print by 1755; and the proverb with から, from 1908 in the books here and the headword today. The line as words: even a thousand-ri road, from one step.
The text in English. The English begins with Legge in 1891, and the mid-century proverb collection renders the Japanese form.
The historical record
The Laozi, chapter sixty-four. The line is the third of three images in a chapter about acting on things before they have grown: 合抱之木，生於毫末；九層之臺，起於累土；千里之行，始於足下 [1]. James Legge, whose 1891 translation is printed beside the Chinese at the Chinese Text Project: The tree which fills the arms grew from the tiniest sprout; the tower of nine storeys rose from a (small) heap of earth; the journey of a thousand li commenced with a single step [1]. The chapter goes on to its own conclusion, 慎終如始，則無敗事, be as careful at the end as at the beginning and nothing will fail; the proverb keeps the first image and drops the warning.
1755. 晩香散人玉枝子, Instructive Poems for Women (女朗詠教訓歌), an illustrated moral reader with pictures by Nishikawa Sukenobu 西川祐信. The oldest Japanese witness here, and the proverb is already a proverb, credited to the ancients: 古人も千里の道も一歩よりはじまるといへば善人となるもあらき人になるもこゝろひとつのわざなれば, as the ancients say, even a thousand-ri road begins from one step, so becoming a good person or a rough one is the work of one heart alone [2]. It is a homily on small faults growing large; Laozi is not named.
1876 to 1893. Six Meiji schoolbooks. Readers on hygiene, morals and the training of the young carry the proverb in the より form, which is how a Meiji child met it [3].
1908. Sermons for the Home (家庭説教). The earliest witness here for the modern particle: 千里の道も一步から始まるものとすれば、私共は念々に反省し刻々に注意して, if even a thousand-ri road begins from one step, then we must examine ourselves thought by thought and take care moment by moment [4]. The proverb is put to daily self-examination.
1915. Yokoyama Kendō 横山健堂, Admiral Tōgō (大将東郷). The Chinese line read as Chinese, at an admiral's first battle: 千里の行も足下に始まる。遠行の第一步は、愼重の覺悟あるべし, a thousand-ri journey begins beneath the feet; the first step of a long road should be taken with grave resolve [5]. Between 1755 and the present the より form is in some 231 books the National Diet Library has digitized, the から form in 40, and the Chinese reading in 5.
The dictionaries today. デジタル大辞泉 has two headwords. Under 千里の道も一歩から: 遠い旅路も第一歩から始まる。どんな大事業も手近なところから始まることのたとえ, even a distant journey begins with the first step; a figure for how any great undertaking begins close at hand [6]. Under 千里の行も足下に始まる, marked 《「老子」六四から》: どんな遠大な事業も手近なところから始まるというたとえ, with 千里の道も一歩より始まる listed as a variant [7]. 故事成語を知る辞典 gives the sense as 大きなことを成し遂げるには、手近なところから着実に始めていくことが肝要である, to accomplish something great, what matters is to begin steadily from what is near, and its example is a novelist's warlord in the 1960s: いっぺんには天下はとれぬ。千里の道も一歩からだという, you cannot take the realm in one go; a thousand-ri road, from one step, as they say [6].
What is not a source. The popular English attributes the line to Confucius; the Laozi is its source. The chapter's own conclusion, care at the end as at the beginning, is the line's context and not part of the proverb. The 1755 book's the ancients is a proverb's way of citing, not a source.
The text in English
1891. James Legge, The Texts of Taoism, chapter 64. The journey of a thousand li commenced with a single step. Legge supplies single step for 足下, beneath the feet; he is the source of the step in English, as the Japanese proverb is the source of it in Japanese [1].
1934. Arthur Waley, The Way and Its Power, chapter 64. The journey of a thousand leagues began with what was under the feet. Waley keeps 足下 literal and turns the li into leagues [8].
1963. D. C. Lau, Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, Penguin, chapter LXIV. A tree that can fill the span of a man's arms / Grows from a downy tip; / A terrace nine storeys high / Rises from hodfuls of earth; / A journey of a thousand miles / Starts from beneath one's feet. Lau keeps miles and returns the last line to the Chinese, beneath one's feet, where Legge had a single step [9].
1965. Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, page 162. Senri no michi mo ippo yori su: "Even a journey of a thousand ri must start with one step." A "ri," the unit of distance in Japan, is 2.44 miles. The above proverb means everything must be done patiently in regular sequence [10].
The popular form. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step is Legge's sentence with miles for li and the tense changed. No source cited here names who first wrote miles; the English Wikipedia article on the phrase names no one, and records the misattribution to Confucius [11].
Today. The stored title is the popular English of the Chinese line, and it sits closer to the Japanese proverb than to the Chinese: the Japanese has the road and the one step that Legge put into English, where the Chinese has a journey and the ground underfoot. Miles for 里 is the one liberty, and every English reader takes it. What a rendering of this line must keep is the pairing of the very long and the very small, and the word begins.
A reading
The English title is right in sense and is the sentence every English reader already knows. What it cannot carry is that the line is the third image of a chapter whose point is care at the end as at the beginning, and the Japanese proverb has been a maxim about small beginnings and the building of character since before Laozi's name was attached to it in a dictionary.
References
- 『老子』第六十四章, at the Chinese Text Project, with James Legge's translation of 1891. https://ctext.org/dao-de-jing#n11655
- 晩香散人玉枝子作, 西川祐信画『女朗詠教訓歌』, 1755. National Diet Library pid 2533881, scan 39. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/2533881/1/39
- National Diet Library, NDL Lab full-text search, 「一歩より」, six schoolbooks of 1876 to 1893, counted by decade. https://lab.ndl.go.jp/dl/
- 『家庭説教』, 1908. National Diet Library pid 818384, scan 71. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/818384/1/71
- Yokoyama Kendō 横山健堂, 『大将東郷』, 春陽堂, 1915. National Diet Library pid 950830, scan 111. https://dl.ndl.go.jp/pid/950830/1/111
- 「千里の道も一歩から」, デジタル大辞泉 · 故事成語を知る辞典, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/千里の道も一歩から-1729075
- 「千里の行も足下に始まる」, デジタル大辞泉, at kotobank. https://kotobank.jp/word/千里の行も足下に始まる-551444
- Arthur Waley, translator, The Way and Its Power, 1934, chapter 64, at a third-party transcription. https://terebess.hu/english/tao/waley.html#Kap64
- D. C. Lau, translator, Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching, Penguin, 1963, chapter LXIV (Lau's passage 153).
- Daniel Crump Buchanan, Japanese Proverbs and Sayings, University of Oklahoma Press, 1965, p. 162.
- "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step", Wikipedia (English). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_journey_of_a_thousand_miles_begins_with_a_single_step