一期一会 (Ichi go ichi e): One time, one encounter
Once a cut is made it cannot be undone
Linguistic concepts
Japanese is a beautiful language. One of the things I enjoy about the language are the neat idiomatic phrases that are built into it. The name of my blog, 文武両道 (bunburyōdō) is an example of one of these idioms, meaning to be skilled with both the pen and the sword. (文 (literature/culture), 武 (martial), 両 (both), 道 (road): One who walks the roads of both the scholar and the warrior).
The 漢字 (Kanji: Chinese characters) characters used in Japanese convey a lot of meaning and as such are able to express quite complicated concepts in very few letters. But because of this there are a lot of people who have the mindset of, “Japanese has a special word for this. That means it’s a uniquely Japanese concept.” One example I see of this is the phrase, 過労死 (karōshi: death from overwork).
“The Japanese have a special word for death from overwork! That mean’s dying from overwork is common in Japan! They have a word for it!” Let’s break it down:
過 (Ka): Over
労 (ro): Labor/work
死 (shi): Death
It’s essentially a three word phrase. Japanese uses three kanji to express a concept. English uses three words. 過労死 : Death from overwork.
I sometimes point out that English having the word “defenestrate” (meaning to throw someone out of a window) is not an indication that throwing people out of windows occurs at a higher frequency in the Anglosphere than anywhere else just because there’s a word for it, but generally people who are making this kinds of points aren’t here for logical a conversation anyway.
Mysterious/Romantic/Exotic Japanese phrases
There are an increasing number of words that originate in Japanese that more and more non-Japanese speakers are becoming aware of. I’ve observed people in certain spaces (particularly project management) getting excited over things like 改善 (kaizen: continuous improvement) and (more amusingly) 看板 (kanban: signboard), as if the concepts of continuous improvement and putting sticky notes on boards are uniquely foreign concepts that need to be adapted.
生き甲斐 (ikigai: reason for living) is another one that has gained a lot of traction recently, especially with the publication of the international bestselling book Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life by Hector Garcia and Francesc Miralles. Personally, I have not read this book. I am sure there is a lot of wisdom within its pages, but I don’t think that Ikigai is a uniquely Japanese concept.
Garcia and Miralles have written another book focusing on another one of these mysterious/romantic/exotic phrases titled, The Book of Ichigo Ichie: The Art of Making the Most of Every Moment, the Japanese Way. Again, I have not read this book but I am very familiar with the phrase 一期一会 (ichi go ichi e) and use it quite often.
Today I’d like to express my thoughts on this phrase including what I think it is and what it isn’t.
What is 一期一会 (ichi go ichi e)?
Before I dive into this I’m going to show what my dictionary expresses about the phrase:
It’s a 四字熟語 (yojijukugo: four-character idiomatic compound) in the same way that my blog name 文武両道 (bunburyōdō) is. The kanji used are:
一 (ichi): One
期 (go): Time/period
一 (ichi): One
会 (e): Meeting/encounter
As I mentioned above, although this concept is expressed as a four-letter idiom in Japanese it is better to be thought of as a short phrase rather than a single word.
One of the biggest Issues I have with the way this is often translated in English is the use of the term “once-in-a-lifetime.” The main reason I have a problem with it is that this could be misconstrued as an indication of frequency, which is not carried in the Japanese phrase. “Once-in-a-lifetime,” to me, means that a rare thing has occurred and will never occur again in your lifetime, so as such that moment should be cherished. But it’s not only rare occurrences that are once-in-a-lifetime events.
The whole point of the phrase 一期一会 (ichi go ichi e) is of course to cherish the moment, because it won’t happen again. But I think it would be a good idea to go a little deeper into the nuance.
There is no correction. It just is.
If you take a brush, dip it in ink, then make a mark on a piece of calligraphy paper, you cannot correct it. What is done is done. It doesn’t matter what the result is. It just is. It’s either perfect or it isn’t.
If you practice 書道 (shodō: calligraphy) you will understand what this means well. Each time you put brush to paper, that’s an example of 一期一会 (ichi go ichi e). You may write a character ten thousand times, but each time you write a character, it is a once-in-a-lifetime event.
Calligraphy is not something I engage with often, but martial arts have exactly the same concept. If I am performing an 居合道 (iaidō) technique, it is what it is. It doesn’t matter if it was good or bad. It simply is. I will perform that technique again, but the next time I do it it will be another unique expression of that technique. If I want to perform the technique “perfectly,” everything about it will need to be perfect. There is no correction in the movement once it has started. If I make a mistake in the movement, the whole movement is wrong. 一期一会 (ichi go ichi e). Do it again. It’s either perfect or it isn’t.
Karate is exactly the same. If you are sparring with an opponent and you throw a punch, whatever punch you throw is the result. “That punch would have landed true if it was 1 cm to the left,” might be true, but the punch was what it was. 一期一会 (ichi go ichi e). You can throw more punches. Do it again.
Running as well. When I step up to the start line of a race everything is 一期一会 (ichi go ichi e), from how much sleep I had the night before to the weather conditions of the day, and every single step I make during that race. Everything might end up blurring together when thousands of moments are strung together, but sometimes if you consider those moments you’ll realize that they are once-in-a-lifetime experiences.
A few years ago I was in a 70 km race across the Izu Peninsula. At one point I ran out of a forest only to find a plain opening up before me with fields of bamboo grass and Mt Fuji in the distance. I remember feeling awestruck when I first laid eyes on that view and thought to myself that it was absolutely a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
But it is not “once-in-a-lifetime” in that I can never or will never go there again. It is a once-in-a-lifetime experience because I will never be able to see that view on that day in those conditions again. The moment has passed. Was it perfect? It just was what it was. And I appreciated it.
A word on what 一期一会 (ichi go ichi e) isn’t
This phrase is not an indication of frequency. If you happen to bump into Keanu Reeves at an airport, it is a rare and possibly even “once-in-a-lifetime” experience. But it is no more 一期一会 (ichi go ichi e) than performing a kata for the 26th time in a training session. Each moment is unique. And once you understand that you can’t correct and you cannot experience the exact same moment again, you appreciate the present more, think fondly of the past, and look forward to the future. That, to me is what 一期一会 (ichi go ichi e) is about.
Final thoughts and take home messages
Different languages have different ways of expressing things. That’s just the nature of how languages work.
A word existing in Japanese is not an indication of something being uniquely Japanese. A Japanese word might just be representative of a short phrase in English because of how languages work.
Four-character idiomatic compounds are contain a lot of meaning despite only being four letters long. Some of these are becoming popular in the west.
一期一会 (ichi go ichi e) is often translated as a “once-in-a-lifetime encounter,” which captures most of the essence of it. But in my opinion, everything we do is a once in a lifetime encounter. One time, one encounter. It’s not an indication of something rare happening. It’s an expression that everything that happens is unique.
Cherish the moment. You might encounter something similar again. It might be better next time. It might even be perfect one day. But it will never be the exactly the same.
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