Each culture has its own sayings about the uniqueness and transience of the present moment. In recent years, the English-speakers have often found themselves reminded, through the expression “YOLO,” that they only live once. (The question of whether that should really be “YLOO,” or “You Live Only Once,” we put aside for the time being.) In Japan, unsurprisingly, one sometimes hears a much more venerable equivalent: “ichi-go ichi‑e,” which some readers acquainted with the Japanese language should be assured has nothing to do with strawberries, ichigo. Rather, the saying’s underlying Chinese characters (一期一会) can be translated as “one time, one meeting.”
The Buddhistically inflected “ichi-go ichi‑e” is just one in the vast library of yojijukugo, highly condensed aphoristic expressions written with just four characters. (Other countries with Chinese-influenced languages have their versions, including sajaseongeo in Korea and chéngyǔ in China itself.) It descends, as the story goes, from a slightly longer saying favored by the sixteenth-century tea master Sen no Rikyū, “ichi-go ni ichi-do” (一期に一度).
One must pay respects to the host of a tea ceremony because the meeting would only ever occur once — which, of course, it would, even if the ceremony was a regularly scheduled event. For we never, to borrow an ancient Greek take on this whole subject, step into the same river twice; no two events, separated in time, can ever truly be identical.
One implication, as noted in the explanatory videos above from the BBC and Einzelgänger, is that we should savor whatever moment we happen to find ourselves in, however imperfect, because we won’t get a second chance to do so. And if it offers little or nothing to enjoy, we can find solace in the fact that its particular displeasure, too, can never revisit us. With the past gone and the future never guaranteed, the present moment, in any case, is the only time that actually exists for us, so we’d better make ourselves comfortable within it. Though these ideas have perhaps found their most elegant and memorable expression in Japan, they’re hardly considered exclusive cultural property there. The Japanese title of Forrest Gump, after all, was Foresuto Ganpu: Ichi-go Ichi‑e.
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Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. He’s the author of the newsletter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Summarizing Korea) and Korean Newtro. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
