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I came across the idiom 「門を同じくして戸を異にす」 recently and was wondering what it means. I tried looking it up online, but there are very few places where it is explained.
Is there a cultural meaning behind this idiom? And if possible, is there anywhere that I can find out more about it?
Meaning: Those of the same clan/house (門) go through different doors (戸). The idea is that different members of the same family will not necessarily have the same talents. This idiom is also similarly applied to situations like students of the same teacher; members of the same organization; etc.
Origins: It's the Japanese reading (書き下し文) of the older Chinese 「同門而異戸」, from 揚子's 法言, which was first published in 9 CE.
The somewhat irregular grammar also stems from that era of forcibly rendering Chinese text into a Japanese word order.
