Hi all, I have heard that Mazda have a motto or philosophy known as 人馬一体 (Jinba ittai), which I believe means "horse and rider in perfect harmony/unity". I don't know whether this is just a clever bit of marketing to attract customers here in Europe, and whether the phrase really means what Mazda want us to think it means!
My question is: does this phrase have a broad enough meaning to include a person and any machine, for example a motorcycle and its rider?
I'm not entirely sure what you're uncertain of here. You understand the (literal) meaning of the phrase, and it's pretty clear that Mazda is taking a phrase referring to horse and rider and using poetic license/metaphor to apply it to the relationship between car and driver. There are no specific rules governing poetic license/metaphor, but I'd say it's pretty clear that if you used it in the context of a motorcycle/rider it would convey the same meaning. (For other "machines" or vehicles which can't be likened to a horse, it probably would feel a bit off.)
NIck1984 said:
Are there any alternative phrases that give the same meaning, particularly relating to a motorcycle and its rider?
If you mean you want to take the phrase and adjust it so it's specifically referencing a motor vehicle/motorcycle rather than a metaphorical horse, there are ways you could do that. You could, for example take the 馬 character and replace it with something like:
人車一体 (Jin
sha ittai, with "sha" being the character for a motor vehicle)
人バ一体 (Jin
ba ittai, read the same as the original but with the katakana バ used in バイク/motorcycle instead of the kanji for horse)
...to get a play on words. (Doing a quick internet search turned up at least a few examples of people doing this.)
Or you could explicitly say
バイクと一体（になる） or the like. Doing a quick internet search also turned up other related slogans/phrases like
バイクに耳を傾けて.
The meaning is completely different, but I also like this motto came across very much:
おまえは風だ
Anyhow, hope this helps!
