The History of Chinese Characters in Japan - Essay Example

For Japan and China to be able to accommodate their differences, the Japanese used the Chinese characters not only for their meaning but for purposes of phonetic. Cursive started to be a common thing in writing the characters and the phonetic characters started to be simplified on how they appeared. This led to the development of a simplified version of characters that are cursive called hiragana and katakana. Hiragana is now used for purposes that are grammatical like in conjugating verbs and the determination of components of a sentence in a more clear way. On the other hand, Katana is used to spell out words that are loaned from foreign countries.

Recently, citizens from Korea, Japan, and Vietnam are civilized, wealthy, more advanced and independent when it comes to their governance system and religious beliefs because of the influences that they have had from China. Most of Asia has experienced changes in their governments and has been able to deal with intra and inter conflict when the countries were mostly influenced by alliances that were made with other countries. An example of the alliances is the Silla alliance which shaped Korea’s future especially in religion and movements made by the government (Nishijima, Yoshinori & Tao, 2009). Chinese civilization had a remarkable durability when it comes to economic and technological innovations which made the other countries start to imitate China. Korea, Japan and Vietnam were attracted by the culture and political orbit of China during the period of postclassical. This paper is going to look at the history of the Chinese character in Japan and it will be done by taking a look at two studies which have been carried out. This paper will be significant in understanding why their cultures are the same.

A study of Japanese loanwords in China was carried out by Haijung (2014). The Japanese language makes use of Chinese characters and it is extensive in its system of writing and portions of its vocabulary are borrowed from the Chinese during the ancient times. This makes people believe that that the Chinese have an influence which is overwhelming in Japanese. This research was carried out in order to give people an understanding that is better on the significance of loanwords in Japan in Modern China. The data for the study was collected from different academic papers. The total numbers of papers chosen were fourteen which were related to Japanese loanwords in the Chinese language used in modern times through journal full-text database of China Academics. There were a total of 117 loanwords in Japan that were used as examples in the papers selected. All the papers chosen were published in the last 10 years when the study was carried out (Haijung, 2014).

The findings show that there are two factors which affect loanwords. The factors are social and linguistic leading to loanwords having influences on the language and society of the host. There are characters which are common between the Japanese and Chinese and are borrowed through graphic loans. Chinese characters are mostly logogram thus there is stability in the meaning of the characters which results in the pronunciation of the two words to be different. Social factors play parts that are very important in borrowing words which are foreign. The study found out that both historical and social backgrounds have effects which are great on loanwords. China was a country that was backward and poor when it was invaded by imperialists and Japan was modernized through the Meiji Restoration success. The study found out that there are a number of words from the Japanese that were translated and entered into Chinese. These were mostly terminologies which represented knowledge and ideas that were new and were urgently needed by the Chinese society. Most of the loanwords were adopted through academic books and people which made them to be used mostly by Chinese intellectuals. Because of these social factors, in 1840-1920s Japanese loans reached a peak. This study shows that loanwords from Japan take a role which is important in creating words that are new and in formatting modern Chinese thus, the host language is affected by the loanwords. The Chinese society and language affect the intake of the loanwords from Japan and still at the same time the Chinese society and language is influenced by loanwords from Japan.

There was a study carried out by Tao (2012) and it was a comparative study of the perceived politeness in Chinese and Japanese when it comes to verbal communication. This study was carried out to clarify the differences and similarities of the cultures of the two countries considering their values, ideas, beliefs and behavior. This is done by examining the linguistic and cultural difference between Japanese and Chinese when it comes to impolite behavior. This helps the study in giving an insight of the traditional moral values that are connected to behavior that is impolite. The data for the study was collected by the use of questionnaires and had three hundred respondents. The respondents were college student from both Japan and China. The participants from China were 150 students; 100 females and 50 males which was still the case in Japan. In China, the respondents were from the University of Beijing while in Japan e respondents were enrolled at universities in Toyama, Tokyo and Kanazawa. The participants’ age ranged from 17-28 years. The questionnaires that were collected from Japan were translated to Chinese which enabled the study to plot communicative behavior concepts. The preparation of the questionnaires was by both Japanese and Chinese versions. The questionnaires had both open and closed-ended questions.

The findings of the research were gotten by first separating the responses gotten by the gender of the respondents. Afterwards, the difference which is qualitative in the answers to the questions was gotten by the respondents being grouped in categories. This enabled the analysis to reveal different varieties of the responses. The view of the respondents when a person does not use language that is polite when addressing them was different depending on nationality and gender. There were 15 different answers from the Chinese students for this question the main ones being not being educated or not raised up properly. From the findings, most students from China thought that failing to use a language that is polite was an indication of a person not being educated and not raised properly and resulted to feelings which are bad thus leading to the creation of a bad impression. Majority of the Japanese students thought that it would lead to feelings which are bad, be unpleasant to the person listening to the words and would be showing lack of common sense. This study shows that both students from China and Japan are aware of the use of politeness is an essential thing to be maintained in verbal communication for the existence of human relations that are good. This shows that the summary of politeness in both Japan and China is the same thing. The two countries have been known for long as lands of propriety and ceremony and this study by Tao (2012) shows that the concept of being polite while communicating is specific when it comes to different cultures, standards and sense of value.

Traditionally, China has been looking at its neighbors as essential countries when it comes to its foreign policy. The findings of the first research show that social and linguistic factors affect loanwords which led to a number of Japanese words to translate to Chinese. However, the study failed to address the issue of what led to the loanwords from the two countries. The second research shows that the students from the two countries have similar thoughts when it comes to the use of verbal communication. However, the study did not investigate what Chinese characters led to the students making similar responses to the study. Both the studies show the relationship between Japanese and Chinese which is a positive one. More study still needs to be done on the issues of the history of Chinese characters in Japan.