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If you're going to use Rome+Egypt for the West, you should probably include Ancient China in Japan's history. Japan didn't suddenly emerge out of the woods in 2
by somerandomness 11y ago
If you're going to use Rome+Egypt for the West, you should probably include Ancient China in Japan's history. Japan didn't suddenly emerge out of the woods in 250AD.
- level3 11y agoWhy would you reach for ancient China instead of, you know, ancient Japan? Are you under the impression that Japanese civilization started with China?
- jpatokal 11y agoWell, actually Korea deserves most of the credit, that's where Japan got eg. tea, pottery, Buddhism and, most likely, its Imperial family. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Japan%E2%80%93Korea_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Japan%E2%80%93Korea...
- level3 11y agoSure, Korea and China both had their cultural influence on Japan, but neither is comparable to the influence of Roman conquest in the West.
- jpatokal 11y agoAre you serious? Can you name a single aspect of Japanese culture that can be considered indigenously Japanese, without Chinese/Korean influence?
- level3 11y agoArt, music, dance, much of the spoken language, for example. Or do you mean completely devoid of outside influence? I think that's probably hard to find anywhere in the world today. My main point is that there's a significant difference between a civilization adopting parts of other cultures, as opposed to other civilizations suddenly forcing it upon you through conquest. The original thread I responded to seemed to argue that Japan had no history (read: civilization) before the adoption of kanji.
- yongjik 11y agoRe: the original thread, I was just using "the start of recorded history" as a convenient yardstick for measuring "ancientness" of civilizations. Of course the people and culture existed before that, but without any record it kinds of blends into prehistory. I'm not suggesting having short history makes Japan inferior or anything like that. It's just a predictable consequence of living on islands across the sea from the culture center. (My own country's history is not much longer, after all.)
- yongjik 11y agoWell, Rome and Egypt were just two famous examples I could think of, and I'm no means suggesting they represent the whole Europe. (And Egypt isn't even that much West. Do "Western people" consider Egypt as one of them?) By the way, I wouldn't recommend including Ancient China in Japan's history: at least don fire retardant suit, because frankly that sounds like an efficient way to offend Chinese and Japanese people at the same time.
- rangibaby 11y agoJapanese are well aware of their shared history with China. I mean, kanji literally means "Chinese characters". From what I've seen Japanese and Chinese get on well. It's their governments that use the other as a convenient boogeyman 1984-style.
- gizmo686 11y agoTo expand on the shared history between China and Japan: China was the superpower of ancient Asia, exerting significant influence on neighboring regions, and exporting its writing system, as well as science and technology to neighboring regions. As a result, approximately 60% of the words found in a Japanese dictionary are of Chinese origin (this becomes closer to 20% when you weight for usage). Informatively, the Japanese word for China is 中国, or central country. Additionally, the nature of the Japanese writing system means that any literate Japanese speaker would recognize the symbols in 中国 (China) mean "middle" and "country", and the symbols in 漢字 (kanji) mean "China" and "character".
- rangibaby 11y agoThat's the Chinese word for China too, which reinforces our point. The Japanese word for Japan has a Chinese origin too (land of the rising sun, to the east of China.)
- Scarblac 11y agoI think most Western people don't consider ancient Egypt to be directly part of their history. The Romans, definitely. Many of the words in your comment and mine are hardly changed from Latin.