Friday, October 17, 2008

I can't think of a title

Though it appeared in the Japan Times ジャパンタイムズ on Tuesday of last week, "New Japanese makes inroads into Chinese vocabulary" is a pretty interesting article, and one which will no doubt annoy the hell out of your (un)friendly neighborhood Chinese nationalist. The story describes "Wasei kango" 和製漢語, literally "Japan-made Chinese words", which were coined in Japan, starting from the Meiji Period 明治時代 (1868-1912) and continuing up to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War 日中戦争 in 1937. "Wasei kango" served to translate knowledge from Western countries into Chinese characters 漢字 as Japan was modernizing after 250 years of relative isolation, and these in turn were adopted by the Chinese and became part of their language. The article gives a sample list of such words (I've added the Mandarin pronunciations):

直接 chokusetsu (direct; zhijie)
注射 chūsha (injection; zhushe)
出口 deguchi (exit; chukou)
伝染病 densenbyō (contagious disease; chuanranbing, with 傳 used in Taiwan in place of 伝)
電子 denshi (electron; dianzi)
動脈 dōmyaku (artery; dongmai)
原子 denshi (atom; yuanzi)
百貨店 yakkaten (department store; baihuodian)
入口 iriguchi (entrance; rukou)
時間 jikan (time; shijian)
決算 kessan (closing of accounts; juesuan)
企業 kigyō (business; qiye)
小型 kogata (compact; xiaoxing)
工業 kōgyō (industry; gongye)
広告 kōkoku (advertisement; guanggao. In Taiwan it's 廣告)
国際 kokusai (international; guoji 國際)
空間 kǖkan (space; kongjian)
民族 minzoku (people; minzu)
農民 nōmin (farmer; nongmin)
大型 ōgata (large scale; daxing)
歴史 rekishi (history; lishi)
劣勢 ressei (inferiority; lieshi)
政党 seitō (political party; zhendang)
社会 shakai (society; shehui, with Taiwanese writing 會 for 会)
市場 shijō (market; shichang)
自然科学 shizen kagaku (natural science; ziran kexue 學 in place of 学)
所得税 shotokuzei (income tax; suodeshui)
出版 shuppan (publishing; chuban)
主体 shutai (main subject; zhuti 體 replacing 体)
相対 sōtai (relative; xiangdui 相對)
体育 taiiku (physical education; tiyu 體育)
体操 taisō (calisthenics; ticao 體操)
投資 tōshi (investment; touzi)
優勢 yǖsei (superiority; youshi)
絶対 zettai (absolute; juedui 絶對)

In the early centuries of Japanese history, China (via Korea) was the source of numerous concepts and vocabulary for Japan. Now the flow has been reversed, and the story concludes by pointing out that the Japanese language today still has a big influence on Chinese.

 The China Post had an "editorial" yesterday on the relationship between Yonaguni Island 与那国島 in Japan's Okinawa Prefecture 沖縄県 and Taiwan's Hualien (Karen) 花連: "Japan isle looks to Taiwan". The reason for the quotation marks around the word "editorial" is that the piece is anything but. It seems the editors at the China Post took a few facts about Yonaguni from its Wikipedia entry, and then "borrowed" very liberally from the same Kyōdō News 共同通信社 story that appeared in the Japan Times a week ago ("Yonaguni looks to Taiwan to survive"). While Kyōdō News was credited in the second paragraph of the Post's article, if I were a college professor and this a term paper handed in by one of my students, I would be raising some questions about plagiarism. But my biggest question is why this appeared as an editorial. The opinions of the editors on Yonaguni and Hualien are not stated anywhere. If this were truly an editorial, shouldn't there be some words about encouraging the two places to grow closer together, thus further improving the overall Japan-Taiwan relationship? Or, seeing as the China Post is generally anti-Japanese in tone, couldn't the editors have passed along a warning about the "threat from the rise of Japanese nationalism"? Even a completely reactionary assertion (not beyond the realm of possibility for the Post!) that Okinawa is still a tribute state of China, and that therefore Taiwan has a claim over Yonaguni, would at least constitute an opinion, which is what an editorial is supposed to do. This story belongs in either the Asia-Pacific or Taiwan sections of the newspaper, and not on the Op/Ed page. Is the China Post too cheap to actually pay Kyōdō News for the article? I guess you could call it "night market journalism".

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