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Chinese influence on Japanese culture refers to the impact of Chinese influences transmitted through or originating in China on Japanese institutions, culture, language and society. Many aspects of traditional Japanese culture such as Taoism , Buddhism , astronomy , language and food have been profoundly influenced by China over the course of ...
Chinese writing, culture and institutions were imported as a whole by Vietnam, Korea, Japan and other neighbouring states over an extended period. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries AD, followed by Confucianism as these countries developed strong central governments modelled on Chinese institutions.
Kanbun, literally "Chinese writing," refers to a genre of techniques for making Chinese texts read like Japanese, or for writing in a way imitative of Chinese. For a Japanese, neither of these tasks could be accomplished easily because of the two languages' different structures. As I have mentioned, Chinese is an isolating language.
Japan has long been influenced by China for around 2 millennia and emulated many cultural and philosophical thought, with many Japanese undertaking studies that came from China or via Korea. [111] Culture, trade, and military confrontation has been a major focal point between the two as well and relations can become very fraught.
During this period, since the language of most official documents was Chinese, most men of the nobility used Chinese characters to write poetry and prose in Chinese, [5] but among women the kana syllabary continued to grow in popularity, and more and more men adopted this simpler style of writing as well.
The kanbun writing system essentially required every literate Japanese to be competent in written Chinese, although it is unlikely that many Japanese people were then fluent in spoken Chinese. Chinese pronunciation was approximated in words borrowed from Chinese into Japanese; this Sino-Japanese vocabulary is still an important component of the ...
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Written language was introduced to Japan around 400 AD in the form of Chinese books written in Classical Chinese. Japanese interest in Chinese writings and culture gradually increased towards the end of the 6th century when Japanese rulers sent missions to the mainland for cultural studies and to bring back books.