I’m not sure Japan really has to thank China for their language.

Its generally accepted by linguists that the origins of the language are not that simple though there is an increased belief that it is related to the altaic languages, what they do all agree on that it is not related to Chinese of any flavor.

Guess I should have been really explicit and specified “written language” – whoops!

Thanks David I’m glad you enjoyed it : )

Have you got a picture of these Pig’s Ear cookies? My google-fu is lacking; all I got were palmiers and some sort oddly wavy cookies.

Credit to my favorite food blog ieatishootipost for the picture. I had these many times when I lived in Singapore.

I know right, its like, they’re practically Chinese right, they all look the same, and speak all ching chong chong right.

Why would a Japanese ‘people’ ever get upset that their culture is marginalized as a mere offshoot of China.

Americans would never get upset if they were marginalized as just an offshoot of England, they’d never get upset if anyone pointed out their language doesn’t even belong to them.

Its not like national identity is important to every culture.

No its fine, as long as we can find some pedantic way to be right even if it means be-littling an entire other country, its fine.

China /has/ had a great deal of influence on Japan, but honestly do you think Japan should really thank China for their writing system? Have you ever had to learn Japanese?

Just thinking this matter is so small, to even make this mistake, is exactly what is wrong with gaijins, Japan has a great amount of pride in their national image, history, uniqueness, but smelly gaijins like to come in and belittle all that like, OMG UR JUST CHINESE LOLOLOLOLOLZORS

Your ruining it for the rest of us.

ALSO KOICHI, ITS NOT FUNNY TO JOKE ABOUT HUGGING PILLOWS. HOW COULD YOU BE SO HEARTLESS YOU KNOW HOW DAKIMAKURA_TAN BROKE MY HEART>

I HATE YOU ALL. ( EXCEPT HASHI OF COURSE)

Also still waiting for the April edition of the Mescale Newsletter

This is great! I honestly had no idea about all of this. However, I’ve yet to see fortune cookies in Japan. I’m sure I could find some in a store right away, but I’ve never heard them mentioned or seen anyone partake in them. Is there a time of the year that people generally eat them?

ITS BE

Why yes, I do see some resemblance :D
No fortune though?

Inspite of the article it self, i love the header of this post. :D Aya your doing a great job again XD
okonomikatsu.blogspot.com

Hogyokudo seems quite popular (search for 宝玉堂, Fushimi Ward, Kyoto Prefecture, Japan on google maps).

Also, if you can read Japanese, check out the following link. The author also mentions a few other shops in the area:

http://ikuiku-1919.at.webry.info/201301/article_21.html

They don’t really look like pig ears, to be honest…

I have a sneaking suspicion that the use of kanji may, in fact, predate World War II.

You’re right, and as in my reply to Mescale above, I agree I should have explicitly specified “written language” – because gosh I didn’t realize it would touch such a nerve! Especially since other parts of that paragraph are simplified too yet haven’t been criticized; e.g. you could also argue that curry came from India instead of being introduced by the British. This balance between simplifying for brevity and not straying foot far from the main topic, and clear, absolute unambiguity is tricky thing.

“do you think Japan should really thank China for their writing system?”

Um…yes? What are you even talking about? Japan? Marginalized? You’ve obviously never been here – they are some pretty racist and chauvinistic people.

Do you even pay attention to the news? Japanese people are racist as fuck to Chinese and Koreans – and they flat out refuse to acknowledge JUST HOW MUCH of their culture comes from mainland Asia.

Do I think they should thank China? Well, maybe not thank, but they sure as hell should cut their racist bullshit and at least acknowledge the factual history of where they come from.

And, uh, no, Americans all study in detail how we were once a colony of England. It’s common knowledge. NO ONE in America would ever claim that we didn’t come from England. Japanese people? They sure do love to try to pretend that none of their culture whatsoever is foreign.

I had a student the other day, in blue jeans and a baseball cap, tell me he didn’t “get” foreign stuff. I just said, “Son, your whole LIFE is foreign stuff. Who do you think invented baseball?” Japanese people just don’t get how many of their most precious possessions are from other countries – they insist on believing that they are “mono-cultural.” Uh, no.

There are those who say that the early Japanese language was likely derived from the early languages spoken in the Korean peninsula–after all, the northern coastline of Kyushu and western end of Honshu are probably about 1-2 days trip on a sailboat from what is now Busan. Indeed, it’s generally agreed that kanji was introduced by Buddhist monks to Japan when Buddhism started to spread to Japan from Korea during the Kofun period of Japanese history (250 to 538 AD); the Korean language at the time was written in Chinese characters (called “hanja” in Korean), so it was obvious that Buddhist monks/missionaries coming over from the Korean peninsula to Japan adapted the writing system they knew to the Japanese language.

Which is too bad because most scholars agree that both Buddhism and the kanji writing system came to Japan from Buddhist missionaries/monks that migrated over from the Korean peninsula–Buddhists that not only spoke the Korean language of the time, but wrote using hanja–the Korean adaptation of Chinese characters. After all, northern Kyushu and the western end of Honshu are only 1-3 days’ boat ride away from the Korean peninsula by sailboat….

Linguistically speaking, a writing system is NOT a language. I think you ought to correct this, because unlike the other simply generalized statements, this one is just wrong.

Oh, good, because the Japanese are even MORE racist against Koreans than they are Chinese. It’s pretty common to hear people in Japan say that “all our crime is actually committed by ethnic Koreans living in Japan. Japanese people don’t commit crimes, only Koreans.”

Japanese people sure as hell don’t acknowledge for a second that any of their culture could have possibly come from Korea, so, considering that the Japanese tried to wipe the Koreans out, and continue to look at them with disgust, yeah, a touch of gratitude might be nice in that direction. If their writing and religion, two of thr most civilized concepts in their culture, came from Korea, yes, I’d like to hear a few more Japanese people speak of the rich, deep cultural debt they owe to Korea rather than simply blaming them for all their crime.

(I’m rusty on the history, but I’m pretty sure I knew Buddhism came to Japan via Korea – wouldn’t say Japan really ought to be grateful for that, though, for various reason – I know nothing of the scholarship on the link between Korean writing and Japanese, though, so I’ll have to check that out.)

Actually Japanese pronunciation is similar to Ancient Chinese pronunciation, certainly not something like “bad” pronunciation there lol.

And almost half of modern Chinese vocab sourced from Japanese words in the early 20th Century. So I guess that’s a tie up there.

But seriously why care where the origin is from?

hmmm i totally agree with you on this one :)
Japan also has a long history of suppressing indigenous people (i.e. Ainu) living in the country and assimilate them. So the “homogeneous society” is pretty much just an illusion.

I almost liked this article if it weren’t for that “Japan has China to thank for the Japanese language” part. Sorry, but it sounds as if Japanese directly evolved FROM Chinese, which is NOT.