Information AboutKanbun |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT KANBUN | |
| archaic japanese language | |
| japanese writing system | |
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The Japanese word originally meant "" instead of " Exempli Gratia ". HISTORY The Japanese Writing System originated through adoption and adaptation of Written Chinese . Japan's oldest books (e.g., '' Kojiki '' and '' Nihon Shoki '') and dictionaries (e.g., '' Tenrei Banshō Meigi '' and '' Wamyō Ruijushō '') were written in ''kanji'' and ''kanbun''. Other Japanese literary genres have parallels; the '' Kaifūsō '' is the oldest collection of Kanshi (漢詩 "Han/Chinese poetry") "Chinese poetry composed by Japanese poets". Burton Watson 's (1975, 1976) English translations of ''kanbun'' compositions provide a good introduction to this literary field. Roy Andrew Miller notes that although Japanese ''kanbun'' conventions have Sinoxenic parallels with other traditions for reading Classical Chinese like Korean '' Hanmun '' 한문 (漢文) and Vietnamese '' Chữ Nho '' (字儒), only ''kanbun'' has survived into the present day. He explains how in the Japanese ''kanbun'' reading tradition a Chinese text is simultaneously punctuated, analyzed, and translated into classical Japanese. It operates according to a limited canon of Japanese forms and syntactic structures which are treated as existing in a one-to-one alignment with the vocabulary and structures of classical Chinese. At its worst, this system for reading Chinese as if it were Japanese became a kind of lazy schoolboy's trot to a classical text; at its best, it has preserved the analysis and interpretation of large body of literary Chinese texts which would otherwise have been completely lost; hence, the ''kanbun'' tradition can often be of great value for an understanding of early Chinese literature. (1967:31) William C. Hannas points out the linguistic hurdles involved in ''kanbun'' transformation. ''Kambun'', 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. Its grammatical relations are identified in subject-verb-object (SVO) order and through the use of particles similar to English prepositions. Inflection plays no role in the grammar. Morphemes are typically one syllable in length and combine to form words without modification to their phonetic structures (tone excepted). Conversely, the basic structure of a transitive Japanese sentence is SOV, with the usual syntactic features associated with languages of this typology, including ''post''positions, that is, grammar particles that appear ''after'' the words and phrases to which they apply. (1997:32) He lists four major Japanese problems: Word Order , parsing which Chinese characters should be read together, deciding how to pronounce the characters, and finding suitable equivalents for Chinese Function Words . According to John Timothy Wixted, scholars have disregarded ''kanbun''. In terms of its size, often its quality, and certainly its importance both at the time it was written and cumulatively in the cultural tradition, ''kanbun'' is arguably the biggest and most important area of Japanese literary study that has been ignored in recent times, and the one least properly represented as part of the canon. (1998:23) A promising new development in ''kanbun'' studies is the Web-accessible database being developed by scholars at Nishōgakusha University in Tokyo (see Kamichi and Machi 2006). CONVENTIONS AND TERMINOLOGY Compositions written in ''kanbun'' used two common types of Japanese can be read as ''dō'' adapted from Chinese '' Dào '' (道 "way, path") or as ''michi'' from the indigenous Japanese word meaning "road, street". ''Kanbun'' implemented two particular types of ''kana'': '' Okurigana '' (送り仮名 "accompanying script") "''kana'' suffixes added to ''kanji'' stems to show their Japanese readings" and '' Furigana '' (振り仮名 "brandishing script") "smaller ''kana'' syllables printed/written alongside ''kanji'' to indicate pronunciation". ''Kanbun'' – as opposed to ''Wabun'' (和文 " Wa (Japan) writing") meaning "Japanese text, composition written with Japanese syntax and predominately ''kun'yomi'' readings" – is subdivided into several types.
Jean-Noël Robert describes ''kanbun'' as a "perfectly frozen, "dead," Language " that was continuously used from the late Heian Period until after World War II. Classical Chinese, which, as we have seen, had long since ceased to be a spoken language on the mainland (if indeed it had ever had been), has been in use in the Japanese archipelago longer than the Japanese language itself. The oldest written remnants found in Japan are all in Chinese, though it is a matter of considerable debate whether traces of the Japanese vernacular are to be found in them. Taking both languages together until the end of the nineteenth century, and taking into account all the monastic documents, literature in the widest sense of the term, and texts in "near-Chinese" (''hentai-kanbun''), it is entirely possible that the sheer volume of texts written in Chinese in Japan slightly exceed what was written in Japanese. (2006:32) Inasmuch as Classical Chinese was originally unpunctuated, the ''kanbun'' tradition developed various conventional reading punctuation, diacritical, and syntactic markers.
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A-man from-Ch'u was-selling spears, shields. Praising them, he-said: My shields are so-hard-that all things none can defeat-them. Again, praising his spears, he-said: My spears are so-sharp-that all things none can defeat-them. Someone said: What if with your spear were to defeat your shield? That man was not able-to respond." (tr. Wu 1997:111)
| 楚 | 人 | 有 | 鬻 | 盾 | 與 | 矛 | 者 |
| ''Chǔ'' | ''rén'' | ''yǒu'' | ''yù'' | ''dùn'' | ''yǔ'' | ''máo'' | ''zhě'' |
| Chu | man | was | selling | shields | and | spears | (nominalizer) |
| 楚 | 人 | 有 | 鬻 | 盾 | 與 | 矛 | 者 |
| 1 | 2 | 8 | 6 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 7 |
| 楚 | 人 | 盾 | 矛 | 與 | 鬻 | 者 | 有 |
| ''So'' | ''jin'' | ''jun'' | ''mu'' | ''yo'' | ''juku'' | ''sha'' | ''yū'' |
| Chu | man | shields | spears | and | sell | (nominalizer) | was |
| 楚 | 人 | に | 盾 | と | 矛 | と | を | 鬻 | ぐ | 者 | 有 | り |
| ''So'' | ''hito'' | ''ni'' | ''tate'' | ''to'' | ''hoko'' | ''to'' | ''o'' | ''hisa'' | ''gu'' | ''mono'' | ''a'' | ''ri'' |
| Chu | man | (subject) | shields | and | spears | and | (direct object) | sell- | ing | man | wa- | s |
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