This English version was translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The Chinese text is authoritative.
Loanwords are necessary
One reason Chinese civilization has continued for thousands of years without interruption is that Chinese character words (names), which combine form, sound and meaning, are rich and relatively stable in meaning. People today, with the help of reference books, have no great difficulty grasping the meaning of pre-Qin and Han texts written two or three thousand years ago.
Chinese character culture has also continually encountered foreign words and interacted with them, gaining a living source of fresh water. For example, between the Wei-Jin and the Sui-Tang periods, it absorbed a great many Buddhist concepts originating in South Asia and formed a number of new Chinese character terms reflecting the Buddha’s teachings, such as 法 (dharma), 空 (emptiness), 禅 (dhyana, Zen), 世界 (world), 现在 (present) and 觉悟 (awakening), which gradually became common words.
In modern times, Chinese character culture met Western culture, knowledge grew explosively, and concepts reflecting new knowledge burst forth like a gusher. Through such routes as “dialect words rising, ancient words reborn, foreign words attaching themselves,” new concepts were “lexicalized” by means of Chinese characters, producing new terms in bulk, while old Chinese terms were also renewed. On this trend of evolution, the linguist Wang Li commented: “The importation of Buddhist vocabulary was a major event in history, but compared with the importation of Western vocabulary, it falls short by a thousand times. ······ From the point of view of vocabulary, the speed of development of Chinese in the last fifty years has exceeded that of the previous several thousand years.” Forty years have passed since Wang Li said this, and the development of Chinese vocabulary in that time has been even greater than in the previous fifty. Some have calculated that as many as three to four hundred new Chinese character words are now added each year.
Because Japan succeeded in learning modern European and American culture through the Meiji Restoration, Japan, as a member of the Chinese character cultural sphere, and China helped each other, using Chinese characters to translate a large number of European and American terms (mainly disciplinary terms). These new terms entered China in the late Qing and early Republic along with Japanese translations of Western books, so many of the keywords in common use in modern China were produced in the three-way communication among China, the West and Japan.
Loanwords entering the borrowing language in the form of new terms increase its vocabulary and enrich its expressive power; this is a sign of language traveling across cultures. Chinese characters have a strong ideographic character. Each character is not only a phonetic sign but also carries a specific semantic unit, and characters often have multiple meanings that translators can choose from. Semantic translations can bring out the distinctive ideographic nature of Chinese characters and reveal their cultural content; sometimes sound and meaning are combined, as in 啤酒 (beer), 卡片 (card), 霓虹灯 (neon light) and 绷带 (bandage); even phonetic transcriptions often choose characters that combine sound and meaning, such as 逻辑 (logic), 维他命 (vitamin) and 可口可乐 (Coca-Cola), as well as recent words like 奔驰 (Benz), 黑客 (hacker), 迷你裙 (miniskirt) and 托福 (TOEFL), which convey the sound while also offering some hint of meaning. When Yan Fu transliterated Utopia, he chose the three characters 乌托邦; besides matching the sound, these three characters also evoke the association “a land of nonexistent hopes,” suggesting the meaning of “utopianism.” These translations combining sound and meaning are marvelous creations of the wise culture of Chinese characters.
Creating new terms by borrowing is a universal sociolinguistic phenomenon. Wang Guowei assessed the borrowing of new words positively: “The language of the Zhou and Qin was found wanting when Buddhist scriptures were translated; the language of recent times is again found wanting when Western books are translated. ······ To teach and learn today, there is already an irresistible trend to add new words; and since others have already created them and we adopt them, nothing could be more convenient.”
A hundred years have passed, and “the importation of new words” has only increased. The establishment of such academic terms as 科学 (science), 民主 (democracy), 自由 (freedom), 经济 (economy), 文学 (literature), 艺术 (art), 封建 (feudal), 资本 (capital), 教育 (education), 新闻 (news), 物理 (physics), 化学 (chemistry), 心理 (psychology), 社会 (society), 革命 (revolution), 共和 (republic), 政党 (political party), 阶级 (class), 权利 (rights), 生产力 (productive forces), 世界观 (worldview), 社会主义 (socialism) and 知识分子 (intellectual) was all achieved in a process of usage in which ancient and modern were developed and Chinese and foreign were joined. The forms of these new Chinese character terms are native to Chinese character culture, while their meanings were mostly shaped by both Chinese and Western factors, with Japanese factors also involved. Thus, tracing the sources of these new Chinese character terms and examining the mechanisms of formation and laws of development of the new concepts that are the knots of modern thought will open up a complex picture of multilateral cultural interaction among China, the West and Japan and reveal the network-like course of modern thought and culture.
Linguistic interaction
That ancient Japan imported from China the system of Chinese character culture, including a large number of Chinese character words, is an established fact that needs no elaboration. A popular view is that in modern times the direction of cultural transmission between China and Japan was reversed: in terms of vocabulary alone, Japan went from importer to exporter, while China changed from a source of cultural supply to a recipient of culture.
This view suffers from crudeness. With a rough periodization of history, it should be put like this: in the early modern period (the Ming-Qing transition and mid-Qing in China, the late shogunate and early Meiji in Japan), the mainstream direction of cultural transmission was still from China to Japan; by the late modern period, owing to the success of the Meiji Restoration, Japan’s level in studying Western learning had overtaken China’s, and one sign of this was that in the late Qing and early Republic China imported from Japan a large number of new terms translating and introducing Western concepts. Zhang Zhidong called them “Japanese terms,” Lin Qinnan called them “the new terms of the Easterners,” Liu Bannong called them “new terms of the Eastern Ocean school,” and linguists in the 1950s called them “Japanese loanwords.”
Although many of the new terms reflecting new knowledge used in modern China did come from Japan, to say that most of them are “Japanese loanwords” is an exaggeration. In setting out below the error of this exaggeration, I am by no means trying to promote “lexical nationalism,” nor to prove that “I used to be richer than you” in order to gain an Ah Q-style “spiritual victory”; this is a conclusion drawn from the actual facts of the modern history of Chinese character culture.
The crushing defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 caused the Chinese to “wake from a great dream” and resolve to learn from their powerful enemy. Starting in 1896, young students were sent to Japan to study Western learning as digested by the Japanese. Over the following ten-odd years this gradually became a tide of study in Japan. Through the efforts of people in both China and Japan, and especially through the transmission of tens of thousands of Chinese students in Japan, new Chinese character words poured into China from Japan in large numbers. In 1897 Kang Youwei compiled the Bibliography of Japanese Books, which included a large number of Japanese-made academic terms such as 经济学 (economics), 伦理学 (ethics), 人类学 (anthropology) and 美学 (aesthetics), attracting the attention of court and public alike.
The new Chinese character terms that entered China from Japan around the turn from the Qing to the Republic fall into the following categories:
(1) Phonetic transcriptions (瓦斯 gas, 俱乐部 club, etc.).
(2) Japanese kun-reading words (入口 entrance, 手续 procedure, etc.).
(3) Japanese-made characters (腺 gland, 膣 vagina, etc.).
(4) Japanese translation expressions (基于 based on, 对于 regarding, etc.).
(5) Classical Chinese words whose original meanings were broadened, narrowed or shifted to translate Western concepts. (For example, 现象 was originally a Chinese Buddhist translation meaning a Buddha or bodhisattva manifesting a transformation body; the Japanese philosopher Nishi Amane infused it with a new meaning, making it a philosophical term, “phenomenon,” corresponding to 本质 “essence.”)
(6) New words coined by Chinese character word-formation methods to translate Western terms.
Some of the above categories did indeed originate in Japan, such as categories (1) to (4), but the larger and more important categories (5) and (6) mostly cannot be summed up as “words of Japanese origin,” because a number of these new terms have other origins:
(1) Originating in Chinese classics
A large number of Chinese character words regarded around the Qing-Republic transition as having entered China from Japan, such as 自由 (freedom), 社会 (society), 科学 (science), 卫生 (hygiene), 小说 (novel), 机器 (machine), 参观 (visit), 代表 (represent), 单位 (unit), 发明 (invent), 反对 (oppose), 范畴 (category), 现象 (phenomenon), 革命 (revolution), 共和 (republic), 讲师 (lecturer), 教授 (professor), 博士 (doctor), 悲观 (pessimistic) and 标本 (specimen), when traced to their origins, mostly come from the lexicon of Chinese classics. They were transmitted from China to Japan from the Jin, Tang, Song and Ming onward, and in modern times, after being reworked in Japan, were “reverse-imported” into China as translations of Western terms; it is more appropriate to call them “emigrant words returning home.” For they were originally old Chinese words, used in China for hundreds or thousands of years, then took up residence in Japan, received the baptism of foreign culture, and in modern times returned to the Chinese language system as “emigrant words.”
(2) From Chinese-language Western books compiled, translated and published in China
There is another group of new Chinese character terms reflecting modern disciplinary concepts, such as 植物学 (botany), 物理学 (physics), 地球 (the earth), 热带 (tropics), 温带 (temperate zone), 冷带 (frigid zone), 寒流 (cold current), 暖流 (warm current), 细胞 (cell), 大气 (atmosphere), 真理 (truth), 公理 (axiom), 定理 (theorem), 比例 (proportion), 权利 (rights), 立法 (legislation) and 选举 (election), once mistakenly thought to be “words of Japanese origin,” but in fact they are not. They were created in China during two periods, the Ming-Qing transition and the late Qing, by Western missionaries working with Chinese scholars in the mode of “Western translation, Chinese narration” (Westerners translating orally, Chinese writing it down), and were transmitted to Japan in the middle and late Edo period and the early and middle Meiji period respectively. Their vehicles were the early Chinese-language Western books (written around the Ming-Qing transition) and the late Chinese-language Western books (written in the mid-to-late Qing) printed in China.
(3) Creations of late-Qing Chinese who “opened their eyes to see the world”
When the country’s gates first opened in the Daoguang and Xianfeng reigns of the Qing, some progressive scholars, thirsting for new knowledge, drew on Chinese translations of Western books and Western newspapers to write a number of books introducing Western affairs and Western learning. Famous examples include the Gazetteer of the Four Continents compiled and translated under Lin Zexu, the Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms compiled by Wei Yuan, and the Brief Survey of the Maritime Circuit compiled by Xu Jiyu. In introducing the affairs and learning of foreign lands, these books translated and coined a number of new Chinese character terms in history and geography, politics and law, and science and technology. These books were coldly received in their own country, but when they reached Japan in the late shogunate and early Meiji, they became hugely popular and were reprinted many times; Yoshida Shōin, a patriot of the late-shogunate restoration, said that “Wei Yuan’s book is widely circulated in our country.” The new Chinese character terms translated in these books spread through Japan along with them; the Japanese not only used them widely but also took them as models for translating new Chinese character terms. For example, the Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms rendered newspaper as “新闻纸” and the American head of state as “大统领”; both were adopted by the Japanese and are still in use today.
In short, of the above kinds of Chinese character words, some are not “new words fluttering in” but “old words revived,” or “classical words renewed”; some are not “Japanese words entering China” but “emigrant words returning home”; and quite a few new terms were produced in China, not Japan, with Japan merely a transit station. Therefore, to regard them all as “Japanese loanwords” does not accord with historical fact. From an etymological point of view, we must restore to the three kinds of words listed above their status as “first created in China,” “renewed classics” and “returning emigrant words,” analyze the whole process of their renewal, export and reverse import, and examine the continuity, change, transmission and transformation in the three-way interaction among China, the West and Japan.
Teachers and students of each other
We should not underestimate the major contribution of late-shogunate and Meiji Japan to the development of Chinese character culture. Modern Japan created a number of new Chinese character terms; it selected a great many classical Chinese words to translate Western terms; it popularized the use of affixes, such as prefixes (老～, 小～, 第～, 非～) and suffixes (～者, ～力, ～性, ～化); and it drew on Western grammar, enriching the use of Chinese characters and helping to drive the vernacular movement and the modernization of Chinese. This achievement must be recognized, but it cannot be a reason to misattribute the etymology of new Chinese character terms and hand them all over to Japan.
In my view, modern Japan’s promotion of the development of Chinese character culture lies mainly not in how many new words it supplied, but in ending the scattered, disorderly, self-generating and self-perishing state of new Chinese character terms; in defining the classical, modern and international meanings of new terms, whether created in China or made in Japan, and linking them together and incorporating them into disciplinary systems; and, through school and social education, in providing a linguistic foundation for Chinese character culture to build a modern system of knowledge. This highly meaningful work was accomplished neither by China nor by Japan alone, but was the result of three-way interaction among China, the West and Japan over the more than three hundred years since the late 16th century. During this time Chinese and Japanese were teachers and students of each other, alternating in the roles of creator and learner, and the translations and coinages of European and American missionaries, aided by Chinese scholars, were also of crucial importance.
After the appearance of translators versed in both Chinese and Western languages, such as Yan Fu, China gradually relied less on Japanese translations of Western books and translated Western learning directly, coining new Chinese character terms on the basis of English, French, German and Russian texts. Japan’s role as a “relay passer” declined, but the usefulness of Meiji-era Japanese new words did not cease, and some of their advantages continued to shine. For example, Yan Fu, who said “to establish a single term I deliberate for ten days or a month,” painstakingly coined 计学, 群学, 母财 and 脑学, which were certainly precise and elegant, but not as clear and easy to understand as the Japanese-translated new Chinese character words 经济学 (economics), 社会学 (sociology), 资本 (capital) and 心理学 (psychology). So what became current in modern China were seldom Yan Fu’s terms and mostly the Japanese translations.
Even today, Japanese vocabulary is still entering China. Currently popular new words such as 达人 (expert), 人气 (popularity), 人脉 (connections), 完败 (crushing defeat), 完胜 (complete victory), 物流 (logistics), 研修 (training), 职场 (workplace) and 熟女 (mature woman) are all Japanese-made.
Although Japanese translated words have the advantage of being convenient and easy to use, we should not overlook that most of these Japanese Chinese character words originate in classical Chinese or were coined using Chinese word-formation methods, and all retain deep ties of origin with Chinese culture. A recent example illustrates the point well. On May 1, 2019, Japan’s emperor changed, and the new era name was “令和” (Reiwa). The official explanation was that the name was formed from characters chosen from the line “in the auspicious first month of spring, the air is fine and the wind gentle” (初春令月，气淑风和) in the “Preface to Thirty-Two Plum Blossom Poems” in volume 5 of the Man’yōshū, Japan’s earliest anthology of waka, and it was declared the first era name drawn from a Japanese classic. This clearly carried an intention of cultural “de-Sinicization,” but on investigation it proved just the opposite. The line in the Man’yōshū, compiled in the 8th century, derives from the line “in the auspicious month of mid-spring, the season is mild and the air clear” (仲春令月，时和气清) in “Returning to the Fields,” a work written in the early 2nd century by Zhang Heng, the Eastern Han scientist and fu poet, and Zhang Heng in turn drew on the phrasing “an auspicious month and a lucky day” (令月吉日) in the pre-Qin classic Etiquette and Ceremonial, “Capping Ceremony for a Gentleman.” That most of the Chinese character vocabulary used in Japan originates in Chinese classics is a historical fact that need not and cannot be avoided; that modern Japan, in coining new Chinese character words when translating Western learning, was deeply rooted in the soil of Chinese culture is a historical thread that must not be forgotten, still less severed.
In sum, linguistic exchange between China and Japan has been a relationship in which each was teacher and student to the other, and people today need not make one-sided assessments. The linguistic achievements jointly created by China and Japan are a rich cultural asset that still functions on both sides today and forms a solid foundation for language development now and in the future.
(The author is a professor at the Center for Studies of Chinese Traditional Culture, Wuhan University)
