Japanese Diary 23: From Land's End to Finisterre by way of Kyoto

[steepholm]

Learning to tell my "on" readings from my "kun" readings has got me thinking again about the Chinese influence on the Japanese language, and about the Japan-Britain analogies which I've noticed from the start of this Japanese-learning endeavour - and which indeed largely enticed me into it.

One thing that's struck me for some time is the name of Japan itself - Nihon/Nippon (日本). Everyone knows that Japan is the Land of the Rising Sun, but that name involves a curious act of displacement and self-othering. Because in order to see Japan as the land from which the sun originates you naturally need to be to the west of it - that is, in China. So, the Japanese name for Japan is not only linguistically Chinese but it assumes a Chinese perspective. (There is an older, native name - Wa: I wonder whether there's ever been a movement to reclaim it?) Similarly, the Japanese word for China - Chuugoku (中国) - literally means "central country", which again puts Japan on the periphery.

What's less clear to me is how deeply buried this etymology is in the minds of those who use the language on a daily basis. A Japanese person looking at the English language might make similar observations regarding, say, the Mediterranean Sea, after all. Most British people today don't think twice about its etymology, I imagine: its use certainly doesn't imply that they consider the world to be centred in that tideless puddle between Spain and Egypt. But that wasn't always the case. Not just during the Roman Empire but for a millennium or so afterwards the countries with a Mediterranean coast must have seemed to the British to be at the centre of civilization: the Holy Land, Rome, Spain, Byzantium, Ottoman Turkey - all were far more "central" than the British Isles. That was still very much the case in, say, 1600 - by 1850 far less so, largely of course due to the rise of the British Empire. Japan's history, however, was very different, and the sense of its "peripherality" maybe survived longer, and/or differently. There are pleasures to being edgy, mysterious, non plus ultra. I wouldn't be surprised if there were a certain relish in the claiming of that identity.

"Britain" meanwhile is no less a Mediterranean name than "Nihon" is a Chinese one - a Romanized version of a Greek word, possibly involving a transcription error (the "B" ought to be a "P", I seem to recall). I wonder what the British "Wa" might be? I rather like the Mabinogion's "Island of the Mighty", but I don't suppose it can be made to stick at this late date.

Comments

[kalypso]

the "B" ought to be a "P", I seem to recall

Ooh, did you see that episode of Churchill's People? With the doomed travel-writer who wanted to out-Herodotus Herodotus, or something like that?

[steepholm]

I'm afraid I don't know Churchill's People at all! I can't remember where I read about the P/B transcription debacle.

[kalypso]

It was a drama series about forty years ago, so I thought you might have seen it too! Digging around, I found the castlist (though no plot summary) for Pritan, the episode in question... All I really remember was that the Roman travel-writer was planning to out-Herodotus Herodotus, plus a lot of other writers, with his account of Pritan (which he insisted was the correct name), but things turned nasty, and at the end a couple of legionaries found his body on the beach, with the word "PRITAN" scratched beside him, and one of them said something like "Well, he's lost that one" and filled out the B with his dagger.

[steepholm]

at the end a couple of legionaries found his body on the beach, with the word "PRITAN" scratched beside him, and one of them said something like "Well, he's lost that one" and filled out the B with his dagger.

Copyedited skin - I like it.

[kalypso]

I think it was in the sand. Presumably it was written as the tide was going out so the sand was wet, and the tide hadn't washed it away before they found him. I can't quite remember, it's possible the last shot was of a wave sweeping over it...

[thistleingrey]

I believe "middle realm" is what zhongguo means in Chinese, too; in that sense the Japanese language has only borrowed big brother's sense of centrality. (Did Japanese people use a different name for China during the early twentieth century, I wonder--those wars were partly about throwing off the old inherited supremacy and becoming a power in their (Japan's) own right.)

IIRC "wa" has difficulties for implying insufficient cultivation/civilization. It too is a Chinese word for Japan(ese), not a native one, FWIW. Korean has the word "waeguk"--wa-culture--which during C20/21 connotes "foreigner" generally, but it's the same root. (K guk == J goku == Mandarin guo.)

ETA For your Mabinogi parallel: the word "Welsh" itself, perhaps, which is a Germanic word and thus an exonym for Cymry.

[steepholm]

Wow, that's really interesting re. "Wa". In that case, I wonder whether there even is a native Japanese word for Japan, or whether its consituent islands were first recognized as a single entity from the outside, as it were?

From what you say, "Welsh" seems a good parallel for Wa, Nihon and indeed Japan - exonyms all!

[thistleingrey]

I suspect that Wikipedia is especially unreliable on issues of identity formation, but the quotations here may be of interest. Is "Yamatō" borrowed? The exonym issue tempore the early fudoki and Kojiki seems to me sort of emergent from using another culture's writing system, just as bits of Latin have remained in most western European languages that don't descend from it. (Advocate (lawyer) and parchment come to mind for twelfth-century German.) Or we've simply lost the writings that used other terms, since they aren't the terms that stuck and weren't used as much....

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I don't suppose there would be an ancient native name for the whole of the UK or British Isles, but of course there is Cymru for Wales and Lloegr -- or the English version Logres -- for England.

Logres has the disadvantage that I've never known how to pronounce it, though Lloegr now trips merrily off the tongue. :)

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I just say "LOGREZ" in a voice of authority. No one has yet called me on it.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

Lloegr if you're coming off the bridge. Where does Albion come from?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

WIthout checking, my memory is that Albion is a name deriving from the whiteness of the chalk cliffs of the Kentish coast - but who used it first I don't know. Also, of course, Alba is the Gaelic word for Scotland. I'm not sure what the connection is there, if any.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Oh, this is fascinating. In one proposed etymology, "Britain" is akin to "Prydain"! Would you believe I'd never looked that up?

OED: Etymology: < classical Latin Britannus (adjective) British, (noun, plural Britannī ) Briton, inhabitant of Britain, Breton, inhabitant of Brittany, apparently corresponding to Hellenistic Greek Βρεττανοί , plural (the Latin name was perhaps adopted from the Greeks of Massilia), also Πρεττανοί , Πρετανοί , probably < a British self-designation reflected by Old Welsh Priten , collective (Welsh Prydain ), although the change of the initial presents difficulties (see note); the British self-designation is perhaps ultimately < the Celtic base of Welsh pryd countenance, image, beauty, form (see pryddest n.).

Nine

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I've looked it up now, and Pytheas is your man, though filtered through others. It does seem indeed that he took the name from the natives (if we can believe Wiki), so the British Wa may indeed be Prydain - as Mr Alexander could no doubt have told us.

Now, though, I rather wish we could have been the Land of the Setting Sun. It would have satisfied my Rorschach lust for symmetry.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Of course some people do equate Hyperborea with Britain. Hence At the Back of the North Wind. Perhaps that would be your best "Land of the Rising Sun" equivalent?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

That will do nicely, thank you!

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

(here from Friends FL)

The story is that the name Nihon was first used in a piece of 7th century diplomatic snottery on the part of the regent Shotoku Taishi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Sh%C5%8Dtoku). To quote wikipedia:

In his correspondence with the Chinese Sui Emperor, Yangdi, the Prince's letter contains the earliest written instance in which the Japanese archipelago is named Nihon. The Sui Emperor dispatched a message in 605 that said, "the sovereign of Sui respectfully inquires about the sovereign of Wa." Shōtoku responded by sponsoring a mission led by Ono no Imoko in 607: "From the sovereign of the land of the rising sun (nihon/hi izuru) to the sovereign of the land of the setting sun."

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Thank you for that - it's very interesting. Put like that, there is a pleasing balance between the two lands. When one sun is removed and the land renamed Chuugoku, it looks quite different. (ETA: It was only half an hour later that the rising/setting contrast and its potential snottiness hit me.)

[jane-somebody.livejournal.com]

That makes me think of the Sunset King and Sunrise King in Nancy Springer's The Silver Sun, although that is obviously an entirely different context. But similar imagery, if without the political rivalry.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

Aren't we Perfidious Albion? Capital city, Trinovantum?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

We're only Perfidious Albion when judged by the standards of France, where they place exceptional store on keeping one's promises come what may. (Just ask Mme Hollande.)

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Who's she, the President's mother?

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Good point (I don't follow these things very carefully). That should have read "Just ask Valérie Trierweiler". Other cuckolded presidential partners are available...

[larryhammer]

See also.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

That's a pleasingly complex history.