Asian = Oriental, etc.

[Douglas G. Wilson]

 From Benjamin Barrett:

>... I'd never heard people say they thought the word was invented by the
>Japanese.

This is what's asserted by the AHD4, and by other sources (I quoted one in
my message of 2/15). I have seen it asserted in some books that Chinese
created the name, though.

> > As for why the Japanese wanted to use a new name in their relations with
> > China ...
>
>It was not a new name. ...

Apparently the character-pair "Nippon" = "Jih-pen" was first applied to
Japan in the 7th Century (I think I read 620 AD somewhere, AHD4 says 670
AD). Of course this appeared in Chinese, but it was said that Japanese
(ones who knew Chinese) chose this Chinese name for themselves. Whether the
character-pair had any accepted meaning in Chinese before this, I don't know.

My question was/is why the Japanese created for themselves the "Nippon" =
"sun origin" character-pair/Chinese-name (regardless of how they pronounced
it) -- assuming that they did. Were they so impressed by China that they
named themselves from a Chinese viewpoint? Or did the name refer to their
claimed solar ancestry, with the "sunrise" explanation invented later for
Chinese consumption? Or was it a deliberate double-entendre from the start?
Or perhaps the story that the Japanese created this name themselves is
apocryphal -- perhaps they took it from some Chinese literary source or
whatever? Or was the name originally only for use in relations with China
[if so how did it supplant "Daiwa", "Yamato", etc.at home?]?

>When the dictionary entry says the Japanese pronounced the characters as
>"Yamato," ...

Apparently "Yamato" = "Japan" came from the name of the state/province
where the Japanese capital was located -- now more or less Nara Prefecture
-- and of the Yamato clan which ruled from there from ca. 300 AD. The clan
was/is associated with the sun goddess Amaterasu. Presumably the
character-pair "Daiwa" was/is alternatively pronounced "Yamato" simply
based on its meaning ("Japan" [ruled by the Yamato clan from Yamato]), as
the character "Wa" (something like "dwarf" in Chinese) also was/is
pronounced "Yamato", and as the characters in "Nippon" also were sometimes
pronounced "Yamato". According to one book, the "wa" in "Daiwa" (also
pronounced "Yamato") was written with the "dwarf" character in Japan until
737 AD, when it was changed to the "peace" character. (Maybe this was when
the Japanese discovered the sense or 'etymology' of the "dwarf" character?)
The "Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan" says that the place-name Yamato
probably meant "mountain place" originally; another book obliquely suggests
"mountain gate".

The Kodansha encyclopedia (under "Shotoku, Prince") states that Shoutoku of
Yamato wrote a letter to the Sui (Chinese) emperor in 607 AD in which he
referred to himself as "the emperor of the land of the rising sun", and to
the Chinese emperor as "the emperor of the land of the setting sun". The
Chinese/Japanese text was not given, so I don't know whether "Nippon" or
equivalent was included, nor can I guess whether "the land of the rising
sun" was being put forth as a national designation or merely used to mean
"the more eastern of these two countries" (a parallel with the Latin
"oriens" as discussed elsewhere), but I think the "rising sun" reference
makes more sense given this symmetrical context. Apparently the Chinese
emperor was overtly displeased with this choice of nomenclature. [Is this a
suspiciously good story? The Kodansha encyclopedia is large, and looks
respectable ....]

-- Doug Wilson