Description
Book SynopsisIt has long been known that the modern Chinese language inherited numerous terms from Japanese and that Japanese coined many of those terms in the last decades of the 19th century. These seven essays address the actual processes by which a discreet number of terms came into being, how they outdistanced competitors, and the persons and texts involved in the process. Rather than relying on received tropes of translation heritage, these essays delve much deeper into the particularities of their cases. They set a standard for subsequent scholarship.
Trade Review"These seven studies provide a veritable wealth of information concerning the actual process of Sino-Japanese appropriation of the terms in the second half of the nineteenth century, together with how they evolved to become linguistic vehicles carrying ideas from the West to Japan and then to China...Through his introduction and translation of these seven studies, Joshua A. Fogel, as a well-established scholar devoted to Sino-Japanese cultural relations, brings to light scholarly practice in Japan and the achievements accomplished by these three Japanese scholars." Limin Bai, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies (June 2017)
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Seven Japanese Studies on the Modern Sino-Japanese Lexicon 1. Saitō Tsuyoshi, The Creation of the Term Kojin (Individual) 2. Saitō Tsuyoshi, The Formation of the Term Shakai (Society) 3. Suzuki Shūji, Religion (shūkyō) and Freedom (jiyū) 4. Yanabu Akira, Liberty-Freedom: Yanagita Kunio’s Resistance 5. Yanabu Akira, The Concept of “Rights” 6. Suzuki Shūji, Terminology Surrounding the “Tripartite Separation of Powers” 7. Suzuki Shūji, Dreams of “Science” and “Truth”
