Old place names in Japanese for China
Posted: April 5, 2010 | Author: Doug | Filed under: Japanese | 5 Comments »Something I wanted to pass along for manga/language nerds. So, lately I was reading a nice manga about Buddhist history in Japan, and the reading level is fairly high (high for me at least), so I have had to read and re-read the manga many times and learned a lot from the process. One of the first things to confuse me I figured out later were the various names for China. Nowadays, in Japanese, China the country is expressed as chūgoku (中国), just as it is in the People’s Republic, but in the old days they used different names, depending on which dynasty was in power.
So, for example, in the book, when talking about the life of Kukai and Saicho, it talked boarding the ships bound for 唐 (tō), but it took me some work to realize that 唐 meant the Tang Dynasty. In fact, that is the name of the dynasty itself. Later, when reading about the life of Eisai, I was similarly confused by his trip to 宋 (sō) until I figured out this was the Song Dynasty.
So in those days, in Japanese, the dynasty name was synonymous with the country itself. When you think about it, it kind of makes sense, but for students learning Japanese, this is something easy to overlook until you get a good dictionary and some rudimentary knowledge of Chinese history. Likewise, the term 漢 (kan) refers to the ancient Han Dynasty, but also becomes synonymous with China, and Chinese characters as in “kanji” (漢字) or “Chinese letters [from the Han Dynasty-era on up]“.
Hope this post proves useful. It’s a very narrow topic, but I thought I would save others the trouble if they ever find themselves in the same situation. 
Hello, this blog is about my life as a father, Buddhist and Japanophile. Any useful information I can pass along will hopefully make the 
These terms are used by Chinese themselves. Southern Chinese dialects in particular have continued to use the term 唐, although perhaps not so much now in 2010. Even until (relatively) recently, Chinese Americans called themselves 唐人, and American Chinatowns were called 唐人街. Nowadays a more common term for Chinatown is 華埠. There’s a touching poem about this change in nomenclature, musing that the difference between the terms was that “the people left.”
Wow, that’s a bit of trivia I sure didn’t know. That means Southern Chinese dialects still are influenced by the Tang Dynasty of yore, even after so many centuries. I never heard such a term used in standard Mandarin, insofar as I studied in the past, so something’s changed over time. I can only guess what.
Great info, thanks for passing along.
I used to live in 唐人町 tojinmachi in Fukuoka. It is not an uncommon name place name suggesting some history of the area.
Some made in China (Tang) terms still in use…
唐揚げ Kara-age fried chicken from China predates KFC
唐薯 Karaimo also called satsumaimo, sweet potato
唐津 Karatsu, a place here in Saga, meaning Port to Tang
唐瓜 Karauri, the term which became キュウリ, cucumber over time
Sorry getting hungry, nearly time for lunch
Stephen
Ha ha ha, I knew about kara-age, though I never understood why the name used the same kanji. Perhaps it was imported then, who knows? Or maybe it’s leftover in the Chinese-Japanese lexicon, as Arun pointed out.
This is a really interesting posting – even though I don’t actually read manga and don’t know all these references.
What about the word “Han” (漢) signifying things/people Chinese? I assuming that it has something to do with the ancient Han Dynasty (漢朝). Do Japanese people ever use this word/character?
The Koreans seem to use their own word “Han” to refer to themselves (e.g. 韓國 han-guk) and I would assume there’s a connection between this and the old state/kingdom of Han (韓國).
If any other readers out there know more about these inter-connections, I’d be very curious to hear more…