Kanbun

For the 17th-century era, see Kanbun (era).

"Kunten" redirects here. For the municipality in Switzerland, see Künten.

Kanbun (Japanese: 漢文, "Sinitic writing") is a Japanese term whose principal sense is writing in Literary Sinitic, including texts composed or circulated in Japan. The term has also been used more broadly for Japanized forms of Sinitic writing and for the tradition surrounding their Japanese reading. Kanbun kundoku (漢文訓読) is the conventional method of reading a Literary Sinitic text as Classical Japanese, assigning Japanese readings and grammatical elements and, where necessary, changing the reading order. A kundoku rendition may use both Sino-Japanese on'yomi and native kun'yomi readings; it is distinct from simply reciting the characters by their Sino-Japanese pronunciations.

Before the widespread use of kana, which developed from cursive forms and components of Chinese characters, Literary Sinitic was extensively used in Japan for official, religious, intellectual, and literary writing. The large surviving corpus includes Chinese classics and Buddhist texts as well as works composed in Japan.

History

Kanbun in its most literal definition means "Chinese writing". The Japanese writing system originated through adoption and adaptation of written Chinese (kanbun). Some of Japan's oldest books (e.g. the Nihon Shoki) and dictionaries (e.g. the Tenrei Banshō Meigi and Wamyō Ruijushō) were written in kanbun. Other Japanese literary genres have parallels; the Kaifūsō is the oldest collection of kanshi (漢詩; 'Chinese poetry'). Burton Watson's English translations of kanbun compositions provide an introduction to this literary field.

The earliest securely dated Japanese materials with return marks are from 783 and 788, although the older of the two may reproduce glossing from Silla; related evidence suggests that the practice began by the late Nara period or earlier. A nationally standardized school convention for reading marks was adopted in 1912.

Kanbun is described by Jean-Noël Robert as a "perfectly frozen 'dead'" language that was continuously used from the late Heian period (794–1185) until after World War II. Kanbun, otherwise known as Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese, had long since ceased to be a colloquial language in China. Yet all the oldest writing in Japan are in kanbun and predate any written documents in Japanese, although there is considerable debate if these Chinese texts contained traces of the Japanese vernacular. Taking into consideration all the texts written in both Japanese and Chinese, including monastic documents, as well as 'near-Chinese' (hentai-kanbun) texts, the amount of Chinese writing in Japan may exceed what was written in Japanese. Despite the size, quality, and importance of kanbun writing, John Timothy Wixted notes that scholars have disregarded kanbun as an area of study until recent times and it is the least properly represented part of the Japanese canon.

Aside from Sinitic writing itself, kanbun can refer to techniques for reading Chinese texts as Japanese or to Japanized forms of Sinitic writing. Samuel Martin coined the term Sino-Xenic in 1953 for Sino-Japanese, Sino-Korean, Sino-Vietnamese, and comparable traditions of Chinese-derived readings and vocabulary. Japanese kundoku has parallels in historical Korean and other East Asian traditions for reading Literary Sinitic. In Japan it has remained continuously and widely used, while modern Korean normally reads such texts with Sino-Korean pronunciations even though glossing traditions such as gugyeol have historical and modern successors.

In the Japanese kanbun reading tradition, punctuation and reading marks guide the analysis of a Sinitic text and its rendering into a conventional Classical Japanese register. Fixed correspondences connect many Chinese words and constructions with Japanese readings, particles, inflections, and word-order changes, although the correspondence is not mechanically one-to-one.

There were several linguistic hurdles involved in kanbun transformation. Chinese grammatical order is subject–verb–object (SVO) and uses particles similar to English prepositions whereas morphemes are typically one syllable in length and inflection plays no role in the grammar. Conversely, Japanese sentence order uses SOV with syntactic features, including postpositions such as grammar particles that appear after the words and phrases to which they apply.

Four major problems faced when transforming kanbun are the word order, parsing which Chinese characters should be read together, deciding how to pronounce the characters, and finding suitable equivalents for Chinese function words.

Nishogakusha University maintains a public Kanbun Database and an international research programme based on Japanese kanbun sources.

Terminology

The Japanese word kanbun originally meant 'Literary Chinese writings'—or, the Chinese classics. Kanbun compositions use both Sino-Japanese on'yomi readings adapted from Chinese pronunciations and native Japanese kun'yomi readings based on Japanese equivalents. For example, 道 can be read dō or michi; the choice between on and kun readings varies with the text and reading tradition.

Kanbun implemented two particular types of kana. One was okurigana 'accompanying script', kana suffixes added to kanji stems to show their Japanese readings; the other was furigana 'brandishing script', smaller kana syllables written alongside kanji to indicate pronunciation. These were used primarily as reinforcements to writing in kanbun. Kanbun—as opposed to Wabun (和文; 'Wa writing'), Japanese text with Japanese syntax and predominately kun'yomi readings—is divided into several types:

jun-kanbun (純漢文, 'genuine Chinese writing')

Chinese text written with Chinese syntax and on'yomi characters

hakubun (白文, 'blank writing')

Kanbun without reading aids or punctuation

Wakan konkō-bun

Sino-Japanese composition written with Japanese syntax and mixed on'yomi and kun'yomi readings

hentai-kanbun (変体漢文, 'variant form Chinese writing')

Chinese modified with Japanese syntax, a "Japan-ized" version of Literary Chinese

As Literary Chinese originally lacked punctuation, the kanbun tradition developed conventional punctuation, glosses, and syntactic markers. Modern instructional terminology distinguishes an unmarked text (hakubun), okurigana, punctuation, return marks such as reten and numbered marks, and the resulting Japanese-order text (kakikudashibun).

kunten (訓点, 'explanation mark')

Guiding marks for rendering Chinese into Japanese

kundoku (訓読, 'explanation reading')

Reading a Literary Sinitic text using Japanese word order, vocabulary, and grammar

kanbun kundoku (漢文訓読, 'Chinese writing Japanese reading')

The conventional Japanese reading of a Literary Sinitic passage

okototen (乎古止点, 'inflectional dot marks')

Diacritical dots on characters to indicate Japanese grammatical inflections

kutōten (句読点, 'phrase reading marks')

Punctuation marks analogous to commas and full stops

kaeriten (返り点, 'return marker')

Marks placed alongside characters indicating their Japanese ordering is to be read in reverse

Kaeriten grammatically transforms Literary Chinese into Japanese word order. Two are syntactic symbols, the | tatesen (縦線, 'vertical bar')—linking mark that denotes phrases composed of more than one character, and the レ reten (レ点; '[katakana] re mark') denotes 'reverse marks'. The rest are kanji commonly used in numbering and ordering systems:

• Four numerals: ichi 一 'one', ni 二 'two', san 三 'three', and yon 四 'four'
• Three locatives: ue 上 'top', naka 中 'middle', and shita 下 'bottom'
• Four Heavenly Stems: kinoe 甲 'first', kinoto 乙 'second', hinoe 丙 'third', and hinoto 丁 'fourth'
• Three cosmological sansai (三才, 'three worlds'), see Wakan Sansai Zue: ten 天 'heaven', chi 地 'earth', and jin 人 'person'.

For written English, these kaeriten would correspond with 1, 2, 3; I, II, III; A, B, C, etc.

As an analogy for kanbun changing the word order from Chinese sentences with subject–verb–object (SVO) into Japanese subject–object–verb (SOV), John DeFrancis gives this example of using a literal English translation—another SVO language—of the opening of the Latin-language Commentarii de Bello Gallico.

Gallia

2‍

Gaul

est

3‍

is

omnis

1‍

all

divisa

4‍

divided

in

5‍

into

partes

7‍

parts

tres

6‍

three

Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres

2‍ 3‍ 1‍ 4‍ 5‍ 7‍ 6‍

Gaul is all divided into parts three

Read in numerical order, this becomes "All Gaul is divided into three parts". DeFrancis adds, "A better analogy would be the reverse situation–Caesar rendering an English text in his native language and adding Latin case endings."

English introductions include Sydney Crawcour's An Introduction to Kambun, reviewed by Marian Ury, and Komai and Rohlich's An Introduction to Japanese Kanbun, reviewed by Andrew Markus. John Timothy Wixted separately argued for greater recognition of kanbun in Japanese literary studies.

Example

Kaeriten example from the Han Feizi

The illustration to the right exemplifies kanbun. These eight words comprise the well-known first line in the Han Feizi story (ch. 36) that first coined the term máodùn (Japanese mujun, 矛盾 'contradiction, inconsistency', lit. "spear-shield"), illustrating the irresistible force paradox. Debating with a Confucianist about the legendary Chinese sage rulers Yao and Shun, the Legalist Han Fei argues that one cannot praise them both because that would be making a "spear–shield" contradiction.

Among the Chu, there was a man selling shields and spears. He praised the former saying, "My shields are so solid nothing can penetrate them". Then he would praise his spears saying, "My spears are so sharp that among all things there's nothing they can't penetrate". Somebody else said, "If somebody tried to penetrate your shields with your spears, what would happen?" The man could not respond.

The first sentence would read thus, using modern Standard Chinese pronunciation:

楚

Chǔ

Chu

人

rén

person

有

yǒu

exist

鬻

yù

sell

盾

dùn

shield

與

yǔ

and

矛

máo

spear

者

zhě

NMZ

楚 人 有 鬻 盾 與 矛 者

Chǔ rén yǒu yù dùn yǔ máo zhě

Chu person exist sell shield and spear NMZ

A fairly literal translation would be "among Chu people, there existed somebody who was selling shields and spears". All words can be literally translated into English, except for the final particle zhě 者 'one who', 'somebody who', which works as nominalizer marking a verb phrase as certain kinds of noun phrases. The original Chinese sentence is marked with five Japanese kaeriten as:

楚人有_下鬻_二盾與_一レ矛者_上

To interpret this, The re レ 'reverse' mark indicates that the order of the adjacent characters, 與 and 矛, must be reversed:

楚人有_下鬻_二盾與_一レ矛者_上

楚人有_下鬻_二盾矛與_一者_上

The word 有 'existed' marked with shita 下 'bottom' is shifted after 者 marked by ue 上 'top':

楚人有_下鬻_二盾矛與_一者_上

楚人鬻_二盾矛與_一者有

Likewise, the word 鬻 'sell' marked with ni 二 'two' is shifted to after 與 marked by ichi 一 'one':

楚人鬻_二盾矛與_一者有

楚人盾矛與鬻者有

To represent this reading in numerical terms:

楚

1‍

人

2‍

有

8‍

鬻

6‍

盾

3‍

與

5‍

矛

4‍

者

7‍

楚 人 有 鬻 盾 與 矛 者

1‍ 2‍ 8‍ 6‍ 3‍ 5‍ 4‍ 7‍

Following these kanbun instructions step by step transforms the sentence so it has the typical Japanese subject–object–verb argument order. The Sino-Japanese on'yomi readings and meanings are:

楚

So

Chu

人

jin

person

盾

jun

shield

矛

mu

spear

與

yo

and

鬻

iku

sell

者

sha

NMZ

有

yū

exist

楚 人 盾 矛 與 鬻 者 有

So jin jun mu yo iku sha yū

Chu person shield spear and sell NMZ exist

Next, Japanese function words and conjugations can be added with okurigana, and Japanese to ... to と...と 'and' can substitute Chinese 與 'and'. More specifically, the first と is treated as an additional function word, and the second, the reading of 與:

楚人に盾と矛とを鬻ぐ者有り

Lastly, kun'yomi readings for characters can be annotated with furigana. Normally furigana are only used for uncommon kanji or unusual readings. This sentence's only uncommon kanji is hisa(gu) 鬻ぐ 'sell', 'deal in', a literary character which is included in neither the kyōiku kanji nor the jōyō kanji lists. However, in kanbun texts it is relatively common to use a large amount of furigana—often there is an interest in recovering the readings used by people of the Heian or Nara periods, and since many kanji can be read either with on'yomi or kun'yomi pronunciations in a kanbun text, the furigana can show at least one editor's opinion of how it may have been read.

楚（そ）人（ひと）に盾（たて）と矛（ほこ）とを鬻（ひさ）ぐ者（もの）有（あ）り

The completed kundoku translation reads as a well-formed Japanese sentence with kun'yomi:

楚

So

Chu

人

hito

people

に

ni

among

盾

tate

shields

と

to

and

矛

hoko

spears

と

to

and

を

o

OBJ

鬻

hisa

sell-

ぐ

gu

ing

者

mono

-er

有

a

exist-

り

ri

s

楚 人 に 盾 と 矛 と を 鬻 ぐ 者 有 り

So hito ni tate to hoko to o hisa gu mono a ri

Chu people among shields and spears and OBJ sell- ing -er exist- s

This annotated kanbun translates to, "among Chu people, there existed one who was selling shields and spears".

Complicated example

To illustrate what is possible with kaeriten, here follows a rather complicated example from Crawcour's book, to which he notes: "The student may take some light comfort from the fact that this is as complicated as these markings can get."

使_㆟籍誠不_㆚以_㆘蓄_㆓妻子_㆒，憂_㆗飢寒_㆖亂_㆙㆑心，有_㆑錢以濟_㆞醫藥_㆝，其盲未_㆑甚，庶幾其復見_㆓天地日月_㆒。（韓愈・代張籍與李浙東書）

is rendered as

籍（せき）をして誠（まこと）に妻子（さいし）を蓄（たくは）へ、飢寒（きかん）を憂（うれ）ふるを以（もっ）て心（こころ）を亂（みだ）さず、錢（せん）を有（たも）ちて以（もっ）て醫藥（いやく）を濟（な）さしめば、其（そ）の盲（まう）未（いま）だ甚（はなはだ）しからず庶幾（ほとんど）其（そ）れ復（また）天地（てんち）日月（じつげつ）を見（み）ん。

Unicode

Main article: Kanbun (Unicode block)

The Kanbun block was added to the Unicode Standard in June 1993 with version 1.1. Two Unicode kaeriten are grammatical symbols (㆐㆑) for linking and reverse marks. The others are the organizational kanji for numerals (e.g. ㆒), locatives (e.g. ㆖), Heavenly Stems (e.g. ㆙), and levels (e.g. ㆝).

The Unicode block for kanbun is U+3190..319F:

Kanbun[1] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

U+319x

㆐

㆑

㆒

㆓

㆔

㆕

㆖

㆗

㆘

㆙

㆚

㆛

㆜

㆝

㆞

㆟

Notes 1.^As of Unicode version 17.0

See also

• Gugyeol
• Idu script
• Interlinear gloss
• Chữ Nôm
• Giải âm
• Wakan Konko Bun

References

Sources

• Aldridge, Edith (2013). "Principles of Hentai Kanbun Word Order: Evidence from the Kojiki". In McAuley, Thomas E. (ed.). Language Change in East Asia. Routledge. pp. 207–232. ISBN 978-1-136-84468-3. OL 33614908M.
• Crawcour, Sydney (1965). An Introduction to Kambun. Ann Arbor, MI: Michigan Center for Japanese Studies. ASIN B0007DRCCY. hdl:2027/spo.akz7043.0001.001. LCCN 66065322. OL 16806692W.
• DeFrancis, John (1989). Visible Speech: The Diverse Oneness of Writing Systems. University of Hawaiʻi Press. ISBN 978-0-824-81207-2. LCCN 89004708. OL 2186641M.
• Frellesvig, Bjarke (2010). A History of the Japanese Language. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-48880-8.
• Hannas, William C. (1997). Asia's Orthographic Dilemma. University of Hawaiʻi Press. ISBN 978-0-824-81892-0. JSTOR j.ctt6wr0zg. LCCN 96044397. OL 1004659M.
• Kamichi, Kōichi; Machi, Senjurō (2006). 二松学舎大学 日本漢文文献目録データベース [The Kambun Database at Nishôgakusha University] (in Japanese). Nishôgakusha University.
• Komai, Akira; Rohlich, Thomas H. (1988). An Introduction to Japanese Kanbun. University of Nagoya Press. ISBN 978-4-930-68990-0. OL 13593808M.
• Markus, Andrew (1990). "Review Essay: Akira Komai and Thomas H. Rohlich. An Introduction to Japanese Kanbun" (PDF). Sino-Japanese Studies. 3 (1): 60–63.
• Miller, Roy Andrew (1967). The Japanese Language. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-52717-8. LCCN 67016777. OL 1753446W.
• Morley, Brendan A. (30 September 2022). "Kanbun, Kundoku, and the Language of Literary Sinitic: Terminological Issues in the Study of Sinography in Japan". Japanese Language and Literature. 56 (2): 329–354. doi:10.5195/jll.2022.237. ISSN 1536-7827. JSTOR 27184953. S2CID 252658034. Wikidata Q140642763.
• Pulleyblank, Edwin G. (1995). Outline of Classical Chinese Grammar. University of British Columbia Press. ISBN 978-0-774-80505-6. LCCN 95173932. OL 3119669W.
• Robert, Jean-Noël (2006). "Hieroglossia, a Proposal" (PDF). Nanzan Institute for Religion & Culture Bulletin (30): 25–48. S2CID 171363016. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-06-01. Retrieved 2011-01-04.
• Schreiber, Gordian (2022). Japanese Morphography: Deconstructing hentai kanbun. Language, Writing and Literary Culture in the Sinographic Cosmopolis. Vol. 4. Brill. doi:10.1163/9789004504936. ISBN 978-9-004-50493-6. S2CID 240583185.
• Ury, Marian (1990). "Learning Kanbun". The Journal of the Association of Teachers of Japanese. 24 (1). American Association of Teachers of Japanese: 137–138. doi:10.2307/489242. JSTOR 489242.
• Watson, Burton D. (1975). De Bary, William Theodore; Watson, Burton (eds.). Japanese Literature in Chinese: Poetry & Prose in Chinese by Japanese Writers of the Early Period. Vol. 1. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-03986-4. LCCN 75015896. OL 10195445M.
• ——— (1976). Japanese Literature in Chinese: Poetry and Prose in Chinese by Japanese Writers of the Later Period. Vol. 2. Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-04146-1. OL 10195473M.
• Wixted, John Timothy (1998). "Kanbun, Histories of Japanese Literature, and Japanologists" (PDF). Sino-Japanese Studies. 10 (2): 23–31.
• Wu, Kuang-ming (1997). On Chinese Body Thinking: A Cultural Hermeneutic. Brill. ISBN 978-9-004-10150-0. OL 9076518M.

External links

• Kanbun in Unicode
• Kanbun – Test for Unicode support in Web browsers, Alan Wood
• International Research Project Based on Kanbun Sources to Reconstruct a View of Japanese Culture, Nishōgakusha University