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Chinese and Japanese cultures are essentially different

dear chinese people

hi, hereby, I want to appreciate honorable chinese people.
japanese travel agency arranged tour of the great Wall of china.ツ And due to snowstorm, 3 japanese person died. In this tragedy, some chinese farmers walked 8 hours in snow mountain to save japanese travelers.ツ And they saved some japanese person.



I opened the following thread on a site called after hours japan.
After heated discussion, I was banned by the site admin.
Any opinions?

Japan Forum for Guys in Japan | Topic - Western misconceptions or illusions on China and Japan
 
I opened the following thread on a site called after hours japan.
After heated discussion, I was banned by the site admin.
Any opinions?

Japan Forum for Guys in Japan | Topic - Western misconceptions or illusions on China and Japan

Not sure why you got banned. Yes, Japan and China are very different. Like night and day in some ways. It's particularly noticeable in certain cities like Shanghai which is inundated with tourist scams. Shanghai reminded me of Bangkok in that respect.
 
China and Japan are very different in many aspects. Japan was the first Asian Nation to sign policies with Western nations. China was being colonized by British and US and other European nations. Japan was conquering through strong Imperialism. Confucianism still has a prominent place in Japanese culture. China not so much. Japan is a very safe and clean country. It has clean drinking water. More than 50% of Chinese people still live in villages with no access to clean water. China is still easily compared with many African nations. Chinese is a VERY different language than Japanese. Japan has the 2nd largest music industry on the world, China has a very small music industry. China is communist, Japan has a Constitutional Monarchy with a Prime Minister. Japanese history has always showed that Japan was and is competing among the world-dominating Western nations. Most of China's history shows it primarily being overshadowed or being conquered by Western nations and Japan.

In the same way, China and Japan are very similar in many aspects.

Japan adopted many Chinese cultural aspects and made them Japanese. Just to name a few: Kanji are Chinese characters which have been transliterated to Japanese pronunciation. Ancient Nara (Kyoto today, I think) is built on a Chinese grid system. Many Japanese temples were based on Chinese temples, but later added Japanese touches to them. Rice farming styles were brought with from China. The Asian folding fan is used in China and Japan and even Korea. A lot of this dates back to how China was perceived by the ancient Japanese. The word for China in Japanese is 窶吮??ツ坂? (chugoku). It literally means something along the lines of "Center Country" "Middle Kingdom". The Japanese literally believed China was at the center of things. This is why they imitated Chinese things and mentalities. There was even a tributary system where Japan and Korea had to send things to China like prostitutes and goods and stuff. Japan later broke away from this system and Japanese culture began to develop and flourish based on Chinese fundamentals.

Japanese culture has defiantly changed from Chinese ways, like anime, manga, J-pop, and kimono. I have met many Americans who think Asians are all the same. This surprises me being an American myself. After dealing with different Asian people and learning Asian history you learn that they are very, VERY ,VERY different.
 
Most of China's history shows it primarily being overshadowed or being conquered by Western nations and Japan.

Yep, China's history only started from 1839 to and ended 1978. China's status as a world power numerous times prior to that and now does not count.
 
Well, opinions on history may differ. As they say, history is writtten and rewritten by historians. Anyway, I don't see any reaso why the administrator has bannned you. I'm certain that every visitor should have the right to express their opinions freely even if their views are absolutely different from administrators' positions. The major principle is that everyone should play well in the sandbox. If you didn't violate any of the forum rules, I don't understand why your account has been banned - sharing opinions is exactly what forums are here for.
 
I don't think this is a simple issue. I mean, on one hand, Japanese and Chinese people both value the Confucian ideals, and both of them use ancient Chinese characters.

But that would be like saying that Britain and France are the same because their languages were influenced by Latin, and they both practice Christianity. To an extent, it would be valid... but it would ignore quite a bit of nuance.

I would say that Japanese culture was strongly influenced by Chinese culture at the beginning, but diverged quite a bit after that. I see the Japanese as better military strategists, and far quicker to adapt to changing circumstances, based on what I've read. They're more aggressive and adaptable people, by nature. In a way that reminds me of the British and Greek cultures, two other cultures that originated on islands. Not sure if there's a connection, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Now, Chinese culture has good qualities as well. It seems like their tendency is to isolate themselves, and maintain tradition. They're very good at following rules. Their general tendency has been to maintain the status quo, keep order, and build wealth.

In a lot of ways, they actually remind me of the US. The US was fairly isolationist and defensive for a long time. We haven't adopted the Metric system, and we've really held on to a lot of traditional ideas that have been abandoned in Europe and the UK. Incidentally, both the US and China are very large and have a lot of landlocked areas. Again, makes me wonder if geography shapes cultures to an extent.

This is probably a very weird comparison, and I'm sure a lot of people won't see what I'm talking about, but that's how I see this.
 
Yep, China's history only started from 1839 to and ended 1978. China's status as a world power numerous times prior to that and now does not count.

Yeah don't know where the guy gets his history lessons. China is the only surviving empire in the world with 50+ minorities. The 200 years if western dominance is an exception in history and it's already coming to an end.

China is communist? Lol yeah sure they are about as communist as the US is capitalist.

China only fell behind due to the ruling by the Manchurians for the last 500 years. Hard to grasp when the US only have 200 or so years of history. Japanese has a much purer version of Chinese culture in a way as they ignored China once the Manchurians took over. Just look at traditional Chinese clothing compared to Kimono. They are very similar. Not the China dress which is essentially Manchurian ethnic clothing and not Chinese in any way.
 
I would say that Japanese culture was strongly influenced by Chinese culture at the beginning, but diverged quite a bit after that. I see the Japanese as better military strategists, and far quicker to adapt to changing circumstances, based on what I've read. They're more aggressive and adaptable people, by nature. In a way that reminds me of the British and Greek cultures, two other cultures that originated on islands. Not sure if there's a connection, but I wouldn't be surprised.

Now, Chinese culture has good qualities as well. It seems like their tendency is to isolate themselves, and maintain tradition. They're very good at following rules. Their general tendency has been to maintain the status quo, keep order, and build wealth.
These qualities also reminds me of what the Japanese have as well. They're a very homogeneous nation, keep with long-standing traditions, maintain a lot of status quo and are good with keeping order and wealth.
In a lot of ways, they actually remind me of the US. The US was fairly isolationist and defensive for a long time. We haven't adopted the Metric system, and we've really held on to a lot of traditional ideas that have been abandoned in Europe and the UK. Incidentally, both the US and China are very large and have a lot of landlocked areas. Again, makes me wonder if geography shapes cultures to an extent.

This is probably a very weird comparison, and I'm sure a lot of people won't see what I'm talking about, but that's how I see this.
I would say so. Large countries tend to attract an incredibly high amount of people and massive countries like the U.S.A and China have many race groups. Plus there's no way to preserve Inuit's way of living in tropical setting for example.
 
Yep, China's history only started from 1839 to and ended 1978. China's status as a world power numerous times prior to that and now does not count.
I have no idea where you learned your history and why would you use these two dates as starting and end point of Chinese history...
So what are all the Chinese dynasties that happened before 1839? So in 1839 a nation called China suddenly popped out of nowhere and took over an entirely different people and their culture and declared themselves Chinese?
And this nation suddenly disappeared in 1978? (Someone please tell me what happened in 1839 and 1978 in China, apparently huge events that saw the sudden birth and disappearance of an entire country). So who are the 1.3 billion people living in the East Asian mainland now?
This is by far one of the weirdest (and fascinating if the TC is not just talking nonsense) historical assertion I've seen :D
 
Here's my opinion on the opening topic. I'm an East Asian minor and we went through a lot of these in class :D
Ancient Chinese culture and Japanese culture are very similar, especially during the Tang times. Japan imported Tang culture wholesale, from architecture to art style to language (not just written Chinese, but a huge vocabulary of kango) to cuisine to philosophy to government, etc. One has to realize that China throughout its history undergone major changes, two of the most fundamental ones occurred after Tang (one during the Yuan dynasty when China was conquered by the Mongols and the other during the Qing when China was conquered by the Manchus). During these periods, many cultural changes took place. For example Chinese switched from sitting on mats to using tables and chairs (although this occurred before Yuan but still due to external influence), started wearing outfits influenced by those worn by the nomadic peoples who conquered them (both voluntarily and forced), and changes in language in pronunciation also took place. (if you compare Middle Chinese pronunciation with Japanese pronunciation of many sino-xenic words in Japanese language, they are practically identical).
Japan, on the other hand, thanks to its geography, was immune from these changes from the outside (after Tang and before the arrivals of the Europeans). It preserved Tang culture extremely well (many of the Classical Japanese architecture we see standing in Tokyo and Kyoto today are typical tang architecture style, like the Todai-ji). Japanese still sit on mats, still practice Chado and Ikebana (arts of the tea and flower, both Tang practices), Japanese people still enjoy cherry blossom, a hobby the Nara elites borrowed from Tang China, but modern Chinese no longer observe (I think, correct me if I'm wrong. At least it's not well known...).
With time, Japan and China went on very different trajectory. The latter's culture undergone fundamental changes with its turbulent dynastic cycles, while Japan not only preserved the Tang culture, but added many native touches to it starting from the Heian period, during which we saw a strong assertion of native wa practice, like the waka (wa poetry) over kanshi (Chinese poetry).
So the result is that today these two cultures appear to be very different other than some obvious links (Confucian ethics, written language, sino-xenic vocabulary). But this is more because of the changing nature of the Chinese culture itself, rather than inherent differences between the two cultures.
Of course, I only addressed the issue of traditional culture free from Western influence. Today Japanese culture is greatly influenced by Western culture and has been for more than a century now, so naturally it's very very different from China which has undergone a dark age under Communism that not only delayed its development but also dealt a lot of damage to its traditional culture.
 
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I believe Japanese and Chinese are not different at all and they had been one people thousand years ago.
You can found out this fact from their similar shape, color, stature, natural color of their hair ( black hair) and also their language and words. Japanese and Chinese are like an apple that has been split down. So despite the similarities of their people, what has made them different in two recent centuries?

The answer is this, " The differences of their governments".
Japan government is a lover to power, is dependent on USA and is opposite to China government. That opposition has been transmitted to society of Japan by propaganda.
 
I believe Japanese and Chinese are not different at all and they had been one people thousand years ago.
You can found out this fact from their similar shape, color, stature, natural color of their hair ( black hair) and also their language and words. Japanese and Chinese are like an apple that has been split down. So despite the similarities of their people, what has made them different in two recent centuries?

The answer is this, " The differences of their governments".
Japan government is a lover to power, is dependent on USA and is opposite to China government. That opposition has been transmitted to society of Japan by propaganda.

They may be similar genetically but they are very different in terms of culture and even language. This all preceeds the differences in modern government.
 
I agree with you, machachi, that they are two different nations but their genetic similarity and shared history (neighborhood and close relationship) and also the similarity of their language ( alphabet and words) and some traditions and customs are caused that they are considered as two similar nations.
of course as you pointed, there are some difference between them; among some notable variety in their two cultures and customs.
I believe, Japanese and Chinese can be more friendly and peaceful and come close to each other based on their genetic similarity and humanity. Of course I don't think it is achievable easily, due to contention of Japanese government against China.
 
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Unfortunately there are many many counterexamples to your idea. There are many conflicts between very genetically similar people. Look at the balkans, within Africa, Irish, Chechnya, Iraq, etc. Not to mention China & its various "ethnic minorities."
 
If I want to talk perfectly I will have to question, "what makes peoples different, despite some of their similarities?"
The similarity that I mean is our common humanity, wisdom and affections which are exist in every human.
The answer is this, " what makes us different is our belief and opinions, whether correct or wrong." The believes that make our fates and specify our destinations.
If all peoples of the world had one belief practically and by all its mean, there was not the smallest dissension and conflict between folks.
Nonetheless, sometimes some apparent similarities between people cause that a group of people come close to another and tend to them.
 
You can found out this fact from their similar ... their language and words.
the similarity of their language ( alphabet and words)
You are totally wrong, I'm afraid. Indeed Japanese language borrowed some vocabulary and Chinese characters from Chinese language, but they are completely different in grammar. They belong to different language families, in the first place.

Japonic languages - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sino-Tibetan languages - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Yes, I know Japanese and Chinese language are different but the appearance of both language alphabets are almost similar. Like French, Germany and English alphabets that are almost similar, while the shape of Russian alphabet are different with them completely.
So the shape of Chinese and Japanese alphabets are almost similar ( they are like the shape of things) while they are very different with Arabic or Latin.
 
Like French, Germany and English alphabets that are almost similar, while the shape of Russian alphabet are different with them completely.
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You are confusing languages and characters (letters).
Both Swahili and English use roman alphabets but there is not the remotest similarity between the languages, while Russian (using Kiryl characters) and Polish(using Roman alphabets) are very similar as languages.
 
Why disrespect one nation to show other is better? I believe history has always been biased because it is written by people either belonging to a specific culture or the other.
 
You are confusing languages and characters (letters).
Both Swahili and English use roman alphabets but there is not the remotest similarity between the languages, while Russian (using Kiryl characters) and Polish(using Roman alphabets) are very similar as languages.

I did mean the shape and manner of writing in Chinese and Japaneses are similar. Also the appearance of these two people are similar as well,so I believe these tow nation had been one people in the ancient times.

Chinese

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Japanese
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