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The history of Chinese food in Japan
The popularization of other Chinese dishes in Japan dates further back than that of gyoza, however. The influx of Westerners into Yokohama, Nagasaki and Kobe during the 1860s set the stage for the diffusion of Chinese cuisine in modern Japan. Although the Chinese had no legal right to remain in Japan before the first Sino-Japanese treaty was concluded in 1871, they were brought in under the legal protection of Western powers. Western merchants relied heavily on their Chinese staff -- servants, clerks and middle-men -- to run the households and enterprises that they relocated from the China coast. During the 1870s and 80s independent Chinese merchants began to settle in Japan as well, so that the Chinese soon constituted the majority of the foreign population residing in the ports.
That is from Modern Japanese Cuisine: Food, Power and National Identity, by Katazyna J. Cwiertka. One thing I learned from this book was how much Japanese wartime experience created the notion of a national cuisine in Japan. Before the war, for instance, soy sauce and rice were not common foods in many parts of rural Japan.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on May 25, 2008 at 04:55 AM in Food and Drink | Permalink
Comments
Certainly the largest Chinatown in the Greater Tokyo metro area is in the port city
of Yokohama.
Japan is famous for its ability to absorb foreign influences in unusually producive ways,
such as the Chinese alphabet, which is only part of the larger Japanese alphabet, parts of
which are phonetic rather than ideographic as the Chinese is.
There are Portuguese influences in the cuisine that go back nearly 500 years, such as tempura,
which comes from a Portuguese form of cooking. Also from the Portuguese is one of the words
for "thank you," namely "arigato," which is derived from the Portuguese "obrigado."
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at May 25, 2008 9:02:46 PM
Just a few quick notes on the previous comment:
1) The Chinese character system is not an alphabet.
2) Chinese characters are logographic, not ideographic. They represent words, not ideas.
Sorry to be picky!
Posted by: wugong at May 26, 2008 12:19:14 AM
Hmm...also to unfairly pick on barkely, arigato does not derive from portugese -- just because it sounds somewhat similar does not make the one derived from the other.
Posted by: at May 26, 2008 12:21:10 PM
wuqong,
I have been told by Japanese that arigato does derive from "obrigado," as well as tempura
cooking. Of course, I may be mistaken. It is my understanding that part of this has to do
with rather subtle and complicated aspects of the nature of "thanking" in Japan, and that
the other terms used for this, "domo" and "gozaimus," each of which has its own particular
aspect and meaning, did not quite fully fit usages when the Japanese first encountered their
first Europeans in trade who were always saying "thank you," in this case, Portuguese saying
"obrigado." However, I am not a linguist of Japanese and could be wrong. Since you claim
to know, what is "arigato" derived from?
"Logographic" is more precisely correct than "ideographic," although this latter term is
used for what are also sometimes labeled as hieroglyphic systems, where the symbols represent
either words or broader ideas (this is not as clearly cut as you are suggesting). The alternative
are "alphabets" in which the symbols are letters representing sounds. The Japanese "alphabet"
is the only one that I am aware of that combines the two kinds of systems, two forms of letter
alphabets, native to Japan, and the imported Chinese hieroglyphic/logographic/ideographic system.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at May 26, 2008 1:52:38 PM
Some quick googling suggests that "arigato"
comes from two Chinese words that mean
"to be" and "difficult," although apparently
in the Japanese it is written in the kanji
alphabet rather than the Chinese system.
However, it is apparently widely believed
that arigato comes from obrigado.
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at May 26, 2008 1:58:27 PM
two forms of letter alphabets, native to Japan,
Since everyone's nitpicking, the hiragana and katakana syllabaries are all derived from simplified forms (hiragana) or parts of (katakana) Chinese characters with the particular sounds, somewhat blurring the line between native and imported. In addition, there are a handful "Chinese characters" that were invented entirely in Japan (known as kokuji, or roughly "national characters") by analogy to the imported characters, like the character "hatake" for a cultivated field. A very small number of these have been reimported to China.
Arigatou is indeed unrelated; it's a particular polite form of a standard adjectival form arigatai whose existence is documented long before Portuguese contact. Tenpura, yes, is Portuguese origin, like tabako for tobacco or pan for bread.
Posted by: John Thacker at May 26, 2008 2:02:05 PM
woqong,
I cannot resist poking back on the "words"
versus "ideas" issue. I am sure that you are
aware that it is the written form of the Chinese
language that provides its unity. Even people
living next to each other, at least up until
recently when uniform educational systems were
imposed in the PRC and Taiwan and Hong Kong,
spoke very differently to the poioint of being
mutually incomprehensible. They would be able
to communicate by drawing the symbols on their
hands to each other.
Which leaves with the question: if what one
says is the "word," but these vary for something
that is commonly understood when the written
symbol is shown, does this not mean in fact that
we are dealing with a common idea?
Posted by: Barkley Rosser at May 26, 2008 2:02:11 PM
Barkley,
"Kanji" is the Chinese characters. It literally means "Han characters." (Japanese borrowed Chinese characters from different times and places in China, and also through Korean, so the Japanese pronunciation of particular Chinese characters reflects different Chinese languages, dialects, and time periods.)
There are also many words that derive from Chinese words or Chinese characters, but while they can be written in kanji, they are generally written in kana. Conversely, nearly all words of purely Japanese origin can be written in Chinese characters that express the meaning of the word, or in some cases the sound alone (such as in dekiru), but the etymology of the Japanese words have nothing to do with the Chinese characters used to write them. For many of these words of Japanese origin (wago), but not all, the use of the kanji is rare.
Arigatou is in the latter category. The use of the Chinese characters is a back-formation long after the word existed. In addition, the Chinese characters are only very rarely used for arigatou.
Posted by: John Thacker at May 26, 2008 2:08:43 PM
Regardless of whether Chinese characters are used as logographs more than ideographs in Chinese (and there is a good argument), the use of Chinese characters in Japanese (and in Korean, where still used) is more as ideographs, as seen by how they are used when representing native Japanese words.
In addition, when representing Sino-Japanese words, generally it takes two characters to represent a single word. The parts have independent morphemes, but the whole is definitely different from the sum of its parts. (One of several reasons why all those stupid "crisis + opportunity" things are stupid.)
However, the fact that different Chinese languages pronounce the same word differently does not diminish the system being logographic. There's a difference between representing an idea and a morpheme.
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