Regional interaction
For those interested in the origins of the regional interaction between China, Korea, and Japan, the Japan Times covers all the bases with this review of history. This is well worth reading for people interested in the subject. Here’s the first sentence:
The Chinese had a name for the people of Japan long before the proto-Japanese had one for themselves. It was “Wa” or “Wo,” written with a character that means “dwarf.”
An excellent idea for a followup would be an account of the influence Japan has had on the rest of Asian culture in modern times, including in language, culture, and business. This influence has been extensive and has taken a route that is almost the reverse of the historical one: from Japan to Korea to China, though Taiwan and Hong Kong are now included.
l need sme 1 in nottingham who has a studio l wann becme fam 
perfeckt 10:10
i love all that is hello kitty but pandapple is so cute
Excellent article. I’m quite interested in the interaction between early Japan and the southern kingdoms of ancient Korea. Great link and thanks again.
January 29th, 2006 at 10:01 pmThis was a good article. I really love reading these articles on history. Its really great for me to get exposed to all 3 sides (China, Korea, Japan) of history. I wish the three countries would meet and hammer down on histories that have intersections and made a large volume history text that would include histories of these nation as both parallel and continuing history.
January 30th, 2006 at 1:18 amWell i got halfway through the article and then i remembered im not a big fan of history X.X or at least the way it has to be written. The article was pretty interesting its just i kept forgetting who was wa and sui and when this happened. Clearly it requires more attention paid to it than i can at the moment.
January 30th, 2006 at 2:24 amLets not forget what Emperor Akihito said about his Korean Lineage. ^^
January 30th, 2006 at 3:54 amChina, Korea, Japan has been so close throughout the history that I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that they are all cousins of each other. LoL
January 30th, 2006 at 6:53 amWell, the character “wo” is comprised of the “person” radical and the character for “short,” but that doesn’t mean it means “dwarf.” It’s generally explained that way, but it’s folk etymology–it could just as easily be a simple phonetic.
January 30th, 2006 at 7:27 amActually, “wa” is most certainly phonetic. “Wa” is what pro-Japanese called themselves, so a “person” radical was added to an existing “wa” character by the Chinese to record the people in the annals. Granted, none of the radical-added characters based on that “wa” base character have really positive meaning — I mean they all derive from meanings of bent, short, withering, etc., so the Chinese could have probably picked a better phonetic part, but you know…
However, the Japanese did change the character to another one with a similar sound, the same one for peace, then promptly changed the reading on it to yamato.
January 30th, 2006 at 9:34 amMore information about the historical links between Korea and Japan. And Emperor Akihito’s comments.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?nn20020312b6.htm
and more info on japanese ancient history.
http://www.asianresearch.org/articles/2410.html
January 30th, 2006 at 10:33 am