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.
Burton Watson's English translations of kanbun compositions provide an introduction to this literary field.
[1][2] Samuel Martin coined the term Sino-Xenic in 1953 to describe Chinese as written in Japan, Korea, and other foreign (hence -xenic) zones on China's periphery.
Morphemes are typically one syllable in length and combine to form words without modification to their phonetic structures (tone excepted).
[6] In terms of its size, often its quality, and certainly its importance both at the time it was written and cumulatively in the cultural tradition, kanbun is arguably the biggest and most important area of Japanese literary study that has been ignored in recent times, and the one least properly represented as part of the canon.A new development in kanbun studies is the Web-accessible database being developed by scholars at Nishogakusha University in Tokyo.
For example, 道 can be read as dō adapted from Middle Chinese /dấw/[9] or as michi from the indigenous Japanese word meaning 'road'.
Taking both languages together until the end of the nineteenth century, and taking into account all the monastic documents, literature in the widest sense of the term, and texts in 'near-Chinese' (hentai-kanbun), it is entirely possible that the sheer volume of texts written in Chinese in Japan slightly exceed what was written in Japanese.As Literary Chinese originally lacked punctuation, the kanbun tradition developed various conventional reading punctuation, diacritical, and syntactic markers.
The rest are kanji commonly used in numbering and ordering systems: 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.
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.
The man could not respond.The first sentence would read thus, using modern Standard Chinese pronunciation: 楚ChǔChu人rénperson有yǒuexist鬻yùsell盾dùnshield與yǔand矛máospear者zhěNMZ楚 人 有 鬻 盾 與 矛 者Chǔ rén yǒu yù dùn yǔ máo zhěChu person exist sell shield and spear NMZA fairly literal translation would be "among Chu people, there existed somebody who was selling shields and spears".
The Sino-Japanese on'yomi readings and meanings are: 楚SoChu人jinperson盾junshield矛muspear與yoand鬻ikusell者shaNMZ有yūexist楚 人 盾 矛 與 鬻 者 有So jin jun mu yo iku sha yūChu person shield spear and sell NMZ existNext, Japanese function words and conjugations can be added with okurigana, and Japanese to ... to と...と 'and' can substitute Chinese 與 'and'.
楚人に盾と矛とを鬻ぐ者有りThe completed kundoku translation reads as a well-formed Japanese sentence with kun'yomi: 楚SoChu人hitopeopleにniamong盾tateshieldsとtoand矛hokospearsと'toandをoOBJ鬻hisasell-ぐgu'ing者mono-er有aexist-りris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 riChu people among shields and spears and OBJ sell- ing -er exist- sThis annotated kanbun translates to, "among Chu people, there existed one who was selling shields and spears".
