East Asian cultural sphere
The East Asian cultural sphere or the Sinosphere consists of countries in East and Southeast Asia that were historically influenced by Chinese culture. Other names for the area include the Sinic/Sinitic world, the Confucian world, the Taoist world, and the Chinese cultural sphere, although the last name is also used to refer particularly to the Sinophone community.
The philosophies and religions known in the West as Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism have long been cultural common denominators in the Sinosphere, along with several important political and social institutions, legal and ritual practices, military and medical ideas, literary, artistic and architectural traditions, and so forth. The core regions of the East Asian cultural sphere from antiquity to present are generally taken to be Greater China, Japan and Korea. Vietnam is also included due to its strong influence by Chinese culture and dynasties throughout history. However, Vietnam's further interactions with ancient South East Asian cultures, like the Champa and Khmer empires, have made it characteristically more South East Asian than the other three, today aligning itself with ASEAN geopolitically. The terms "East Asian cultural sphere" and "Chinese character cultural sphere" are used interchangeably with "Sinosphere" but they have different denotations and connotations depending on context and the point of view of the writers.
One important reason why the Chinese, Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese have shared so many institutions, cultural practices, beliefs and traditions for so long is that these ideas were recorded and transmitted in the same basic written language, known as “literary Sinitic” or Classical Chinese. This logographic script was invented in China several thousand years ago, and was used––like the Latin script in premodern Europe––like a literary lingua franca, which transcended local languages and dialects, and which has acted as an important cultural common denominator for the cultures of East Asia until modern times. For more than a thousand years, into the early twentieth century, elites in East Asia communicated in writing primarily utilizing literary Sinitic––even though the Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese all developed written scripts which reflected their own very different spoken languages and dialects.
It is important to recognize, however, that Japan, Korea and Vietnam are not merely pale reflections of China. Recent studies of the use of literary Sinitic in East Asia have demonstrated, for example, that although texts written in this script brought new cultural influences to Japan, Korea, and Vietnam over many centuries, both the language and the cultural influences that were transmitted to these environments were transformed by them. The countries of East Asia were not, in other words, simply passive receptacles of Chinese culture; rather they were active participants in an ongoing and creative process of cultural interaction, exchange, and reinvention.
The historical influence of Chinese traditions and cultural practices has extended beyond the East Asian cultural sphere to varying degrees at various times. This can be seen in the establishment of overseas Chinese communities dating back to the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries in Southeast Asia countries such as Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Laos and the Philippines. Chinese architecture has, in various ways, influenced the architecture of other Asian nations, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and the Philippines. More recently, new waves of Mainland Chinese migrants have led to the emergence of large modern-day ethnic Chinese communities in a number of major cities in various parts of Southeast Asia and South Asia, notably Sihanoukville in Cambodia and Mandalay in Myanmar.
The East Asian cultural sphere is comparable in this regard to the Arab world, Western world, Latin world, Greater India, Greater Iran and Turkic world among others.
Terminology
China has been regarded as one of the centers of civilization. The emergent cultures that arose from the migration of original Han settlers from the Yellow River are sometimes regarded as the starting point of the East Asian world. Nowadays, its population is around 2–2.5 billion.The Japanese historian Nishijima Sadao, professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, originally coined the term 東亜文化圏. He conceived of a Chinese or East Asian cultural sphere distinct from the cultures of the west. According to Nishijima, this cultural sphere shared the philosophy of Confucianism, the religion of Buddhism, and similar political and social structures. His cultural sphere includes China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, stretching from areas between Mongolia and the Himalayas.
East Asian culture
Arts
Architecture
Countries from the East Asian cultural sphere share a common architectural style stemming from the architecture of ancient China.Calligraphy
See caoshu.Cinema
See Hong Kong cinema, Taiwanese media, Chinese mainland media, Singaporean media, Vietnamese media, Korean dramas and pop music, Japanese animated and drama series, Pokémon, etc..Martial Arts
See Martial Arts, Gongfu, Kuntao, Karate, Taekwondo, Judo, Sumo, Nhất Nam, Vovinam etc.Music
See List of Chinese musical instruments like erhu, which have influenced Indonesia, Korea, Japan and Vietnam.Cuisine
The cuisine of East Asia shares many of the same ingredients and techniques. Chopsticks are used as an eating utensil in all of the core East Asian countries. The use of soy sauce, a sauce made from fermenting soy beans, is also widespread in East Asia. Rice is a main staple food in all of East Asia and is a major focus of food security. In East Asian countries, the word for 'cooked rice' can embody the meaning of food in general.Kimchi, sushi, phở, sashimi, wasabi, tea, noodles / ramen, udon, rice, hot pot, dumplings, dimsum, etc. are popular terms associated with East Asian cuisine.
Also see Chinese cuisine, list of Chinese dishes, Vietnamese cuisine, Japanese cuisine, Singaporean cuisine and Korean cuisine.
Traditions
Fashion
See hanfu, qipao / cheongsam, kimono, hanbok, áo dài, etc.Lion Dance
The Lion Dance is a form of traditional dance in Chinese culture and other culturally East Asian countries in which performers mimic a lion's movements in a lion costume to bring good luck and fortune. Aside from China, versions of the lion dance are found in Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Tibet, and Taiwan. Lion Dances are usually performed during New Year, religious and cultural celebrations.New Year
Greater China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Vietnam traditionally observe the same Lunar New Year. However, Japan has moved its New Year to fit the Western New Year since the Meiji Restoration.Philosophy and religion
The Art of War, Tao Te Ching, Analects are classic Chinese texts that have been influential in East Asian history.Taoism
The countries of China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Vietnam have been influenced by Taoism. It is also called as Onmyōdō in Japan.Shintoism
Shintoism is the ethnic religion of Japan. Shinto means "Way of the Gods". Shinto practitioners commonly affirm tradition, family, nature, cleanliness and ritual observation as core values.Ritual cleanliness is a central part of Shinto life. Shrines have a significant in Shinto, being places for the veneration of the kami. "Folk", or "popular", Shinto features an emphasis on shamanism, particularly divination, spirit possession and faith healing. "Sect" Shinto is a diverse group including mountain-worshippers and Confucian Shinto schools.
Buddhism
The countries of China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Vietnam share a history of Mahayana Buddhism. It spread from India via the Silk Road through Pakistan, Xinjiang, east as well as through SEA, Vietnam, then north through Guangzhou and Fujian. From China, it proliferated to Korea and Japan, especially during the Tang dynasty. It could have also re-spread from China south to Vietnam. East Asia is now home to the largest Buddhist population in the world at around 200-400 million.Confucianism
The countries of China, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and Vietnam share a Confucian philosophical worldview. Confucianism is a humanistic philosophy that believes that human beings are teachable, improvable and perfectible through personal and communal endeavour especially including self-cultivation and self-creation. Confucianism focuses on the cultivation of virtue and maintenance of ethics, the most basic of which are rén, yì, and lǐ. Ren is an obligation of altruism and humaneness for other individuals, yi is the upholding of righteousness and the moral disposition to do good, and li is a system of norms and propriety that determines how a person should properly act in everyday life.Neo-Confucianism
philosophy is primarily defined by the development of Neo-Confucianism. During the Tang dynasty, Buddhism from Nepal also became a prominent philosophical and religious discipline. Neo-Confucianism has its origins in the Tang dynasty; the Confucianist scholar Han Yu is seen as a forebear of the Neo-Confucianists of the Song dynasty. The Song dynasty philosopher Zhou Dunyi is seen as the first true "pioneer" of Neo-Confucianism, using Daoist metaphysics as a framework for his ethical philosophy.Elsewhere in East Asia, Japanese philosophy began to develop as indigenous Shinto beliefs fused with Buddhism, Confucianism and other schools of Chinese philosophy. Similar to Japan, in Korean philosophy elements of Shamanism were integrated into the Neo-Confucianism imported from China. In Vietnam, neo-Confucianism was developed into Vietnamese own Tam giáo as well, along with indigenous Vietnamese beliefs and Mahayana Buddhism.
Other religions
Though not commonly identified with that of East Asia, the following religions have been influential in its history:- Hinduism, see Hinduism in Vietnam, Hinduism in China
- Islam, see Xinjiang, Muslims in China, Islam in Hong Kong, Islam in Japan, Islam in Korea, Islam in Vietnam.
- Christianity, one of the most popular religions in Hong Kong, Korea, etc.
Language
Historical linguistics
Various languages are thought to have originated in East Asia and have various degrees of influence on each other. These include:- Sino-Tibetan: Spoken mainly in China, Myanmar, Northeast India and parts of Nepal. Major Sino-Tibetan languages include the varieties of Chinese, the Tibetic languages and Burmese. They are thought to have originated around the Yellow River north of the Yangzi.
- Austronesian: Spoken mainly in Taiwan, Indonesia, Madagascar, and the Pacific Islands. Major Austronesian languages include Malay, Javanese, and Filipino.
- Austroasiatic: Spoken mainly in Vietnam and Cambodia. Major Austroasiatic languages include Vietnamese and Khmer.
- Kra-Dai: Spoken mainly in Thailand, Laos, and parts of Southern China. Major Kra-Dai languages include Thai and Lao.
- Mongolic: Spoken mainly in Mongolia and China. Major Mongolian languages include Mongolian, Monguor, Dongxiang and Buryat.
- Tungusic: Spoken mainly in Siberia and China. Major Tungusic languages include Evenki, Manchu, and Xibe.
- Koreanic: Spoken mainly in Korea. Major Korean languages include Korean, and Jeju.
- Japonic: Spoken mainly in Japan. Major Japonic languages include Japanese, Ryukyuan and Hachijo
- Ainu language: Spoken mainly in Japan and considered an isolate.
While other languages have been impacted by the Sinosphere such as the Thai with its Thai numeral system and Mongolian with its historical use of hanzi: the amount of Chinese vocabulary overall is not nearly as expansive in these languages as the core CJKV, or even Zhuang and Hmong.
Various hypotheses are trying to unify various subsets of the above languages, including the Sino-Austronesian and Austric language groupings. An overview of these various language groups is discussed in Jared Diamond's Germs, Guns, and Steel, among other places.
Writing systems
East Asia is quite diverse in writing systems, from the Brahmic, inspired abugidas of SEA, the logographic hanzi of China, the syllabaries of Japan, and various alphabets and abjads used in Korea, Mongolia, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc.| Writing system | Regions |
| Logograms 漢字 | China, Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, Korea, Vietnam*, Singapore, Taiwan |
| Syllabary | Japan |
| Alphabet | Korea |
| Abugidas | China, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Malays* |
| Alphabet | Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Brunei, East Timor |
| Alphabet | Mongolia |
| Alphabet | Mongolia*, China |
| Abjad | China, Malays*, Brunei |
Characters influences
Hanzi is considered the cultural glue that unifies the languages and cultures of many East Asian nations. Historically, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam have used Chinese characters. Today, they are mainly used in China, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore albeit in different forms.Mainland China and Singapore use simplified characters, whereas Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau use traditional.
Japan still uses kanji but has also invented kana, believed to be inspired by the abugida scripts of southern Asia.
Korea used to write in hanja but has invented an alphabetic system called hangul that is nowadays the majority script. However, hanja is a required subject in South Korea. Names are also written in hanja. Hanja is also studied and used in academia, newspapers, and law; areas, where a lot of scholarly terms and Sino-Korean loanwords, are used and necessary to distinguish between otherwise ambiguous homonyms.
Vietnam used to write in chữ Hán or Classical Chinese. Since the 8th century they began inventing many of their own chữ Nôm. Since French colonization, they have switched to using a modified version of the Latin alphabet called chữ Quốc ngữ. However, Chinese characters still hold a special place in the cultures as their history and literature have been greatly influenced by Chinese characters. In Vietnam, hanzi can be seen in temples, cemeteries, and monuments today, as well as serving as decorative motifs in art and design. And there are movements to restore Hán Nôm in Vietnam.
Zhuang is similar to the Vietnamese in that they used to write in Sawgun and have invented many of their characters called Sawndip. Sawndip is still used informally and in traditional settings, but in 1957, the People's Republic of China introduced an alphabetical script for the language, which is what it officially promotes.
Literature
East Asian literary culture was based on the use of Literary Chinese, which became the medium of scholarship and government across the region. Although each of these countries developed vernacular writing systems and used them for popular literature, they continued to use Chinese for all formal writing until it was swept away by rising nationalism around the end of the 19th century.Throughout East Asia, Literary Chinese was the language of administration and scholarship. Although Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their languages, these were limited to popular literature. Chinese remained the medium of formal writing until it was displaced by vernacular writing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Though they did not use Chinese for spoken communication, each country had its tradition of reading texts aloud, the so-called Sino-Xenic pronunciations, which provide clues to the pronunciation of Middle Chinese. Chinese words with these pronunciations were also borrowed extensively into the local vernaculars, and today comprise over half their vocabularies.
Books in Literary Chinese were widely distributed. By the 7th century and possibly earlier, woodblock printing had been developed in China. At first, it was used only to copy the Buddhist scriptures, but later secular works were also printed. By the 13th century, metal movable type was used by government printers in Korea but seems to have not been extensively used in China, Vietnam, or Japan. At the same time manuscript reproduction remained important until the late 19th century.
Textual Scholarship
Japan's textual scholarship had Chinese origin which made Japan one of the birthplaces of Sinology.Geopolitics and international relations
Some analysts say that Australia and New Zealand are increasingly under Asian influence both culturally and economically due to its proximity.In 2019, Italy became the first G7 country to sign a BRI memorandum with China, much to the dismay of the United States.
Economy and trade
The business cultures of Sinosphere countries in some ways are heavily influenced by Confucianism.Important in China is the social concept of 關係 or guanxi. This has influenced the societies of Korea and Japan as well.
Japan features hierarchically-organized companies and the Japanese place a high value on relationships. Korean businesses also adhere to Confucian values, and are structured around a patriarchal family governed by filial piety between management and a company's employees.
Before European imperialism, East Asia has always been one of the largest economies in the world, whose output had mostly been driven by China and the Silk Road.
During the Industrial Revolution, East Asia modernized and became an area of economic power starting with the Meiji Restoration in the late 19th century when Japan rapidly transformed itself into the only industrial power outside the North Atlantic area. Japan's early industrial economy reached its height in World War II when it expanded its empire and became a major world power.
Post WW2 (Tiger economies)
Following Japanese defeat, economic collapse after the war, and US military occupation, Japan's economy recovered in the 1950s with the post-war economic miracle in which rapid growth propelled the country to become the world's second-largest economy by the 1980s.Since the Korean War and again under US military occupation, South Korea has experienced its postwar economic miracle called the Miracle on the Han River, with the rise of global tech industry leaders like Samsung, LG, etc. As of 2019 its economy is the 4th largest in Asia and the 11th largest in the world.
Hong Kong became one of the Four Asian Tiger economies, developing strong textile and manufacturing economies. South Korea followed a similar route, developing the textile industry. Following in the footsteps of Hong Kong and Korea, Taiwan and Singapore quickly industrialized through government policies. By 1997, all four of the Asian Tiger economies had joined Japan as economically developed nations.
As of 2019, South Korean and Japanese growth have stagnated, and present growth in East Asia has now shifted to China and to the Tiger Cub Economies of Southeast Asia.
Modern era
Since the Chinese economic reform, China has become the 2nd and 1st-largest economy in the world respectively by nominal GDP and GDP.The Pearl River Delta is one of the top startup regions in East Asia, featuring some of the world's top drone companies, such as DJI.
Up until the early 2010s, Vietnamese trade was heavily dependent on China, and many Chinese-Vietnamese speak both Cantonese and Vietnamese, which share many linguistic similarities. Vietnam, one of Next Eleven countries, is regarded as a rising economic power in Southeast Asia.
East Asia participates in numerous global economic organizations including:
- Belt and Road Initiative
- Shanghai Cooperation Organization
- Bamboo Network
- ASEAN, ASEAN Plus Three, AFTA
- East Asia Summit
- East Asian Community
Etymology of 'Sinosphere'
The "CJKV" languages—Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese—translate the English -sphere as Chinese quān "circle; ring; corral; pen", Japanese ken 圏けん "sphere; circle; range; radius", Korean gwon 권 and Vietnamese quyển, all of which are cognates.
Victor H. Mair discussed the origins of these "culture sphere" terms. Chinese wénhuà quān 文化圈 dates back to a 1941 translation for German Kulturkreis "culture circle/field", which the Austrian ethnologists Fritz Graebner and Wilhelm Schmidt proposed. Japanese historian Nishijima Sadao coined the expressions Kanji bunka ken and Chuka bunka ken, which China later re-borrowed as loanwords. Nishijima devised these Sinitic "cultural spheres" within his "Theory of an East Asian World".
Chinese-English dictionaries give similar translations of this keyword wénhuà quān 文化圈: "the intellectual or literary circles" and "literary, educational circles".
The Sinosphere may be taken to be synonymous to Ancient China and its descendant civilizations as well as the "Far Eastern civilizations". In the 1930s in A Study of History, the Sinosphere along with the Western, Islamic, Eastern Orthodox, Indic, etc. civilizations is presented as among the major "units of study."
Comparisons with the West
The British historian Arnold J. Toynbee listed the Far Eastern civilization as one of the main civilizations outlined in his book, A Study of History. He included Japan and Korea in his definition of "Far Eastern civilization" and proposed that they grew out of the "Sinic civilization" that originated in the Yellow River basin. Toynbee compared the relationship between the Sinic and Far Eastern civilization with that of the Hellenic and Western civilizations, which had an "apparentation-affiliation."The American Sinologist and historian Edwin O. Reischauer also grouped China, Korea, and Japan into a cultural sphere that he called the Sinic world. These countries are centralized states that share a Confucian ethical philosophy. Reischauer states that this culture originated in Northern China, and compared the relationship between Northern China and East Asia to that of Greco-Roman civilization and Europe. The elites of East Asia were tied together through a common written language based on Chinese characters, much in the way that Latin had functioned in Europe.
The American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington considered the Sinic world as one of many civilizations in his book The Clash of Civilizations. He notes that "all scholars recognize the existence of either a single distinct Chinese civilization dating back to at least 1500 B.C. and perhaps a thousand years earlier, or of two Chinese civilizations one succeeding the other in the early centuries of the Christian epoch." Huntington's Sinic civilization includes China, North Korea, South Korea, Mongolia, Vietnam, and Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. Of the many civilizations that Huntington discusses, the Sinic world is the only one that is based on a cultural, rather than religious, identity. Huntington's theory was that in a post-Cold War world, humanity "identify with cultural groups: tribes, ethnic groups, religious communities, and at the broadest level, civilizations."