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77.9% of Japanese think country must improve relations with China, Japanese govt survey says
Mainichi (Japan) / AP ^ | March 29, 2006

Posted on 03/29/2006 9:49:21 AM PST by buglemanster

Almost four-fifths of respondents to a government survey said Japan must improve its relations with neighboring China, which have been strained over a spate of disputes, the Foreign Ministry announced Wednesday.

The study, which polled 1,314 Japanese voters last month, found that 67 percent of respondents said relations with China weren't good and 77.9 percent said ties needed to be improved.

Asked what specific problems were contributing to deteriorating relations with Beijing, nearly 59 percent of respondents raised differences over interpretations of wartime history, including Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to a war shrine critics say glorifies Japan's militaristic past.

Respondents also cited disputes over natural resources and China's growing military spending as thorns in the troubled relationship.

While linked by billions of dollars in trade, Japan and China are at odds over a range of issues including clashes over their wartime history, China's growing military power and rights to undersea gas and oil deposits that lie in disputed territory.

Just over 40 percent of respondents said they felt Japan's security was intact, according to the survey.

Of those respondents, 71 percent attributed Japan's security to its mutual pact with the United States, under which about 50,000 U.S. soldiers are stationed in Japan.

Some 55 percent cited Japan's pacifist Constitution, which forbids the use of force in settling international disputes.

The study interviewed 1,314 randomly selected respondents Feb. 10-13 and gave no margin of error. (AP)


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: china; japan; koizumi; sinojapaneseties; yasukuni
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More information from survey from another Japanese news source (Kyodo):

A total of 12 percent said they thought the current situation between the two countries was fine, and 1.5 percent said it was all right if the relationship became even worse.

On current bilateral ties, widely seen as soured, 66.7 percent responded they do not think the relationship is good, while only 6.9 percent thought it was good or rather good.

To a question on how they foresee the ties as changing in the next 20 years, nearly half had an optimistic outlook, with 12.3 percent saying Japan and China will have deepened relations as cooperative partners, and 34.2 percent saying ties will generally get better but friction will also increase.

1 posted on 03/29/2006 9:49:24 AM PST by buglemanster
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To: buglemanster
Maybe Japan and China want to form an Asian co-prosperity sphere.
2 posted on 03/29/2006 9:52:23 AM PST by Mike Darancette (In the Land of the Blind the one-eyed man is king.)
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To: NZerFromHK; TigerLikesRooster; flg; Gengis Khan; Cronos; Brian Allen; pganini

Ping!


3 posted on 03/29/2006 10:05:15 AM PST by CarrotAndStick (The articles posted by me needn't necessarily reflect my opinion.)
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To: buglemanster

Japanese gov's got some PR to do to edumacate their bourgeois mice about the threat. Sort of like ours ....


4 posted on 03/29/2006 10:05:47 AM PST by GOP_1900AD (Stomping on "PC," destroying the Left, and smoking out faux "conservatives" - Take Back The GOP!)
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To: buglemanster
The study interviewed 1,314 randomly selected respondents Feb. 10-13 and gave no margin of error.

Just wow. (/Sarc). And welcome to FR.

5 posted on 03/29/2006 10:06:30 AM PST by CarrotAndStick (The articles posted by me needn't necessarily reflect my opinion.)
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To: Mike Darancette
The new term in Japan being thrown around is "Kanji cultural sphere" (kanji bunkaken) or "Kanji civilization" (kanji bunmei), which includes China, Japan, Taiwan and Korea.

Of course this is still empty talk for now, but it always has had a really strong idealism attached to it.




Typical Japanese newspaper is about 70% Chinese characters, and is fairly understandable for literate Chinese.
6 posted on 03/29/2006 10:09:54 AM PST by buglemanster
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To: CarrotAndStick

It's a Japanese government survey, are you implying the Japanese government fabricates its data or is deliberately trying to create a wrong impression? If so, doesn't that say even more about the direction the Japanese government is going? It also depends on the goal of the study, if its point was just to determine the responses of the surveyed people, there doesn't need to be an error calculation.


7 posted on 03/29/2006 10:19:30 AM PST by buglemanster
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To: buglemanster
As they say, money talks.

I thought the China-Japan relationship was pretty good few years ago, until the Japanese government starts catering to the right-wingers for domestic political reason.

But, like everything else in life, the pendulum will start swing the other way sooner or later.
8 posted on 03/29/2006 10:22:44 AM PST by Fishing-guy
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To: buglemanster

I recognise Roman fonts. That doesn't mean I know German. Or Spanish. Or French. Or Bahasa (which also uses Roman fonts).


9 posted on 03/29/2006 10:22:53 AM PST by CarrotAndStick (The articles posted by me needn't necessarily reflect my opinion.)
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To: CarrotAndStick
I recognise Roman fonts. That doesn't mean I know German. Or Spanish. Or French. Or Bahasa (which also uses Roman fonts).

LOL. Chinese is a logographic script, it's not an alphabet nor a syllabary. Not only is the script shared between Chinese and Japanese, but the vocabulary is also shared to a great extent. Modern Japanese vocabulary is about 60% Sinitic. Korean vocabulary has an even higher proportion. A Chinese person can definitely pick up a newspaper in Japan and comprehend the general idea. If he goes on to learn a little more basic Japanese vocabulary and grammar, he can become semi-literate very quickly. Vice versa.
10 posted on 03/29/2006 10:27:44 AM PST by buglemanster
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To: buglemanster; Brian Allen

Maybe this is the ticket for the Chinese to occupy Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and all else of Asia, since they are also "Chinese". </sarc>


11 posted on 03/29/2006 10:31:38 AM PST by CarrotAndStick (The articles posted by me needn't necessarily reflect my opinion.)
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To: buglemanster

And what about the anti-Japanese riots in China?


12 posted on 03/29/2006 10:35:29 AM PST by Gengis Khan
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To: CarrotAndStick

Let me give you an analogy. Chinese characters (Kanji) are like Arabic numerals (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9). It doesn't really matter what language you speak, if see 1, you know it means "one", "un", "eins", "ichi", "yi" etc. Likewise, when you see 33, you know it means "thirty-three", "trente-trois", "dreißig drei", "sanju-san" or "sanshi-san". Now expand this idea to an entire language, and also factor in the large number of shared cognates between Chinese and Japanese (for example: 33 in Chinese is sanshi-san, in Japanese it's sanju-san).


13 posted on 03/29/2006 10:40:31 AM PST by buglemanster
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To: CarrotAndStick
Maybe this is the ticket for the Chinese to occupy Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and all else of Asia, since they are also "Chinese". /sarc

It was indeed the reasoning used by the Japanese during WWII, for the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.


Japanese propaganda poster during the 1930s. The 5 color flag on the right was the original Chinese flag. And the one on the left was the Manchukuo puppet state flag, and the middle one is obviously the Japanese flag.

I don't see the Chinese invading Japan. It's always been Japan's goal since Hideyoshi during the 16th century to conquer East Asia.
14 posted on 03/29/2006 10:46:37 AM PST by buglemanster
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To: buglemanster

And ..................
34 is sanju-yon , vier und dreißig
35 is sanju-go, funf unf dreißig
36 is sanju-roku, sechs und dreißig
37 is sanju-nana, sieben und dreißig
38 is sanju-hachi, acht und dreißig
39 is sanju-quo, neun und dreißig
40 is yonju, vierzehn

so on............


15 posted on 03/29/2006 10:49:30 AM PST by Gengis Khan
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To: buglemanster

Oops
vierzehn = vierzig


16 posted on 03/29/2006 10:50:41 AM PST by Gengis Khan
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To: buglemanster

In most Indian languages, 2 is "do", 4 is "chattr". In Greek, it is "dos" and "qattr" respectively.

In Indian tongues, triangle is "tricone"

In Greek, it is "trigon".

Likewise raj is rex.

Dev is daeva. And so on...


But Indians are not Greek. Greek are not Indian.


17 posted on 03/29/2006 10:52:26 AM PST by CarrotAndStick (The articles posted by me needn't necessarily reflect my opinion.)
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To: CarrotAndStick
the cross-over of using kanji characters in both Chinese and Japanese scripts are much more than fonts or alphabets.

In modern written Japanese, kanji are used for most nouns and verbs. Hiragana is used largely for grammar (conjunctions, conjugations, etc.), though many Japanese words have no kanji (or at least no kanji that is still used) and are always written in hiragana. Katakana is used to write foreign (mostly western) loan words and names of foreigners.

I don't know about the poster's claim of 75% mutual readability, but the kanji script is used for the nouns and verbs expressing meaning, it do represent significant amount of active vocabulary and abstract expressions in Japanese (as high as 70% historically, now less, but still significant and essential). So yes, Chinese and Japanese readers can understand quite a bit of each other's writing through the recognition of common kanji nouns and verbs, but most likely can not really follow the more complex grammar and phrasing.

There is long historical cultural commonality and affinity between China and Japan. A lot of that got overran in the brutual Sino-Japanese war and its deeply antagonistic aftermath. But there are deep roots on both side that goes thousand years back before the current, often hostile China-Japan relationship of late 19th and much of 20th century. So it's not surprising that there may be people in both countries trying to "fix" the current relationship by pushing for relationship based more on historical mutual affinities and not recent mutual antagonism.
18 posted on 03/29/2006 10:53:04 AM PST by Republican Party Reptile
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To: buglemanster
Typical Japanese newspaper is about 70% Chinese characters, and is fairly understandable for literate Chinese.

A Chinese teacher I had told me that while visiting Japan he was able to communicate by writing notes.

19 posted on 03/29/2006 10:54:23 AM PST by wideminded
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To: CarrotAndStick
In most Indian languages, 2 is "do", 4 is "chattr". In Greek, it is "dos" and "qattr" respectively.
But Indians are not Greek. Greek are not Indian.


What is your point? Did I say Japanese were Chinese or Chinese were Japanese? No, I did not.

I wrote that the Japanese language uses Chinese characters and also share a great deal of vocabulary with Chinese. Hence there exists current fad terms like "Kanji cultural sphere" and "Kanji civilization" used by the Japanese themselves. There is a great deal of cultural identity between China and Japan that is difficult to erase even when politics and nationalism get in the way. That's all I'm saying. Your reply is nonsensical given the context.

Also Greeks use the Greek alphabet and Indian languages typically use Sanskrit-derived scripts. You are talking about Indo-European linguistics, but I am talking about cultural identity and literary traditions.
20 posted on 03/29/2006 11:04:02 AM PST by buglemanster
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