Kanbun (漢文 'Han writing') is a system for writingLiterary Chinese used in Japan from theNara period until the 20th century. Much ofJapanese literature was written in this style and it was the general writing style for official and intellectual works throughout the period. As a result,Sino-Japanese vocabulary makes up a large portion of theJapanese lexicon and much classical Chinese literature is accessible to Japanese readers in some resemblance of the original.

Kanbun in its most literal definition means "Chinese writing".^[1] TheJapanese writing system originated through adoption and adaptation ofwritten Chinese (kanbun). Some of Japan's oldest books (e.g. theNihon Shoki) and dictionaries (e.g. theTenrei Banshō Meigi andWamyō Ruijushō) were written inkanbun. Other Japanese literary genres have parallels; theKaifūsō is the oldest collection ofkanshi (漢詩; 'Chinese poetry').Burton Watson's English translations ofkanbun compositions provide an introduction to this literary field.^[2][3]

Kanbun is described byJean-Noël Robert as a "perfectly frozen 'dead'" language that was continuously used from the lateHeian period (794–1185) until after World War II. Kanbun, otherwise known asClassical Chinese or Literary Chinese, had long since ceased to be a colloquial language in China. Yet all the oldest writing in Japan are inkanbun and predate any written documents in Japanese, although there is considerable debate if these Chinese texts contained traces of the Japanese vernacular. Taking into consideration all the texts written in both Japanese and Chinese, including monastic documents, as well as 'near-Chinese' (hentai-kanbun) texts, the amount of Chinese writing in Japan may exceed what was written in Japanese.^[4] Despite the size, quality, and importance ofkanbun writing, John Timothy Wixted notes that scholars have disregardedkanbun as an area of study until recent times and it is the least properly represented part of the Japanese canon.^[5]

Aside from Chinese writing,kanbun also refers to a genre of techniques for reading Chinese texts read like Japanese or for writing in a way similar to Chinese.Samuel Martin coined the termSino-Xenic in 1953 to describe Chinese as written in Japan, Korea, and other foreign (hence-xenic) zones on China's periphery.^[6]Roy Andrew Miller notes that although Japanesekanbun conventions haveSino-Xenic parallels with other traditions for reading Literary Chinese like Koreanhanmun and VietnameseHán Văn, onlykanbun has survived to the present day.

In the Japanesekanbun reading tradition, the Chinese text is transformed through punctuation, analysis, and translation into classical Japanese. Through a limited canon of Japanese forms and syntactic structures treated as though they existed in alignment with vocabulary and structures of Classical Chinese, thekanbun text could be read in drastically different ways. At its most extreme, this type of reading could render the text so simplified that it could be understood through an elementary student's perspective. At its best, it could preserve a large body of Classical Chinese texts that would have otherwise been lost. Thus thekanbun could also be of great value for understanding early Chinese literature.^[7]

There were several linguistic hurdles involved inkanbun transformation. Chinese grammatical order issubject–verb–object (SVO) and usesparticles similar toEnglish prepositions whereas morphemes are typically one syllable in length and inflection plays no role in the grammar. Conversely, Japanese sentence order usesSOV with syntactic features, includingpost positions such as grammar particles that appearafter the words and phrases to which they apply.

Four major problems faced when transformingkanbun are theword order, parsing which Chinese characters should be read together, deciding how to pronounce the characters, and finding suitable equivalents for Chinesefunction words.

A new development inkanbun studies is the Web-accessible database being developed by scholars atNishogakusha University in Tokyo.^{[8][clarification needed]}

The Japanese wordkanbun originally meant 'Literary Chinese writings'—or, theChinese classics.^[9]Kanbun compositions used two common types of Japanese kanji readings: Sino-Japaneseon'yomi ('pronunciation readings') borrowed from Chinese pronunciations and native Japanesekun'yomi 'explanation readings' from Japanese equivalents. For example,道 can be read asdō adapted fromMiddle Chinese/dấw/^[10] or asmichi from the indigenous Japanese word meaning 'road'.

Kanbun implemented two particular types ofkana. One wasokurigana 'accompanying script',kana suffixes added to kanji stems to show their Japanese readings; the other wasfurigana 'brandishing script', smallerkana syllables written alongsidekanji to indicate pronunciation. These were used primarily as reinforcements to writing inkanbun.Kanbun—as opposed toWabun (和文; 'Wa writing'), Japanese text with Japanese syntax and predominatelykun'yomi readings—is divided into several types:

jun-kanbun (純漢文, 'genuine Chinese writing')

Chinese text written with Chinese syntax andon'yomi characters

hakubun (白文, 'blank writing')

Kanbun without reading aids or punctuation

Wakan konkō-bun

Sino-Japanese composition written with Japanese syntax and mixedon'yomi andkun'yomi readings

hentai-kanbun (変体漢文, 'variant form Chinese writing')

Chinese modified with Japanese syntax, a "Japan-ized" version of Literary Chinese

As Literary Chinese originally lacked punctuation, thekanbun tradition developed various conventional reading punctuation, diacritical, and syntactic markers.

kunten (訓点, 'explanation mark')

Guiding marks for rendering Chinese into Japanese

kundoku (訓読, 'explanation reading')

The Japanese reading of a kanji

kanbun kundoku (漢文訓読, 'Chinese writing Japanese reading')

A Japanese reading of a Chinese passage

okototen (乎古止点, 'inflectional dot marks')

Diacritical dots on characters to indicate Japanese grammatical inflections

kutōten (句読点, 'phrase reading marks')

Punctuation marks analogous to commas and full stops

kaeriten (返り点, 'return marker')

Marks placed alongside characters indicating their Japanese ordering is to be read in reverse

Kaeriten grammatically transforms Literary Chinese into Japanese word order. Two are syntactic symbols, the |tatesen (縦線, 'vertical bar')—linking mark that denotes phrases composed of more than one character, and theレreten (レ点; '[katakana]re mark')^[11] denotes 'reverse marks'. The rest are kanji commonly used in numbering and ordering systems:

• Four numerals:ichi一 'one',ni二 'two',san三 'three', andyon四 'four'
• Three locatives:ue上 'top',naka中 'middle', andshita下 'bottom'
• FourHeavenly Stems:kinoe甲 'first',kinoto乙 'second',hinoe丙 'third', andhinoto丁 'fourth'^[11][12]
• Three cosmologicalsansai (三才, 'three worlds'), seeWakan Sansai Zue:ten天 'heaven',chi地 'earth', andjin人 'person'. For written English, thesekaeriten would correspond with 1, 2, 3; I, II, III; A, B, C, etc.

As an analogy forkanbun changing the word order from Chinese sentences withsubject–verb–object (SVO) into Japanesesubject–object–verb (SOV),John DeFrancis gives this example of using a literal English translation—another SVO language—of the opening of the Latin-languageCommentarii de Bello Gallico.^[13]

DeFrancis adds, "A better analogy would be the reverse situation–Caesar rendering an English text in his native language and adding Latin case endings."^[14]

Two English textbooks for students ofkanbun areAn Introduction to Kambun by Sydney Crawcour,^[15] reviewed byMarian Ury in 1990,^[16] andAn Introduction to Japanese Kanbun by Komai and Rohlich, reviewed by Andrew Markus in 1990^[17] and Wixted^{[further explanation needed]} in 1998.^[18]

The illustration to the right exemplifieskanbun. These eight words comprise the well-known first line in theHan Feizi story (ch. 36) that first coined the termmáodùn (Japanesemujun,矛盾 'contradiction, inconsistency', lit. "spear-shield"^[9]), illustrating theirresistible force paradox. Debating with aConfucianist about the legendary Chinese sage rulersYao andShun, theLegalist Han Fei argues that one cannot praise them both because that would be making a "spear–shield" contradiction.

Among theChu, there was a man selling shields and spears. He praised the former saying, "My shields are so solid nothing can penetrate them". Then he would praise his spears saying, "My spears are so sharp that among all things there's nothing they can't penetrate". Somebody else said, "If somebody tried to penetrate your shields with your spears, what would happen?" The man could not respond.

The first sentence would read thus, using modernStandard Chinese pronunciation:

A fairly literal translation would be "among Chu people, there existed somebody who was selling shields and spears". All words can be literally translated into English, except for the final particlezhě者 'one who', 'somebody who', which works asnominalizer marking a verb phrase as certain kinds ofnoun phrases.^[19] The original Chinese sentence is marked with five Japanesekaeriten as:

楚人有_下鬻_二盾與_一レ矛者_上

To interpret this, Thereレ 'reverse' mark indicates that the order of the adjacent characters,與 and矛, must be reversed:

楚人有_下鬻_二盾與_一レ矛者_上

楚人有_下鬻_二盾矛與_一者_上

The word有'existed' marked withshita下 'bottom' is shifted after者 marked byue上 'top':

楚人有_下鬻_二盾矛與_一者_上

楚人鬻_二盾矛與_一者有

Likewise, the word鬻'sell' marked withni二 'two' is shifted to after與 marked byichi一 'one':

楚人鬻_二盾矛與_一者有

楚人盾矛與鬻者有

To represent this reading in numerical terms:

Following thesekanbun instructions step by step transforms the sentence so it has the typical Japanesesubject–object–verbargument order. The Sino-Japaneseon'yomi readings and meanings are:

Next, Japanese function words and conjugations can be added withokurigana, and Japaneseto ... toと...と 'and' can substitute Chinese與 'and'. More specifically, the firstと is treated as an additional function word, and the second, the reading of與:

Lastly,kun'yomi readings for characters can be annotated withfurigana. Normallyfurigana are only used for uncommon kanji or unusual readings. This sentence's only uncommon kanji ishisa(gu)鬻ぐ 'sell', 'deal in', a literary character which is included in neither thekyōiku kanji nor thejōyō kanji lists. However, inkanbun texts it is relatively common to use a large amount offurigana—often there is an interest in recovering the readings used by people of the Heian or Nara periods, and since many kanji can be read either withon'yomi orkun'yomi pronunciations in a kanbun text, thefurigana can show at least one editor's opinion of how it may have been read.

楚（そ）人（ひと）に盾（たて）と矛（ほこ）とを鬻（ひさ）ぐ者（もの）有（あ）り

The completedkundoku translation reads as a well-formed Japanese sentence withkun'yomi:

This annotatedkanbun translates to, "among Chu people, there existed one who was selling shields and spears".

ChineseWikisource has original text related to this article:

代張籍與李浙東書

To illustrate what is possible withkaeriten, here follows a rather complicated example from Crawcour's book, to which he notes: "The student may take some light comfort from the fact that this is as complicated as these markings can get."^[20]

使_㆟籍誠不_㆚以_㆘蓄_㆓妻子_㆒，憂_㆗飢寒_㆖亂_㆙㆑心，有_㆑錢以濟_㆞醫藥_㆝，其盲未_㆑甚，庶幾其復見_㆓天地日月_㆒。（韓愈・代張籍與李浙東書）

is rendered as

籍（せき）をして誠（まこと）に妻子（さいし）を蓄（たくは）へ、飢寒（きかん）を憂（うれ）ふるを以（もっ）て心（こころ）を亂（みだ）さず、錢（せん）を有（たも）ちて以（もっ）て醫藥（いやく）を濟（な）さしめば、其（そ）の盲（まう）未（いま）だ甚（はなはだ）しからず庶幾（ほとんど）其（そ）れ復（また）天地（てんち）日月（じつげつ）を見（み）ん。

Kanbun were added to theUnicode Standard in June 1993 with version 1.1. Two Unicodekaeriten are grammatical symbols (㆐㆑) for linking and reverse marks. The others are the organizational kanji for numerals (e.g.㆒), locatives (e.g.㆖), Heavenly Stems (e.g.㆙), and levels (e.g.㆝).

The Unicode block for kanbun is U+3190..319F:

• Gugyeol
• Idu script
• Interlinear gloss
• Chữ Nôm
• Giải âm
• Wakan Konko Bun

Look up漢文 in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Kanbun in Unicode
• Kanbun – Test for Unicode support in Web browsers, Alan Wood
• International Research Project Based on Kanbun Sources to Reconstruct a View of Japanese Culture, Nishōgakusha University

• Kanbun
• Archaic Japanese language
• Japanese writing system
• Reordered languages
• Classical Chinese

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