Kanbun
Kanbun (漢文, "Chinese writing"), a form of Classical Chinese used in Japan from the Nara period to the mid-20th century. Much of Japanese 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 the Japanese lexicon and much classical Chinese literature is accessible to Japanese readers in some semblance of the original. The corresponding system in Korean is gugyeol (口訣/구결). Kanbun Kundoku can be classified as some sort of creole language, as it is the mixture between Native Japanese and classical literary Chinese.
Alíz Horváth
Assistant Professor, East Asian Institute of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest
Alíz Horváth recently completed her PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. She also holds a dual MA degree in Japanese and Chinese philology and an additional BA in Korean and Finnish language and has spent multiple years in these four areas as a scholarship holder. She is interested in the mechanisms of transnational flows in Japan, China, and Korea, as well as the dynamics of intellectual history, cultural history, and history writing. She enjoys experimenting with interdisciplinary solutions and novel methods, such as digital tools, to explore innovative approaches to the study of East Asia. She is particularly enthusiastic about data visualizations and actively advocates for diversity and inclusion in digital humanities through the promotion of non-Western perspectives. Professor Horváth's current book project explores the shifting dynamics of the intellectual history of history writing through the procedural study of the Dai Nihonshi (The History of Great Japan 大日本史, 1657-1906), the most monumental historiographical endeavor in Japan produced by the controversial Mito school. Using the diverse sections of the Dai Nihonshi itself (which she translated to English for the first time) and the biographies and individual records of the compilers, Horváth situates the significance of Mito and the Dai Nihonshi, the first Japanese historical work that used the structural and stylistic features of Chinese dynastic histories, in the context of East Asian transnational intellectual exchange and trace the foreign roots of the formation of nationalism in Japan. <\p>