stirringwinds:

solacekames:

softsoundingseas:

I have a random question. So I keep on seeing an argument that the Japanese stole the Hanfu from the Chinese? However, I feel that during the time the “Kimono” was adopted, it was because China was a very large and superior nation that held much dominant power in the region (not necessarily in land but in their cultures) and because it was adopted by the upper class, it then started to become a very popular form of clothing. Much like how ‘western clothing’ has become popular around the globe. Not quite assimilation but not quite stealing like we can see when people use stereotypes to define a person or their clothing? That’s what I feel but does anybody have any other thoughts?

Yep, it’s not stealing and it’s not assimilation, it’s simply cultural influence. Throughout most of history China was massively more powerful and influential than Japan—huge country versus small island chain, after all.

The problem is that Eurocentric history teaches us to see East Asian countries as either a) completely isolated entities b) one conglomerate racist mass. No shades of gray, nothing in between. Us Asian-Americans are usually taught the same thing, unfortunately. When it comes to European countries, we’re trained to apply a lot more subtlety.

Nobody asks whether the English stole their alphabet from the Italians, for example. We get taught a more complicated view of history where Rome was the center of power and cultural influence in Europe for a long time, there were overlapping spheres of influence over the last two millenia, many European cultures and proto-nations imitated Rome and learned from them whether they were under direct Roman control or not, but then things changed. Yet I constantly have to hear the most nonsensical questions about Japan “stealing” kanji from China. It shouldn’t be that hard to understand, but since we’re taught that Europe is totally exceptional and every other geographic cluster in the world is not allowed to be as complicated as Europe these misunderstandings keep coming up.

i agree too. the power dynamics during WW2 and the first sino-japanese war are a whole different can of worms, but the evolution of the kimono and kanji from chinese cultural influences occurred in a world where china was in the indisputably more powerful position. 

there is also the fact that imperial china had a very strong sense of being the centre of civilisation and sinicisation of non-han people- getting them to adopt chinese culture- was a deliberate means to entrench the empire. and that cultural power emanated outside china proper too. in that context, it would be rather odd to describe non chinese people absorbing chinese influences as ‘stealing’.