The earliest kanji in Japan?
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「日本で最古」の“文章”か…高知・南国市の遺跡から発掘の弥生土器に文字…2世紀後半〜3世紀中ごろに作られた「刻書土器」文章としては最古の歴史を塗り替える可能性も
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The text says:
Nihon de saiko' no “bunshō” ka… Kōchi nankokushi no iseki kara hakkutsu no Yayoi doki ni moji… 2 seiki kōhan 〜 3 seiki nakagoro ni tsukura reta `kokushodoki' bunshō to shite wa saiko no rekishi o nurikaeru kanōsei mo
「日本で最古」の“文章”か…高知・南国市の遺跡から発掘の弥生土器に文字…2世紀後半〜3世紀中ごろに作られた「刻書土器」文章としては最古の歴史を塗り替える可能性も
The "oldest writing" in Japan? Writing found on Yayoi pottery excavated from a site in Nankoku City, Kochi Prefecture. It may be the oldest known inscription on pottery made between the late 2nd century and the mid-3rd century.
There are several things about this two-kanji inscription that I find truly amazing:
1. they are so early, which means there was cultural / intellectual / language contact between continental East Asia and insular Japan already in the first few centuries of our era
2. the script is essentially the same as it is today
3. the expression and the grammar on which it is based are also the same as contemporary usage: 何不 interrogative + negative = rhetorical question
nani fu / MSM hé bù 何不 ("why not?")
This expression in Mandarin still has a modern ring to it and occurs frequently in daily speech and writing (15,400,000 ghits).
Nanzo zaru: Dōshite… shinai no ka
なんぞ・ざる：どうして…しないのか
"Why don't you do it?
4. It has an ironical tone
5. Perhaps we may say, on the basis of this evidence, that the Japanese were already employing a sort of kanbun (漢文 "Han writing") in the 2nd-3rd c. AD. Since it is already mature, this has important implications for the dating of Sino-Japanese interactions, n'est-ce pas? Of course, the object may have been inscribed in China and brought to Japan. Nonetheless, Japanese who saw this object would have been aware of the written marks on it. And then there was the famous gold seal of the King of Na, which had more kanji on it and was approximately a century earlier than the inscribed ostracon described in this post. (see "Selected readings" below)
In any event, this is an important discovery, the full implications of which still need to be worked out.
Selected readings
"China's Japan" (9/13/21) — The King of Na gold seal (Japanese: 漢委奴国王印) is a solid gold seal discovered in the year 1784 on Shikanoshima Island in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan.
"On the origin of the term 'hanzi'" (2/3/21)
[Thanks to Jim Unger and Lucas Christopoulos]
Chris Button said,
January 24, 2025 @ 3:26 pm
Didn't Japan have coins from China in the Yayoi period, which contained kanji on them? So, even if this discovery is legit, it still wouldn't be the oldest.
I also see the link in the selected readings to the gold seal found in Shikanoshima.
Chris Button said,
January 24, 2025 @ 3:30 pm
I'm also not convinced by 何不:
– 何 is hardly clear
– 不 would not have that modern form
Jonathan Smith said,
January 24, 2025 @ 3:36 pm
OK at bottom looks "不" ish — but it wouldn't be typical for early Chinese writing. And OK no at top does not look like "何", kinda at all. Not sure what they're thinking here. A guess based on "context" such as it is I guess? And the storage pot probably was not inscribed with a mysterious sentence beginning "Why not… ?" Sure it could in theory be writing though…
David Lurie said,
January 24, 2025 @ 4:15 pm
I am not an epigrapher but I wonder about the first character, which looks fairly fragmentary on the small low-rez pictures I've seen. And it is unclear what a sentence fragment of this sort would be doing on a piece of pottery. Not to say that this inscription isn't what it is said to be by the experts, but we do tend to overestimate the significance of isolated cases of this sort. I write about earlier cases of enthusiastic attention to "first characters in Japan" finds in the first chapter of my book , and don't see this one, at least in isolation, as a reason to change my suspicion of the potential impact of such discoveries.