Banyan Sudden onsen

摘要

BACK IN FEBRUARY, when covid-19 was raging in China, a young girl in Japan took Chinese social media by storm. Dressed in a traditional Chinese cheong-sam, she stood on the streets of her hometown bowing to passers-by to solicit donations for the afflicted. Calli-graphers, too, knelt in Tokyo, inkbrush in hand, writing prayers for the people of Wuhan. Consignments of face masks made their way from Japan to China with poems on the box: "Though separated by mountains and waters, we look at the same sky." To any scholar of East Asia's classical history, such acts have context. Japan and China share an extraordinarily long interaction. The Japanese language had no written form until Chinese characters were imported over 1,500 years ago. Kyoto, Japan's cultural heart, was laid out in emulation of the Tang dynasty capital of Chang'an (modern-day Xi'an). Japanese monks and scholars helped bring from China three religions that played a big part in shaping Japanese culture: Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism.