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One of the Oldest Kangi Uses Found in Japan


Piney

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They usually say monks got Chinese writing in Japan in the 8th century, but this is unmistakably the kanji "shu".

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/周

The proportion, the little curl at the tip of the vertical line, this is a kanji all right. Although, if it's the first they found between the first century BC and the 8th AD, we can conclude it wasn't too main stream. The island of Iki is in the Korea Strait, it could have been some borrowing from Korea. They had writing on the Peninsula since the 1st century AD.
 

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37 minutes ago, Gingitsune said:

They usually say monks got Chinese writing in Japan in the 8th century, but this is unmistakably the kanji "shu".

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/周

The proportion, the little curl at the tip of the vertical line, this is a kanji all right. Although, if it's the first they found between the first century BC and the 8th AD, we can conclude it wasn't too main stream. The island of Iki is in the Korea Strait, it could have been some borrowing from Korea. They had writing on the Peninsula since the 1st century AD.
 

I think the Yayoi originated in Korea before the Goryeo and Kimek nomads came in but there was so much cultural destruction during the occupation many records were probably lost.  The Empire wanted to rewrite history so that it looked like most Japanese culture developed in-situ. 

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7 minutes ago, Piney said:

I think the Yayoi originated in Korea before the Goryeo and Kimek nomads came in but there was so much cultural destruction during the occupation many records were probably lost.

Indeed, the Yayoi in Japan (800 BC to 250 AD) are assumed to be from the Mumun pottery culture in Korea (1500 BC to 300 BC).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mumun_pottery_period

As for kanji bowl, it seems the Jin state (300 BC to 200 AD) had diplomatic relationship with imperial China, and even if they didn't know how to write Chinese, they could have passed on goods from the middle kingdom into the island of Iki.

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