西遊記 Journey to the West
July 26, 2008アメリカでは、多分あまりしられていないけど、GokuまたはSongokuと聞けば知る人もいるかもしれない。たまたま家に、３巻からなる西遊記があって、今ちょうど１巻めがおわったところ。おもしろい。日本のいわゆる妖怪というものは中国から来たことがよく分かるし、忍者の使う術というものも、やっぱり中国からなのかと思う。天界、霊界、そして人間が住む世界。子供がNarutoと言う漫画を見てるが、彼らの術もここから来ている。
Not so many people don’t know about a Chinese book, “Journey to the West” in US. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_to_the_West) If you hear “Goku” or “Songoku”, you might know it. I happen to have this book that consists for three books, and I just finished the first one. It is interesting and funny. I think that Japanese Yukai comes from China as well as tricks from Nija come from China. A world consists of three: God’s world, Yukai’s world, and people’s world. My kids watches Naruto on DVD. I guess their tricks are also originated from here.
This is from my friend:
It’s very interesting that you mentioned “Journey to the West”. I read
that book in original classical Chinese when I was 10 and loved the
fancy story. You probably already knew that this book was based on the
writing (大唐西域記) of a true character (玄奘) back in 7th century China. I
was just watching a TV program regarding this famous monk last week. I
think the drama of his life is even more fascinating. Many of my
friends from India knows about him, too. Here’s a wiki entry about
him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xuanzang
It’s true that many Japanese stuffs came from China originally. But
China also borrowed back a lot of Japanese stuffs since 明治維新. Many
Chinese terms in use today, such as 科學, 民主 or 社會, are actually late
19th or early 20th century Japanese terms. So we learned from each
others in different times of history, as it should be.