Pre-Meiji period Since antiquity, the Japanese have supplemented their native vocabulary, known as
yamato kotoba, by borrowing many words from Chinese. After integrating the Chinese words into their vocabulary, they began creating their own
kango. One source of
wasei-kango is the reinterpretation of
yamato kotoba via ''on'yomi
readings of the characters as opposed to the original kun'yomi. For example, the archaic word for Japan, ( Hinomoto
), has become the modern ( Nihon
or Nippon
). Another example is the word for daikon, , which changed from ōne
to daikon
. Sometimes, an inversion of the character order is necessary, as in the construction of rippuku
from hara ga tatsu'' for "anger". Terms have also been coined for concepts in
Japanese culture such as
geisha (),
ninja (), or
kaishaku ().
Meiji Restoration As Western influence began to take hold in Japan during the 19th-century
Meiji Restoration, Japanese scholars discovered that they needed new words to translate the books imported from Europe. They also imported new terms coined by Chinese and Western scholars from Sino-English dictionaries from China. Many of these terms are still commonly being used by both countries nowadays. Sometimes, existing words were repurposed to translate these new concepts. For example, was a
Classical Chinese Buddhist term which became the modern word for "world", and was taken from
Qinding Qiansouyan Shi (), a
Qing dynasty poetry compendium. Other words were completely new creations, such as and . The majority of
wasei-kango were created during this period. Following the Meiji Restoration and the Japanese victory in the
First Sino-Japanese War, many of these terms found their way into the modern Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese languages, where they remain today. == Examples ==