2019年第3期

【Abstract】

No matter where people live, they gather to create a new civilization that suits them. In addition, with the development of civilization, a cultural form suitable for civilization has been created. Through this process, these areas can continue to develop new cultures. In order to maintain culture and civilization and further develop them, communication must go smoothly. Therefore, the writing system is indispensable. The speed at which culture and civilization develop will vary greatly depending on whether there is a writing system. The first writing system in East Asia was Chinese writing. With the help of the writing system, China has developed a rich and colorful culture. In addition, Chinese culture and civilization have also spread to neighboring countries through Chinese characters. Therefore, Chinese characters have also been introduced into neighboring countries. These countries were able to develop their own culture and civilization more quickly and more extensively through Chinese characters. However, these countries were not satisfied with the Chinese characters imported from China. They needed new characters that could express their culture, so they made their own Chinese characters for this purpose. Among them, the most representative regions are Korea, Japan and Vietnam. In these countries, new characters were created after the formation of Chinese characters to record their native language. Since these Chinese characters are only used in their respective regions, even though the number of these Chinese characters is not large, they have good regional characteristics. Although these Chinese characters are not different from Chinese characters in composition, some Chinese characters have different meanings and usages. In addition, since these Chinese characters are only used in relevant regions, their research would help to understand the evolution process of Chinese characters not only in China but also in other regions, as well as the types of regional culture development. To this end, this special issue has collected a series of research papers on unique Chinese characters created in Korea, Japan and Vietnam. Through this issue, I hope that Chinese character research can be extended to new areas beyond the existing research.