The Sinosphere, also known as the Chinese cultural sphere, East Asian cultural sphere, or the Sinic world, encompasses multiple countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia that were historically heavily influenced by Chinese culture. The Sinosphere comprises Greater China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Historically, it also included the Ryukyu Kingdom. Singapore might also be included due to modern-era overseas Chinese migration. The Sinosphere is different from the Sinophone world, which indicates regions where the Chinese language is spoken. Imperial China was a major regional power in Eastern Asia and exerted influence on tributary states and neighboring states, including Japan, Korea and Vietnam. These interactions brought ideological and cultural influences rooted in Confucianism, Taoism and East Asian Buddhism. The four cultures were ruled by their respective emperors under similar administrative systems, furthermore, the adoption of the Confucian-based imperial examination system deeply influenced the bureaucracy and social structure of Korea and Vietnam. Chinese inventions influenced, and were in turn influenced by, innovations of the other cultures in governance, philosophy, science, and the arts. Literary Chinese became the written lingua franca for bureaucracy and communications, and Chinese characters became locally adapted as kanji in Japan, hanja in Korea, and chữ Hán in Vietnam. The literary importance of classical Chinese was moderated as Japan, Korea and Vietnam invented their own phonographic writing systems, with Japan developing the katakana and hiragana scripts, Korea creating the hangul, and Vietnam initially developing chữ Nôm but replacing it with Latin alphabet-based Vietnamese alphabet since the 1910s due to French colonization. However Classical Chinese or modified versions of it such as kanbun and the Idu script remained in official use until the modern era. In the 21st century, ideological and cultural influences of Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism remain visible in high culture and social doctrines.
Terminology Ancient China was one of the cradles of civilization, with the emergent cultures that arose from the migration of Han settlers from the Yellow River generally regarded as the origin of the East Asian world. Japanese historian Nishijima Sadao (1919–1998), professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, coined the term Tōa bunka-ken (東亜文化圏, 'East Asian Cultural Sphere') to refer to an East Asian cultural sphere distinct from the cultures of the West. According to Nishijima, this cultural sphere—which includes China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam—shared the philosophy of Confucianism, the religion of Buddhism, and similar political and social structures stemming from a background of historical Classical Chinese scholars. It has also been informally referred to as the "chopsticks sphere" due to perceived native use of these utensils across the region.
Etymology The term Sinosphere is derived from Sino- 'China' (cf. Sinophone) + -sphere, in the sense of the sphere of influence under the influence of a country. The CJK languages—Chinese, Japanese, Korean—each use cognate terms to translate English sphere:
Chinese quān (Chinese: 圈; 'circle', 'ring', 'pen') Japanese ken (圏、けん; 'sphere', 'circle', 'range', 'radius') Korean gwon (권; from 圏) Unlike with the other languages of the Sinosphere, the corresponding Vietnamese cognate khuyên 圈 is not used to mean 'sphere' or 'area'. Instead, vùng ('region', 'area') is used. The Chinese 東亞文化圈 is translated in Vietnamese as Vùng văn hóa Á Đông (塳文化亞東). In the Ryukyuan languages, 圏 (ちん; chin) is not used to mean 'sphere', 'area', or 'domain' and only appears in kammun texts written by Ryukyuans. Instead, 世 (yu) is used to mean 'world' or 'sphere'. As such, Chinese: 漢字文化圏 and Chinese: 東亜文化圏 would be translated as kanjii tiigata nu yu (漢字一型ぬ世) and too-a tiigata nu yu (東亜一型ぬ世), respectively. Victor H. Mair discussed the origins of these 'culture sphere' terms. The Chinese wénhuà quān (Chinese: 文化圈) dates to a 1941 translation for the German term Kulturkreis, ('culture circle, field'), which the Austrian ethnologists Fritz Graebner and Wilhelm Schmidt proposed. Japanese historian Nishijima Sadao coined the expressions Kanji bunka ken (漢字文化圏; 'Chinese-character culture sphere') and Chuka bunka ken (中華文化圏; 'Chinese culture sphere'), which China later re-borrowed as loanwords. The Sinosphere may be taken to be synonymous to Ancient China and its descendant civilizations as well as the "Far Eastern civilizations" (the Mainland and the Japanese ones). In Toynbee's A Study of History (1934–1961), the Sinosphere is presented as among the major "units of study", along with the Western, Islamic, Eastern Orthodox, and Indic civilizations.
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