The Sinosphere, also known as the East Asian cultural sphere, or the Sinic world, encompasses multiple countries in East Asia and Southeast Asia that historically were heavily influenced by Chinese culture, norms and traditions. According to academic consensus, the Sinosphere comprises four entities: Greater China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. Other definitions may include Mongolia and Singapore, largely due to limited historical Chinese influences or increasing modern-day Chinese diaspora. The Sinosphere is not to be confused with Sinophone, which indicates countries where a Chinese-speaking population is dominant.
Imperial China was a major regional power in Eastern Asia and had exerted influence on tributary states and neighboring states, among which were Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. These interactions brought ideological and cultural influences rooted in Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism. During classical history, the four cultures shared a common imperial system under respective emperors. Chinese inventions influenced, and were in turn influenced by, innovations of the other cultures in governance, philosophy, science, and the arts. Written Classical Chinese became the regional lingua franca for literary and scientific exchange, and Chinese characters (Hanzi) became locally adapted in Japan as Kanji, Korea as Hanja, and Vietnam as chữ Hán.
In late classical history, the literary importance of classical Chinese diminished as Japan, Korea, and Vietnam each adopted their own literary device. Japan developed the Katakana and Hiragana scripts, Korea created Hangul, and Vietnam developed chữ Nôm (which is now rarely used; the modern Vietnamese alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet). Classical literature written in Chinese characters nonetheless remains an important legacy of Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese cultures. In the 21st century, ideological and cultural influences of Confucianism and Buddhism remain visible in high culture and social doctrines.
Terminology
Ancient China has been regarded as one of the centers of civilization, with the emergent cultures that arose from the migration of original Han settlers from the Yellow River generally regarded as the starting point of the East Asian world. Today, China's population is approximately 1.402 billion.
Japanese historian (1919–1998), professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, originally coined the term , conceiving of a Chinese or 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 scholars in Classical Chinese.
Etymology
Sometimes used as a synonym for the East Asian cultural sphere, the term derives from ('China, Chinese') and , in the sense of a sphere of influence (i.e., an area influenced by a country). (cf. Sinophone.)
Sharing cognates, the "CJKV" languages—Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese—translate the English term sphere as: Chinese: (, 'circle, ring, corral, pen') Japanese: (, 'sphere, circle, range, radius') Korean: ( from 圏)
Unlike the other languages in the Sinosphere, Vietnamese does not use 'khuyên' 圈 to mean sphere or area. Rather, Vietnamese uses 'vùng', meaning a region or area. The translation for 東亞文化圈 in Vietnamese is Vùng văn hóa Á Đông (塳文化亞東).
In Ryukyuan languages, 圏 ’ちん’ 'chin' is not used to mean sphere or area or domain. This word is also found only on Kammun texts written by Ryukyuans. Ryukyuans use the term 世 'yu' meaning world or sphere. Thus, 漢字文化圏 and 東亜文化圏 would be translated as 漢字一型ぬ世 'kanjii tiigata nu yu' and 東亜一型ぬ世 'too-a tiigata nu yu' respectively.
Victor H. Mair discussed the origins of these "culture sphere" terms. The Chinese () dates back to a 1941 translation for the German term , ('culture circle, field'), which the Austrian ethnologists Fritz Graebner and Wilhelm Schmidt proposed. Japanese historian coined the expressions and , 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 the 1930s in A Study of History, the Sinosphere along with the Western, Islamic, Eastern Orthodox, Indic, etc. civilizations is presented as among the major "units of study".