Traits de Caractères

In a humorous and aptly constructed alphabet book, the author explains and highlights the cultural and linguistic differences between China and Japan. Based on some 1,850 of the 1,945 basic kanji that permeate Japanese civilization and have their equivalents in Simplified Chinese, its aim is to observe the shifts in meaning, and even in writing, to demonstrate the reasons for potential misunderstandings between the two peoples.The chosen words all refer to basic ideograms of the Japanese language, but they do not constitute a dictionary, as they may have translations other than those presented here. The author thus attempts to understand the respective thinking of a Japanese or a Chinese person by providing representative examples from their cultures.