Adoption of Chinese literary culture

Chinese writing, culture and institutions were imported as a whole by Vietnam, Korea, Japan and the Ryukyus over an extended period. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries AD, followed by Confucianism as these countries developed strong central governments modelled on Chinese institutions. In Vietnam and Korea, and for a shorter time in Japan and the Ryukyus, scholar-officials were selected using examinations on the Confucian classics modelled on the Chinese civil service examinations. Shared familiarity with the Chinese classics and Confucian values provided a common framework for intellectuals and ruling elites across the region. All of this was based on the use of Literary Chinese, which became the medium of scholarship and government across the region. Although each of these countries developed vernacular writing systems and used them for popular literature, they continued to use Chinese for all formal writing until it was swept away by rising nationalism around the end of the 19th century.

During the 20th century, several Japanese historians grouped these three countries with China as an East Asian cultural realm. According to Sadao Nishijima (西嶋定生, 1919–1998), it was characterized by Chinese writing, Mahayana Buddhism in Chinese translation, Confucianism and Chinese legal codes. The concept of an "East Asian world" has seen little interest from scholars in the other countries following its appropriation by Japanese militarists in terms such as the "Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere". Nishijima is also credited with coining the expressions Kanji bunka-ken (漢字文化圏, "Chinese-character culture sphere") and Chūka bunka-ken (中華文化圏, "Chinese culture sphere"), which were later borrowed into Chinese. The four countries are also referred to as the "Sinic World" by some authors.

At the beginning of the current era, the Chinese script was the only writing system available in East Asia. Classical works of the Warring States period and Han dynasty such as the Mencius, the Commentary of Zuo and Sima Qian's Historical Records were admired as models of prose style though the ages. Later writers sought to emulate the classical style, writing in a form known as Literary Chinese. Thus the written style, based on the Old Chinese of the classical period, remained largely static as the various varieties of Chinese developed and diverged to become mutually unintelligible, and all distinct from the written form. Moreover, in response to phonetic attrition the spoken varieties developed compound words and new syntactic forms. In comparison, the literary language was admired for its terseness and economy of expression, but it was difficult to understand if read aloud, even in the local pronunciation. This divergence is a classic example of diglossia.

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