Chinese Texts in Nara and Heian Japan

[bluetortilla]

Does anyone know some of classic Chinese texts that were circulating in Japan during the Nara and Heian Eras (or before)? I'm pretty certain these important texts come from the Tang Dynasty.

[Glenn]

They didn't all come from Tang (if you mean the court, or "China", that is). They used it to write official documents for a while. For instance, from Kojiki (712 CE, Nara Period):

故受命以貢上人、名和邇吉師。即論語十巻、千字文一巻、并十一巻、付是人即貢進。

Also, from Nihonshoki (720 CE, Nara Period):

十五年秋八月壬戌朔丁卯、百濟王遣阿直岐。(中略)阿直岐亦能讀經典。即太子菟道稚郎子師焉。於是天皇問阿直岐曰、「如勝汝博士亦有耶。」對曰、「有王仁者、是秀也。」(中略)十六年春二月、王仁來之。則太子菟道稚郎子師之。習諸典籍於王仁。莫不通達。

I just pulled these from Wikipedia. I don't know if I'd be able to find actual texts from the time written in Classical Chinese without doing a lot of work (or at all). Of course, I'm sure there were also imported texts from the Tang courts that were written in Classical Chinese by native Chinese as well, but there were also native Japanese texts written in Classical Chinese.

[bluetortilla]

I have looked around a bit and could only find references to the Confucian Analects (no Chinese title), and Buddhist scripts. The main emphasis on Old Japanese is a sort of hybridization of Chinese texts to fit the Japanese inflection. But I would argue that during this time period of Nara and Heian, there must have been countless scholars who were fluent in pure Chinese and could write prodigiously as well (this is amply measured by their mastery of kanji). It was a long developing road indeed before the iroha finally outlined the two simplified kana syllabaries.

I say this from a number of standpoints. First, it would be impossible to quickly easily adapt a very complex ideographic writing system, as the time of development of Old Japanese shows. Secondly, It had taken centuries for Japanese society to grow to the point of understanding and fully utilizing written language. That would indicate great gaps in writing in which pure Chinese texts must have been poured over not only by scholars but by the gentrified class as well as literacy became a indispensable skill. Finally, the emergence of Japanese literature shows an aesthetic sense that is clearly derived from Chinese forms. The only explanation for this would be an extensive knowledge of Chinese. I don't see how anyone could argue that point or that it holds true to this very day. In adopting and modifying the Chinese writing system, Japan also absorbed and adopted the Chinese atheistic and rules of composition.

The problem is finding the Chinese texts and demonstrating their use. The bilingualism of early Japanese scholars however is beyond question and is quite obvious to any scholar of Japanese today surveying Chinese and vice versa. I would be particularly interested in literary works (pure Chinese poetry, etc.), that were used in Japan. In modern times it is quite easy to find Buddhist Mantras and the like (but even these are Japanese creations I believe), kanbun is ubiquitous at any high school, but these are relics of writing after the missing links..

I can find acknowledgement of the widespread use of Chinese texts but nothing on the names of these texts, or even much commentary on the significance of these works on the historical development of Japan. After the creation of the man'yōgana (万葉仮名), I can find nothing more mentioning Chinese texts. Obviously- or at least what I can gather from the web- there is a gaping hole in a historical survey of the development of Japanese writing and its adaption of Chinese structures and culture.

[OneEye]

You seem to make a lot of assertions about things, but then it seems you don't have the language skills to do even the most basic research. This is just a guess, but it doesn't seem like you've searched for this stuff in Chinese or Japanese, which would be the most obvious starting point. You may be right about everything you said in your post (I know essentially nothing about this field), but to me it sounds like you read some stuff that you're now parroting on a forum. Don't take that the wrong way, I've certainly done my fair share of that in my day. If you're really, truly interested in this stuff, hopefully this will spur you on to master the languages you need to be able to actually do the research, because this does sound like an interesting subject.

If it has been shown that early Japanese texts do indeed bear a similarity in form to whichever Chinese texts they were reading in Japan at the time, then it would seem logical that at least some of those texts are known. Which Chinese literary forms and time periods do they bear resemblance to? 左傳 reads quite differently than 王羲之. Also, "bilingual" or "fluent" is a real stretch. Literary Chinese at this time was exactly that: a literary language, not a spoken one, and there was not a whole lot of resemblance to the spoken language anymore, unless they were reading 變文. As previous generations of Western sinologists have proven, it's quite possible to read literary Chinese without speaking a word of any Chinese language.

And when you say a gaping hole, do you mean in English? Because I'd be willing to bet every last dollar I have that there is an absolute ton of stuff written about it in Japanese. Even on the web. Probably a lot in Chinese too.

[bluetortilla]

Well, you're right about a number of things. I'm just starting out on this, so I'm just basing what I say here on speculation and a cursory web search. What I need are some of the Chinese texts that were pivotal in the formation of early Japanese. I'm interested in these Chinese texts for use in several different surveys. Actually, i do have the Japanese skills (not ancient Japanese, but that's not a difficult curve), but I lack the Chinese skills (which I'm studying now). I hadn't planned on making this forum a starting point, but I just thought I'd ask. So no, I'm not parroting. I'm learning Chinese from the perspective of someone who knows Japanese and is interested in how the adoption of Chinese language and customs resulted in an enormous shift in Japanese social hierarchy and culture. I will try searching the web in japanese next, but my bet would be that I while I can find tons of modified 'Japanese' 漢文 texts I doubt I'll find any of the pure Chinese texts (and for now my Chinese is far too remedial to trace the Japanese texts to the Chinese ones without help). Maybe I'm wrong but I doubt it. This is the gap that seems to exist, at least on Wikipedia et al. I can't find any mention of imported texts from China. Obviously they not only existed but were meticulously studied. They should reveal a lot about Japan's development. Since I've been browsing English pages, then I guess you're right in saying there is a lack of information in English (which reveals a need for further study in this area).

I don't know the prevalence of bilingualism in the Nara (or perhaps to a lesser degree the Heian) eras, but even between Mandarin and Modern Japanese the number of homophones is quite high, which certainly is evidence of a major language exchange. From what I've learned of Cantonese the numbers are even higher, closer to the dialect of the Tang Dynasty. That would suggest frequent exchanges between Chinese and Japanese scholars during the period. Clearly a very strong Chinese influence in Japan was evidenced by a sudden shift in everything from the arts, architecture, and social structure. You are probably aware that Japanese 漢字 is separated into 訓 and 音 readings. I have no reason to suspect that any 音 reading today is not related to an actual Chinese utterance at some time in the past. Perhaps indeed you can read characters without speaking Chinese (I can read Chinese speaking Japanese ), but I seriously doubt that the Japanese just made up new sounds for characters- I'm pretty sure the sounds, minus certain vowels and tones, came from China. Later of course Japanese sounds were assigned to characters alongside the Chinese ones. Semantically too, you will find 熟語 adheres to Chinese meanings (even if today some are archaic) that originate from China. So while I have no idea as to the extent of 'bilingualism' among Japanese literary scholars around 900 A.D., it's pretty clear that Chinese readings, or close approximations, were adopted along with Chinese characters. To this day, hardly any 漢字 contain a 訓 reading alone.

I guess an abstract would state that the impact of Chinese language on Japanese, while recognized, has been underestimated by historians in both the West and Japan, and more work is required to chronicle and promote better general knowledge of this period. Especially the Nara era.

Well, enough for now. I'm new at this but would like to hone my green hones and write a short paper within the next couple of months on this topic. It just occurred to me that it wouldn't hurt to ask here first.

[Glenn]

There's a lot to respond to, but I think reading around Wikipedia should answer a lot of your questions. Since you know Japanese well, start here:

漢文

Highlights:

分類

以下のものに分かれる。

純漢文

古代中国の古典文語文法で書かれたもの。純粋漢文、正則漢文とも。現代中国では「文言文」と呼ぶ。

変体漢文

それ以外の変則的な文法の漢字文章。普通話や國語といった現代中国語文(現代中国では「漢文」〔簡体字：汉文〕と呼ぶ)やその諸方言文、白話体、日本独自の和習や万葉仮名を含んだ漢文および漢字のみの日本語文、新羅・高句麗の語習を多く含んだ碑文など。

日本に初めて漢文が入ってきたのがいつかということをはっきり定めることはできない。しかし、『後漢書』には、57年に倭の奴国が後漢の光武帝に使して、光武帝により、奴国の君主が倭奴国王に冊封され金印を綬与されたという記事があり、江戸時代に発見された金印には「漢委奴国王」という漢字が刻まれていた。この記事からすると、当時の倭国の人々が全く漢文が分からなかったとは考え難い。

また、現存する日本最古の歴史書である『古事記』の応神記には、

原文

故受命以貢上人、名和邇吉師。即論語十巻、千字文一巻、并十一巻、付是人即貢進。

現代語訳

(百済は、応神天皇の)命令を受けて和邇吉師という名の人を奉った。そして、論語10巻・千字文1巻のあわせて11巻（の書物）をこの人に付けて献上した。

という記述があり、さらに『古事記』と同時代の歴史書である『日本書紀』の応神紀の記事には、

原文

十五年秋八月壬戌朔丁卯、百濟王遣阿直岐。(中略)阿直岐亦能讀經典。即太子菟道稚郎子師焉。於是天皇問阿直岐曰、「如勝汝博士亦有耶。」對曰、「有王仁者、是秀也。」(中略)十六年春二月、王仁來之。則太子菟道稚郎子師之。習諸典籍於王仁。莫不通達。

現代語訳

(応神天皇)15年(西暦284年)の8月6日、百済王が阿直岐を遣わした。阿直岐は(儒教の)経典も読むことができた。そこで、皇太子である菟道稚郎子の先生にした。ここにおいて、天皇は阿直岐に「お前より優れているような博士はまだいるか」と訊ねた。(阿直岐は)「王仁という者がいまして、この者は優れています」と答えた。

(応神天皇)16年(西暦285年)の2月、王仁が来た。ただちに王仁を皇太子である菟道稚郎子の先生にした。(皇太子は)諸々の典籍を王仁に習い、理解しないものはなかった。

I'm sure you'll notice that the above quote is where I pulled my examples from earlier. Also, I'm sure you'll find this interesting (I sure did):

宣命体

There's also 文言文 (in Chinese), but it doesn't seem to have much to say about Japan and Japanese texts written in that style.

[OneEye]

First, you can't assume that just because Japanese borrowed readings from Chinese, that bilingualism was present or common. Now, I'm sure that some people may have been bilingual, but it's very possible that they simply borrowed Chinese readings, adapted them to Japanese pronunciation, and that's all. Of course, it's also possible that bilingualism was widespread. My point is that you can't make that claim without better evidence than borrowed vocabulary, which could very easily have been borrowed into the Japanese spoken language from written Chinese.

Maybe an example would be more illustrative. Let's say I'm a Tang-era scholar and I'm teaching you Classical Chinese (which is not the same as Middle Chinese, though I'm going to read it aloud in my own variety of Middle Chinese). Odds are that if I'm living in Japan, it is I who has learned Japanese rather than teaching you to speak Chinese. Anyway, I show you this phrase:

天地玄黃

and tell you it's pronounced "tʰen dijH ɣ4 ɣwaŋ" (taken from here)

You then adapt it to fit Japanese pronunciation, thus:

ten chi gen kou (this doesn't seem to be a good example because these readings don't line up very nicely, but I'm sure you get the point).

Eventually, due to the influence of the written language on the spoken language and the fact that you want to be able to discuss this stuff with your friends through speech rather than writing, you start using some of these words in speech. Since you're used to reading them with the above pronunciations, you say them that way when speaking, while of course treating them with Japanese grammar as happens in this sort of situation. Eventually they become a part of Japanese, without you ever having learned to speak Chinese at all.

Now, I'm not saying that this is what happened. Again, I don't know anything about this particular field, and I don't know any Japanese to speak of (those readings above may very well be wrong, I just copied them from the same site as the MC readings). It's just an example to demonstrate that you can't assume bilingualism just because there is a lot of shared vocabulary. You need better evidence.

You said in your earlier post that you "would argue that during this time period of Nara and Heian, there must have been countless scholars who were fluent in pure Chinese and could write prodigiously as well (this is amply measured by their mastery of kanji)." Why would you argue that? Based on what evidence? Have you come across anything that suggests they were actually fluent in any form of Chinese (not sure what "pure" means here), rather than just learning literary Chinese? Mastery of kanji is no indication of proficiency in the spoken language, and neither is a resemblance between literary forms. If you're going to put forth this argument, it needs to be based on evidence first. Don't come up with a shaky hypothesis and then go out looking to fit whatever evidence you come across to it. Go out and do all the research you can and then come up with your argument based on the evidence that's actually there.

The fact that you speak Japanese does not mean that you're not just parroting what you've read. You said a lot of things in your other post as if you know them to be true, when you have no real evidence to support them. I'm curious about, for example, how you know that early Japanese literary forms bore so much resemblance to literary Chinese (not that this on its own can demonstrate in any way that the Japanese scholars actually spoke Chinese). My guess is that you read it in someone's book, perhaps a scholar you know to be reputable. Nothing wrong with that, but then rather than saying things like "quite obvious to any scholar" and "beyond question", maybe you should say "I'm looking into whether there is anything to suggest that Japanese scholars in the Nara and Heian periods learned to speak Chinese. I've read books A, B, and C and papers D, E, and F which seem to suggest that this might be the case. Any leads on this?" Careful, conservative, rigorous research is much better than jumping to conclusions and then looking for square-shaped evidence to fit your round hypothesis.

One last thing: Chinese writing is not ideographic. That is an old myth that has been dispelled numerous times in the academic literature. Please do some more reading on this (John DeFrancis seems to be a popular one on this topic).

Anyway, this is interesting stuff. I personally would be really interested to read some of the early texts from Japan written in literary Chinese, maybe as part of our "Grand 文言文 Reading Project". Let us know what you find as you get further along in this study.

[Glenn]

I was under the impression that tones were relatively recent developments, and that up through Middle Chinese they didn't exist in the form they do today (the pitch contour variety, that is). Am I wrong about that?

OneEye, a lot of your points are valid. There are written records, though, of Japanese people being sent to China to study, and that they learned Chinese and brought it back to Japan (the so-called 遣唐使). At least, that's what I've read. They also apparently learned it from some Koreans who happened to be proficient in the Chinese of the day, although it may have just been written. The above-quoted Kojiki and Nihonshoki mention people who came from Baekje (百濟), a kingdom in southern Korea from 346-660 to teach Japanese emperors 文言, and somewhere on Wikipedia there's a picture of a gravestone in China for a Japanese exchange student, but I'm not sure where it is right now. So a lot of what bluetortilla is saying jibes with what I've read as well, although you are correct that using source materials is most preferable.

I just searched for the text of the 応神紀 and found this:

日本書紀巻第十

譽田天皇 應神天皇

譽田天皇、足仲彦天皇第四子也。母曰氣長足姬尊。天皇、以皇后討新羅之年、歲次庚辰冬十二月、生於筑紫之蚊田。幼而聰達。玄監深遠。動容進止。聖表有異焉。皇太后攝政之三年、立爲皇太子。時年三。初天皇在孕而、天神地祇授三韓。既産之、宍生腕上。其形如鞆。是肖皇太后爲雄裝之負鞆。

http://www.seisaku.b...i/shoki_10.html

After that text colors and sizes start changing for some reason I don't understand. Maybe you can speak to whether they're true 文言 or if they're a bit strange (or annotations or something):

時年三。

肖、此云阿叡。

上古時俗、號鞆謂褒武多焉。一云、初天皇爲太子、行于越國、拜祭角鹿笥飯大神。時大神與太子名相易。故號大神曰去來紗別神。太子名譽田別尊。然則可謂大神本名譽田別神、太子元名去來紗別尊。然無所見也、未詳。

時年百歲。

Perhaps that section of that piece can be a starting point for a discussion and analysis to see how strictly this early 8th century Japanese text lines up grammatically with the Chinese works of the day. As far as the process of how Chinese writing influenced the Japanese language lexically and phonologically, I can't really comment on that aside from speculation that, to me, makes a lot of sense. But I'm sure there are papers on that anyway, and that's a wholly separate topic. Or you could start from the beginning (which I didn't realize was also 漢文):

http://www.seisaku.bz/nihonshoki/shoki_01.html

It also has the text size and color variations, so there's a lot of potential study material there it seems (30 parts). I wish I could participate in those discussions, should they happen, but my level of Chinese isn't good enough to allow that. Anyway, I hope this has been worth both of your whiles.

[OneEye]

OneEye, a lot of your points are valid. There are written records, though, of Japanese people being sent to China to study, and that they learned Chinese and brought it back to Japan (the so-called 遣唐使).

And this is exactly the sort of evidence I was talking about. I wasn't trying to make any claims one way or another, just trying to point out the sort of thought process and evidence that should go into making these sorts of assertions.

Anyway, I'm no expert in historical syntax or anything like that, but the page you linked to looks like pretty straightforward 文言 to me. I didn't take the time to actually go through and read it all, but the bits I skimmed over are pretty easily readable. Interesting stuff!

[bluetortilla]

Wow. Lots of good stuff. 1eye, I‘m really not trying to hypothesize anything at this point, much less back up the sweeping opinions I've made (they're my own, thanks). The only thing I'm interested in is a brief phonetic survey of literature common to both Japan and China during the Nara (or Heian) period. Thank you Glenn for the leads; they are quite interesting, especially the 日本書紀. Yes, that's exactly the sort of discussion I'm interested in. It would be great to find a work simpler and straightforward though, like a popular poem or document that was widely read in common. Judging from the other links you've sent, it doesn't seem likely that I will. The apparent lack of old Chinese texts and literature common to both societies is curious to me. I think that they existed. But if they did, what happened to them? Maybe it can be seen if they were simply rewritten. There is much to learn. Perhaps I'll have to settle now for cross-referencing well known samples from Japan with a separate but similar pieces from China.

OneEye, as far as bilingualism is concerned, I did not imply that bilingualism was widespread in Nara (or ever) Japan. I said that i would imagine bilingualism was rare but common among scholars, as they were the ones disseminating the new writing system to fit the then-extant Japanese. I suppose supposition too is confined to what you consider as bilingualism. I recognize textual bilingualism without necessarily being able to speak the language well. Whatever its occurrence, it is a well-documentated fact that that Chinese 漢字 readings and semantics radically altered not only the development of the Japanese language, but its entire society as well. That's a huge topic, and not one I know enough about to debate over. I can only make statements based upon many years of living in Japan, with the observations and study of Japanese culture and language that go along with that.

I'm not sure what you think Chinese characters should be called if not 'ideogram' or why that is a month but I'd be curious to know. What is relevant about them is their semantic content independent of sound. But surely you aren't suggesting that one could go about learning a developed system of characters without employing a phonetic structure? If I just assigned phonemes to characters using standard English, the phonetic elements of the radicals would be lost and they would be far more difficult to remember and become quite impractical. Surely no one has actually done this. So I really can't say I agree- learning the characters would require learning a new sound system (even if you just 'speak it in your head'), i.e., new language. And so Chinese, both semantically and phonetically, was adapted by the Japanese for their writing system. We do have ample evidence for that. But unlike a purely phonetic alphabet, I believe that Chinese had a far greater impact on Japanese culture than the former would have.

Btw, looking at the link you gave seems to offer good transliteration to old Chinese (thanks), but the Japanese is modern. That's why they're so different. So all one would need is get the old Japanese sounds to compare.

合掌

[OneEye]

I said that i would imagine bilingualism was rare but common among scholars,

(emphasis mine)

No, you said "The bilingualism of early Japanese scholars however is beyond question and is quite obvious to any scholar of Japanese today surveying Chinese and vice versa." (again, emphasis mine). That's not nearly the same thing. I agree with the rest of this paragraph. It is certainly possible to learn to read Classical Chinese without being able to speak it (as has now been done for two thousand years in China). But that is not "bilingualism", at least not in the way I understand the term to generally be used. You can't really call it "biliteracy" either, because there was not any Japanese writing system yet. The best term I can think of is diglossia, in which the written language (classical Chinese) was likely read with either some form of Chinese pronunciation, or with Japanese approximations of the Chinese pronunciations of the characters. But that's not the same thing. You wouldn't say that a scholar who can read Egyptian was "bilingual" in his native language and Egyptian, you'd just say he can read Egyptian.

Now again, if there is evidence that they actually spoke some form of Chinese (as in, they were able to communicate orally in Chinese), then that's a different matter. I'm not claiming anything one way or the other about this, I'm just pointing out that the evidence you're using to support this is not working. You may very well be right about all of this for all I know, but if you are then it's by accident, and not because of what you're using to support your argument.

I'm not sure what you think Chinese characters should be called if not 'ideogram' or why that is a month but I'd be curious to know. What is relevant about them is their semantic content independent of sound.

A writing system is defined as a system of marks used to record speech. Chinese characters originally recorded Old Chinese. Other characters were created over time, and they recorded a morpheme of whichever form of Chinese was spoken in that time and place. Words have sound, therefore the characters are not independent of sound. Chinese characters consist of form (形), sound (音), and meaning (義).

Chinese characters are generally referred to as logograms. That is, they refer to words (or really, morphemes). Some characters are ideograms, such as 一, 二, 上, etc. In Chinese philology these are referred to as 指事 characters. The overwhelming majority of characters are 形聲 characters, which consist of a signifier and a phonetic. The fact that in Japanese the phonetic aspect of characters is often ignored does not mean that the characters themselves contain no phonetic information.

Unfortunately, the word "ideogram" does still come up sometimes when referring to the writing system as a whole. That's a result of a very long time of misunderstanding and bad information.

As a side note, "radicals" are essentially useless when talking about etymology. They're just a (somewhat) convenient way to index characters in a dictionary, nothing more.

But surely you aren't suggesting that one could go about learning a developed system of characters without employing a phonetic structure?

I never said anything like that. In fact, claiming that the characters have "semantic content independent of sound" would seem to go hand in hand with such a suggestion, and I'm saying the exact opposite.

As to the rest of that paragraph, I think you're unclear on the relation between writing and speech. Don't be tempted to think of it in terms of English or modern Japanese. Chinese written in the Tang dynasty was not the same as the spoken language, and in fact bore little resemblance. There was 白話 literature, but it was considered vulgar and therefore an unlikely vehicle to use to bring writing to Japan. The Chinese writing system resembled the spoken language during the Zhou dynasty, and again beginning in the 20th century, but did not at any time in between (apart from the 白話). Knowing the pronunciation, or some approximation thereof, of a bunch of characters is not the same as knowing how to speak the language, especially when the language being read had so little relationship to the spoken language of the time.

Btw, looking at the link you gave seems to offer good transliteration to old Chinese (thanks), but the Japanese is modern. That's why they're so different. So all one would need is get the old Japanese sounds to compare.

I'm afraid it isn't that simple. Different characters were borrowed into Japanese at different times in history, and the Sino-Japanese pronunciations came from different areas of China. You'd have to look into both elements for each character.

Apart from that, no reconstruction is a good transliteration of Old Chinese. They're all shaky at best, because there's so little evidence to go on. But anyway, what you're looking for isn't Old Chinese, but Middle Chinese. Even then, there is considerable variation depending on what time and place you're talking about within Middle Chinese. This is really tedious stuff, I'm afraid.

[bluetortilla]

This is really tedious stuff, I'm afraid.

I concur. Would you be offended if I suggested that you are approaching all of this a little too academically? I appreciate your sharing your knowledge, but I'm not trying to publish anything here on these forums and I for one shrug off quibbles, debates, or the necromantic flights of fancy of zealous scholars. In other words, from where I stand there is no argument. If this was a debate to have been won you are the winner. I'm merely looking for documents like the ones Glenn sent.

I just want the names of Chinese literary works (vulgar or no) that have surfaced in Japan during the Nara and Heian periods. If I can't find those, I'd like to find the next best thing. Down in the road I'd be interested in postulating on what seems to be the dearth of such documents. For now, I'm not interested in how people commonly spoke back then, but only on how the characters were pronounced.

合掌

[OneEye]

Hm...

First, I don't know that bit about debates to be won and necromancy was all about, but whatever.

You started this thread saying things like:

But I would argue that during this time period of Nara and Heian, there must have been countless scholars who were fluent in pure Chinese and could write prodigiously as well (this is amply measured by their mastery of kanji).

I thought it was reasonable to assume you were actually trying to make that argument.

You said things like "I would argue", and "there is a gaping hole in a historical survey of the..." and "would like to...write a short paper...on this topic". Again, I thought it was reasonable to assume you wanted to approach this academically, but I guess not. If you're just looking for some texts out of general interest, why not just say that? That's an interesting enough topic in its own right. I'd be interested to read some texts in literary Chinese written by Japanese people at that time too, like I mentioned earlier. We'll hopefully be reading a 17th century Korean something-or-other in literary Chinese sometime in the next few months in the 文言文 reading project, and I'd love to do something similar with a Japanese text.

[bluetortilla]

All good then. When I come across something, I'll let you know. There are plenty of literary Chinese works written in Japan (well, if you consider 漢文 to be Chinese- I haven't studied them yet); the missing links are the Chinese works that were read and studied in Japan. Those have been proving to be very elusive.

I know very little about the literature from this period and I'm just getting started in familiarizing myself with it.

Thanks for your help and interest.

[eslang]

@bluetortilla

Are you still looking for "some of classic Chinese texts that were circulating in Japan during the Nara and Heian Eras"?

There are some classic Chinese quotations used in The Tale of Genji. (Po-Chu-i's Collected Works used in The Tale of Genji)

Or you can read up on 菅原道真 (Sugawara no Michizane) who is regarded as an excellent poet, particularly in Chinese poetry.

[bluetortilla]

Yes, I am thanks. I'm familiar with the げんじものがたり but never thought to look there as it's one of the first major works to extensively use hiragana. I didn't know it contains quotes from Chinese literature.

I would think comparing literary works, particularly poetry would be fruitful. I'll give Sugawara a look. I take your saying he's an aficionado of Chinese poetry?

Much more difficult to find are the works of the Chinese contemporaries.

[eslang]

Murasaki Shikibu tend to quote and refer to 白居易 (Bai Juyi or Po Chu-i) poems often in the Genji Monogatari. It may not be easy to spot them because it is mainly written in hiragana with some kanji. Alternatively you may try looking up 白氏文集.

There are also some Poetry in Chinese quoted in this book by Donald Keene - Anthology of Japanese Literature from the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century (UNESCO Collection of Representative Works: European).