The influence of China, beginning primarily with the Tang dynasty, on Japan can be seen in nearly every aspect of its culture. Architecture, religion, ideology, arts and various other aspects were heavily impacted by trade and communication with China proper throughout history. Even Kanji (漢字, lit. Chinese/Han characters), one of the three scripts of written Japanese, is essentially Chinese characters reformed while the other two were based off cursive scripts or radicals of Chinese characters used to phonetically represent spoken Japanese. Furthermore, Literary Chinese, called Kanbun (漢文, lit. Chinese writing,) was used in official government or intellectual writings until around the 20th century.

During the 19th-20th century, when Japan became one of the most powerful states in the world as China fell into disrepair and became antiquated, there was a rise of the ideas of Japanese nationalism and superiority. Did Japan during this time see the Chinese aspects of their culture as “Chinese” or something disconnected and changed to become uniquely Japanese? Was there any scholarly discussion on the potential identity crisis this may have been causing or any push revive old indigenous Japanese practices and ideas and forgo Chinese influenced ones due to their association with failing, subjugated state? Was this topic even a thought on the mind of the average learned man of the time?