Right와 일본어

Abstract

The term ‘right’ is rendered as 權利 in Japanese as well as in Korean and Chinese. The Chinese characters 權 and 利 do not, however, denote any meaning of ‘righteous’. Indeed, 利權, the reversed form, even has pejorative connotations. The difficulty which Japanese speakers experience in understanding how the term 權利 can represent the meaning ‘right’ implies that this basic concept which Western people make use of in their legal and political discussions is still not properly understood by modern Japanese people. In fact, the existence of this problem goes unrecognized. In the initial attempts to translate this term in the late 19th century, there were various efforts to clarify its original sense as shown by the alternatives： 通義, 權理, 權義, etc., where 義 and 理 convey this meaning of ‘righteous.’ Moreover, the Japanese language actually has several pre-existing terms which denote meanings close to ‘right’, for example, 株 and 分, and when the meaning of ‘right’ needed to be explained in late 19th century Japan, these terms were used. The concept of 分, in particular, can be shown by analysis to be surprisingly similar to that of ‘right.’ The common understanding that East Asia originally had no concepts applicable to the concept of ‘right’ is therefore false.