Japan Is to China As UK Was to European Continent

choi

Tod Lindberg, Japan’s Tense Neighborhood; China talks about a ‘peaceful rise,’ even as it probes for weakness. The Weekly Standard (magazine), vol 20: _ (Apr 6, 2015)
www.weeklystandard.com/articles/ ... borhood_899938.html

Quote:

"No one thinks China is eager for a war with any of its neighbors; its 1979 invasion of Vietnam was the act of a China in very different circumstances from those of rapidly advancing prosperity today. But if there’s a door, China will knock on it, and if there’s no answer, China will try the handle.

"China, for its part, has also been pouring on the hate toward Japan, though the current heat map is not as bright as it was six months ago. This is nothing new. A foundational myth of the Chinese Communist party is that its forces (rather than the Nationalist forces) were at the forefront of resistance to the Japanese invasion in 1937

"One interesting sight in the offices of many current and former Japanese security officials is an upside-down map of East Asia. Sometimes, apparently, a change of perspective helps to clarify the geopolitics. Upside down, Japan looks a bit like the UK off the coast of continental Europe. And therein lies a strategy. Japanese mistrust of its giant continental neighbor dictates a policy of closer cooperation with its offshore neighbors and, especially, with the United States.

Former diplomat Kuni "Miyake 宮家 邦彦 [the kanji 宮家 means the house of a prince 親王, who the emperor award a title which ends with 宮] proposes an 'Island Alliance,' building out from the US-Japan alliance, of like-minded maritime countries basically satisfied with the regional status quo: Australia, the Philippines, Indonesia. He sees its three principles as maintaining a balance of power with regard to the continent (no Chinese hegemony); maintaining a 'healthy distance' from the continent (a principle of non-intervention); and securing the sea lines of communication, thus a global free trade system.

"Obama has made clear his sense of affront over Vladimir Putin’s flouting '21st-century' norms of international behavior by annexing Crimea and advancing into eastern Ukraine. In Japan, some like Miyake think China is beginning to do by sea what Putin is doing on land; hence the 'gray zone' probing the seriousness with which Japan and its American ally take Japan’s possession of the Senkaku Islands. Perhaps this is an overstatement, but in any case, we have learned how demonstrably reckless it is to rely on 21st-century norms—or any other norms—as a substitute for serious security policy.

"Tod Lindberg is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford, and a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard.

choi

My comment:
(a) This is a long article, taking three Web pages. I think there is no need to read the text (except for quotations above), but do view the map on the first Web page (only).
(b) Tod Lindberg has a English Wikipedia page, which is not notable (and thus there is no need to read).
(i) Charles Lindbergh (1902 – 1974) made the solo flight from Long Island, New York to Paris on May 20–21, 1927.
(ii) Dictionary of American Family Names (published by Oxford University Press) does not include Lindbergh (which I presume is a variant of Lindberg). As for Lindberg, the same dictionary says Lindberg is a "Swedish [surname]: * * * Swedish lind ‘lime tree’ + berg ‘mountain’, ‘hill’ [as well as] south German [surname]: * * * name from any of several places so named."
(iii) Proust, 配瑪德琳小蛋糕的是椴花茶，不是菩提花茶或萊姆茶. June 20, 2013
blog.udn.com/albertineproust3/7789326
(菩提樹長得很像椴樹; 積非成是; 配瑪德琳小蛋糕 petite madeleine)
(A) For pronunciation, see Proust (surname)
www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/proust
(B) Madeleine (cake)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeleine_(cake)
(C) At the top of this blog is a Proust quotation (in traditional Chinese), whose link brings us to another blog disclosing its source: 追憶似水年華 [vol] I 在斯萬家那邊. 聯經版 , 1992, p 58.

That is a (Taiwanese) translation of the first--and very old--English translation:
Marcel Proust (au) (Charles Kenneth Scott-Moncrieff, translator), Swann's Way. In  New York: Henry Holt & Co, 1922, at page 67.
books.google.com/books?isbn=1486411916

The Scott-Moncrieff’s translation has been criticized for basing on the original, faulty French edition, see Jerry Farber, Scott Moncrieff's Way: Proust in Translation. 1997.
zacker.info/pst/moncrieff6.html
(cited as a reference in a Wiki page about the book)
, and not sticking closely to the French original. See Mary Blume, Translating Proust: Doing it Swann's way?  New York Times, Dec 5, 2003
www.nytimes.com/2003/12/05/busin ... iht-blume_ed3_.html
("Moncrieff * * * was working from a faulty text and was both too fustian and too free")

* In Jerry Farber’s blog, Scott-Moncrieff’s title (“Remembrance of Things Past”) is what the 聯經’s title was from; there was an error (“For one thing, an entirely new translation, by Richard Howard, should be in print before long”).
Marcel Proust (au), DJ Enright (ed), CK Scott-Moncrieff (tr), Terence Kilmartin (tr), Richard Howard (introduction), Swann's Way. New York: Modern Library (whose parent is Penguin Random House), 2003.
(iv) Less you see the forest for the trees, see Etymology of the Phrase 'Cannot See the Forest for the Trees.' StackExchange, Oct 7, 2012
english.stackexchange.com/questions/84522/etymology-of-the-phrase-cannot-see-the-forest-for-the-trees
, please read
The Cookie
www.haverford.edu/psychology/ddavis/p109g/proust.html
("The definitive French Pleiade edition translated by CK Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. New York: Vintage[-Random, 1982]. pp 48-51)
, where the narrator (“M” in the book; Marcel Proust), as a grown-up, reminisced his childhood visits to his aunt’s house at Combray.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combray

Charles Swann, a wealthy stockbroker and family friend of M’s parents.
(v)
(A) A lime tree is Tilia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilia
(a genus; "Commonly called lime trees in the British Isles, they are not closely related to the lime fruit. Other names include linden"/ The genus occurs in Europe and eastern North America, but the greatest species diversity is found in Asia [which means this is where the genus originates]; deciduous; section 1 Name)
(B) Contrast
Ficus religiosa  菩提樹
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ficus_religiosa
(also known as the Bo-Tree (from the Sanskrit [b]odhi: "wisdom," "enlightened," and as a Sinhalization of this[,] the Sinhala Bo)

* bodhisattva
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhisattva
(In Buddhism, a bodhisattva (Sanskrit) is an enlightened (bodhi) being (sattva).
(C) Buddha:  It is capitalized, because it is a proper name.
* Gautama Buddha
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha
(also known as Shakyamuni; The word Buddha means "awakened one" or "the enlightened one;" The times of Gautama's birth and death are uncertain [possibly around 400 BC]; The evidence of the early texts suggests that Siddhārtha Gautama [the last one being the surname and his father being Shuddodana Gautama] was born into the Shakya clan; No written records about Gautama have been found from his lifetime or some centuries thereafter)
* Buddha (n; etymology: Sanskrit, literally 'enlightened', past participle of [Sanskrit verb] budh 'know [understand, wake up, restore to life')
www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/Buddha
* bodhisattva (n; from bodhi- (from budh-) + sattva)
www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/de ... english/bodhisattva
* Sanskrit English dictionary (In the preceding item, definition of "budh" comes from this dictionary.)
muni (noun masculine): "holy man, sage"  (Shakyamuni = sage of Shakya clan)
spokensanskrit.de/index.php?script=HK&beginning=0+&tinput=muni&trans=Translate&direction=AU
  ^ Sanskrit grammar
     en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanskrit_grammar
     (Sanskrit is a highly inflected language with three grammatical genders (masculine, feminine, neuter) and three numbers (singular, dual, plural). It has eight cases: nominative, vocative, accusative,  instrumental, dative, ablative, genitive, and locative)
  ^ Sanskrit as a living language (ca. 2nd millennium BC–600 BC); continues as a liturgical language.  Wikipedia