Ukraine is situated between Europe and Asia, and can regard itself as part of both, but this crossroads constantly raises doubts about which part is best, which countries to cooperate with, where to look for support and inspiration. While Europe is imposing its requirements on Ukraine, the East (Japan, Korea, China, India, Arab countries) are waiting for our business proposals, willing to cooperate, showing interest in and understanding of the situation in Ukraine. An increasing number of Ukrainians are showing professional interest in the East and studies of Oriental languages and cultures are flourishing. It is safe to assume that the foundations of further collaboration have been laid. More on this, on contacts with the East and cultures that appear so different by their very uniqueness, and on prospects in the following interview with Dr. Ivan BONDARENKO, Ph.D., head of the Chair of Chinese, Korean, and Japanese Philology at the Taras Shevchenko National University.
Bondarenko: “Since time immemorial Ukraine has been at the crossroads of many peoples and civilizations. At present, the Institute of Oriental Studies and our Institute of Philology are preparing for publication a joint monograph [in Ukrainian] entitled ‘Ukraine’s Linguistic and Literary Contacts with Countries in the Orient.’ In the first chapter, ‘The Roots,’ the author, Dr. Tyshchenko, refers to Ukrainian place names and proves that our language is packed with borrowings from Arabic, Turkic, and Persian. On the other hand, one finds in the names of towns, rivers, and villages a lot of Celtic and Scandinavian root morphemes. In other words, we’re still under the influence of those Asian and North European tribes that inhabited what is currently Ukrainian territory long before the Scythes and Polovtsi (Cumans).
“Ukraine’s position astride two worlds is only natural. The most topical question for us is whether to follow the European road or turn eastward. Life itself will give us the answer. As a nation, we are certainly closer to the Europeans, but, regrettably, no one is waiting for us in Europe. Hard as we try to get there, whichever way we choose, we are told to wait, that we aren’t ready to be admitted, that we aren’t sufficiently educated or cultured. Meanwhile, they are waiting for us in the East; markets in China, Korea, Afghanistan, India, and Iran keep their doors open. They are interested in our goods: aircraft, armaments, textiles, steel, grain, household appliances, you name it.
“Here is a vivid example. Philologists study some forty languages at our institute (French, Italian, Spanish, German, and many Oriental ones, including Japanese, Chinese, Persian, Hindi, Turkish, Arabic, and so on). By the way, students majoring in Oriental languages more often take internship courses in such countries than those majoring in European languages. Almost ninety percent of the students from our Orientalist chairs visit Korea, China, Japan, Turkey — they are enrolled in their leading universities for six months and sometimes for a year. In contrast, getting a month-long internship in Great Britain or France is a problem, considering the entry visa red tape alone. A mere ten percent of our best students can make trips to Europe, although we have joined the Bologna Process. There are no such problems with the East. Not so long ago we sent a group of students to Korea. Every year up to 25 students at my chair alone visit the countries whose languages they study under various study programs. Even though Japan is an expensive country to visit, we have scholarly cooperation and student exchange agreements with four universities.”
How attractive Oriental cultures are to Ukrainians?
Bondarenko: “Their interest in these cultures has been increasing with each passing year. Every year we admit 55 students majoring in Chinese, 25 in Japanese, and 10 in Korean. There are also students interested in studying Hindi, Persian — one class for each language — and Arabic and Turkish (two classes each). The competition in the Orientalist department matches those in the German, Spanish or French ones. Last year, Chinese placed second after English in terms of applicants.”
What about Japan and its recent interest in Ukraine?
Bondarenko: “My academic chair is constantly reminded of their support. The Mitsubishi corporation gives ,000 each year for the Japanese study groups organized on the basis of the Japanese Language and Culture Center. Two Korean companies, LG and Samsung, are competing to sponsor courses in Korean. Of course, it’s another way to advertise themselves, but the Institute of Philology has advanced technological equipment as a result. For example, the Japanese have supplied state-of-the-art equipment for two language labs, two multimedia centers, and a computer classroom with half a million dollars donated by the Japanese government. These language labs are meant for advanced training courses. Here each student has a booth with direct contact with the instructor through earphones. The instructor launches various study programs, monitors the student’s progress, correcting mistakes, and so on. The polyfunctional instructor’s desk looks like a spaceship’s control panel. These labs were equipped [and tested] by two Japanese specialists within two weeks (a Ukrainian team of ten would have worked for several months).
“Native-speaking lecturers willingly visit our Institute of Philology. In fact, the Orientalist chairs employ 14 such specialists, among them Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Arabs, Indians. For example, Sensei Kataoka is a Tenri University graduate. He took a postgraduate course at the Kyiv National University, focusing on a comparative study of Ukrainian and Japanese folklore. Japanese dance groups and instructors also visit us every year. They teach our students the famous tea ceremony, calligraphy, and so on. One of the dance groups presented us with a 13-string koto. Hopefully, our students will learn to play it before long.”
When did Oriental studies begin in Ukraine? Who were the founding fathers?
Bondarenko: “Oriental studies in Ukraine date back centuries. In the mid-19th century, the Richelieu Lyceum in Odesa had courses in Arabic and Persian. Lviv was the next Orientalist center, followed by Kharkiv in the 1920s. Academician Ahatanhel Krymsky is considered to be the founding father of scholarly Oriental studies in Ukraine. He was a distinguished historian, linguist, and translator, versed in Turkic and Arabic. His scholarly endeavors in the 1920s-1930s are associated with the blossoming of Orientalism in Ukraine. Krymsky was Scientific Secretary with the Academy of Sciences [of Soviet Ukraine]. Among other things, he stepped in to help establish the journal Skhidny svit (The Orient) and the Academy’s Oriental Study Department. The latter was meant to become a full-fledged Orientalist research center, except that this never happened. In the 1930s, Oriental studies in Ukraine suffered severe [NKVD] repressions and were actually annihilated. Ahatanhel Krymsky was arrested [in July 1941]. In 1942 he died at the Kustanai Penitentiary [in Soviet Kazakhstan]. It was only in the 1990s that the matter of reinstating Oriental studies in Ukraine was raised by Omeljan Pritsak (a Ukrainian, Lviv-born Orientalist of world renown who had immigrated to Europe after WW II, eventually settling in the United States, where he headed the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute for many years) with President Leonid Kravchuk after Pritsak’s return to his beloved Ukraine. In the mid-1990s, two Orientalist chairs, specializing respectively in Turkic and the Middle East, were established at Kyiv National University. The Chair of Chinese, Korean and Japanese Philology was instituted in 2004. I’ve had the honor of heading it since its inception.”
How did you come to be an Orientalist?
Bondarenko: “In the 1970s I graduated from Leningrad University’s Faculty of Philology — it was there I’d started studying Japanese as a third extracurricular language. Later, I worked as a lecturer at Annaba University, in Algeria. Japanese was first just an episode from my student life series, an exotic one. I never expected it to determine my future. As it was, Japanese listed in my CV had me posted to Japan, in 1990, as a Russian and Ukrainian teacher. When in Japan, I worked on my Japanese, as an associate professor with Tenri University’s Faculty of International Culture Studies (this university is located in Nara Prefecture). I continued studying at the Nara Japanese Language School where I received a diploma allowing me to teach Japanese as a foreign language.
“After returning to Ukraine, in 1999 I defended my doctorate (“Russia-Japan: 18th-Century Linguistic Contacts”) at the National Academy of Sciences. While digging up data at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Archives in St. Petersburg, I came across interesting handwritten Japanese-Russian glossaries dating from that period, drawn up by Japanese mariners who’d found themselves in Russia, due to some or other circumstances. Being unable to return home, they eventually ended up in Moscow and St. Petersburg. By the way, Peter I founded a Japanese language school in St. Petersburg, in 1705. It would last until 1816. Anyway, the glossaries I discovered proved to be valuable information sources, considering that those Japanese seafarers, originating from various parts of Japan, added various colloquialisms. Moreover, they used Cyrillic letters to convey the Japanese transcription, helping to understand the peculiarities of pronunciation. Also, these glossaries reflected Siberian vernacular — which inexplicably turned out to have been strongly influenced by the Ukrainian language. As it was, I found lots of borrowings from Ukrainian in those glossaries, both on the phonetic and lexical levels. In other words, spoken Ukrainian had a very strong influence on spoken Russian at the time, so much so as to find its reflection in the Russian vocabulary used by the Japanese… including bandura, borshch, batih (whip), horilka (vodka), dolia (fate, destiny, lot), to mention but a few.”
Where do you think Japanese culture has the strongest influence in Ukraine?
Bondarenko: “Before the Second World War, [Soviet] Russia’s Far East was mostly inhabited by Ukrainians. An early 1930s’ census points to over 50 percent of the populace, the result of Stolypin’s reform and, later, Stalin’s dekulakization. Even now you can find lots of typically Ukrainian family names in the phone directories of Vladivostok and Khabarovsk. After the Russian Revolution [October 1917] a lot of Ukrainians emigrated to Manchuria, particularly to Harbin. Proof of the presence of many Ukrainians in Harbin at the time is the fact that the first Ukrainian-Japanese dictionary with 11,000 entries came off the presses there in 1944, compiled by Vasyl Odynets and Anatolii Dibrova. It was also there that the foundations for cultural contacts (however tentative at first) between Ukrainians and Japanese were laid. This is manifest in the local [ethnic] Ukrainians’ creative heritage: songs, books, ballets. A Ukrainian-language literary journal was published in Harbin. It carried Ukrainian translations of Japanese poetry, articles written by Japanese journalists, and so on.”
What elements of Japanese culture appealed the most to you as a Ukrainian?
Bondarenko: “The Oriental culture is often referred to as that of shame, while the European one is tagged as that of guilt. All of us, being Christians, suffer the original sin and have to spend our life atoning for it before our Lord Jesus Christ. For as long as we live, we keep sinning and asking His forgiveness. The Oriental shame culture is about keeping a lifestyle preventing one from being ashamed of one’s own deeds and responsible for letting others feel ashamed of themselves — be it the enemy, friend or next of kin. This attitude is clearly manifest on all levels, even in politics (you will never hear a [Japanese] politician lash out at his predecessor, condemning his policy — in glaring contrast with the persisting practices in Ukraine and Russia. Today, the names of Mao Zedong and Ho Chi Minh are held in esteem in their respective countries. Their mummies will be kept in the mausoleums, and no one will be allowed to smear their names. The main thing in the Oriental mentality is to understand, even support the enemy instead of destroying him.
Japanese are particularly tolerant toward foreigners, they forgive lots of their infractions. They allow you an opportunity to make good what you’ve done wrong. I made lots of mistakes during the ten years of teaching practice in Japan, but my Japanese colleagues were so discreet I’d never read their faces to see I’d done something wrong. It was their remarkably tolerant attitude that charged me with an overwhelming desire to get better, upgrade myself. Now this is what makes the difference between our mentalities, something our Ukrainian society lacks so badly: charity, understanding, sensitive approach, all of which the Japanese strictly observe when among themselves and with foreigners.”
