A Comparative Study On Chinese And Japanese Cow Culture

Humans are associated with nature in many ways, among which the relationship between humans and animals are seen to be the most unique. Cows are regarded to be an indispensable and necessary cattle in the production and economic activities in farming society and frequently appear in idioms and proverbs. Cows are treated as " Five Cereals God" for totemism, which has strong reproductivity. Thus, cows are looked upon as a token to bring humans a bumper grain harvest and propitious portent. We can clearly figure out the ethnic and epoch differences between China and Japan from the "cow" culture. Until now, many researchers have studied the origin, variety, distribution of cows as well as the medical values, raising methods of cows and the functions of cows in fete, war and transportation. However, there are not many studies concerning comparative studies on Chinese and Japanese "cow words" up to now. In addition, even though china and Japan both have cows, their respective cultural connotations differ from each other. Therefore, the paper takes the totemisms between two countries and cow words between two languages as the research target and makes the comparative study in terms of language and culture. This paper is based on abundant practical corpus, and tends to seek the cultural elements in cow words in cognitive and semantic approaches. Moreover, the cow words in two languages have a lot in common and a few differences in terms of image. This paper tends to find out the possible causes for their geographical and ethnic psychology differences in the analysis of the differences.In the first place, the paper put forth a comparative study on Chinese and Japanese cow cultures in terms of totemism, farming, transportation and dieting. Furthermore, the paper compares the concepts and images of cows. The paper generalizes the words and idioms that contain the character "cow" in two langauges. In addition, the paper classifies all the words into three types-negative, positive and neutral, and detailedly compares and analyses the attitudes of Chinese and Japanese people towards the image of cows. Last but not the least, the paper attempts to find out the likely causes that lead to the different attitudes of Chinese and Japanese people towards the image of cows in terms of geographical environment and ethnic psychology.The author finds the similarities and differences between Chinese and Japanese cow cultures through the comparative study on cow totemism and cow words. In terms of cow totemism, we can readily observe that both Chinese and Japanese people pray for a bumper crop year, using cows. Therefore, cows have long been respected and worshipped in that cows can make crop productive and are seen as a symbol of good harvest. Moreover, both China and Japan have festivals to celebrite cow gods and think that cows boast of their divinity. From farming and transport point of view, caws as precious labor, is treasure to the agriculture, also is very close and benefit to human being.Cows loss wild nature, share weal and woe with human and for so long have been regarded as an important partner to treat by Japanese and Chinese people. In terms of cow words, it can be easily seen that both Chinese and Japanese have negative, positive and neutral symbolic meanings. From positive point of view, cows represent valuable labor force and ambassador of peace; from negative viewpoint, cows have such sombolic images as slow movement, torpor, stupidity and stubbornness; from neutral point of view, cows often appear in words and idioms concerning plants, animals, places and person's names. Owing to the geographical and ethnic differences, images of cows in Chinese and Japanese peoples'minds alter respectively. Although Chinese think cows are stubborn and stupid, they generally consider cows to be inured to hardships, modest, diligent and sacrificing. Thus, Cows are highly praised in China with many positive symbolic meanings; on the other hand, in Japan idioms derived from cows almost all bear negative symbolic meanings.