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Abstract At the turn of the Qing Dynasty from the Ming, a large number of antiQing opponents, including scholars, monks and merchants fled to Japan and became perfect Chinese teachers to teach Chinese culture in Japan. Lots of Japanese at that time were so fond of studying Chinese that in Japan came into being a special subject Toingaku, which facilitated the Japanese to read Chinese classics directly with Chinese pronunciation (namely Toin in Japanese). In the mid18th Century, Toingaku developed from practical Chinese teaching to theoretical studies of Chinese phonology. Monk Muso Munnou was the most outstanding scholar in the field as he wrote many books on Chinese phonology, such as Mako Inkyo, San On Sei Ka, and so on. He regarded Inkyo published in the late Tang Dynasty as a reference book which could be used to examine the correctness of pronunciation for Chinese characters. However, the book was not only ignored by the Chinese but also misunderstood by most Japanese scholars for its obscurity and obsolescence even though it had been republished many times in Japan. Thus, he labeled Inkyo with Katakana, explained it in Japanese, and published it with a new title Mako Inkyo so that the old book took a new look, shedding light on the field of Chinese phonology. Affected by traditional Yi Xia debating thought, Munnou and other Japanese sinologists at that time took the view that the pronunciation of Chinese language had been polluted by the languages of the northern minorities, and that its phonetic system had strayed away from the orthodox Chinese rhyme system after Wu Hu Chaos (the five barbarian tribes during the Wei and Jin Dynasties), and the ruling of the Yuan and Qing Dynasties. The influence was so great that even the Japanese pronunciation of Goon and Kanon for Chinese characters was ruined, resulting in a lot of distorted pronunciations. Therefore, it was necessary to correct the Japanese mispronunciation of Goon and Kanon, and Chinese mispronunciation of Huayin as well according to the phonological reference book Inkyo, The work led to the publication of his important book San On Sei Ka. Taking the language policy of the Qing Dynasty and the actual situation of Mandarin Chinese into account, Munnou marked the Mandarin pronunciation with Japanese Katakana for most Chinese characters in Inkyo. Based on the literature reviews concerning Chinese phonology of his teachers and students, especially Munnou himself, we can understand Japanese sinologists' awareness about Chinese language at that time, and also learn the fact of Mandarin Chinese in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, especially after Emperor Kangxi's reign. There were two kinds of generallyacknowledged Mandarin Chinese Guanhua or Dushuyin (reading pronunciation). One of them carried four tones, Ping, Shang, Qu, Ru, represented by Nanjing Mandarin and the other was Zhongzhou Yun, which had no entering tone, and was used as singing sound. However, neither of them was better than Hangzhou dialect, which had alternation of voiced and voiceless initials, and was more suitable for rhyming dictionary and closer to old Chinese pronunciation in the Tang and Song Dynasties. This is the main reason why most Tang Tong Shi (Japanese interpreters for Chinese language) preferred to learn Nanjing Mandarin, and some of them even learned Hangzhou dialect besides Nanjing Mandarin before 1870s.
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2014, Vol. 44 
