Point of interest: 山川異域 風月同天

Japanese aid packages to China in response to the COVID-19 virus outbreak have been including the following extract from a

かんし

漢詩

(ancient Chinese poem):

In English, this means roughly 'although our rivers and mountains are foreign, nature's beauty and the heavens are the same'. In other words, even though we may live in different places, we all face the same things. This sentiment is a wonderful expression of solidarity by Japanese people with the suffering of Chinese people isolated and alone with the virus - even as Japan began to face the same issues.

Since this is from a traditional Chinese poem, it is missing the okurigana (accompanying kana) that would provide the grammatical context in modern Japanese. A modern Japanese reader would have the choice of either using the readings of the words and kanji as is, or of 'translating' the poem by expressing the full meaning in modern Japanese. In this case, the former option is quite understandable, as all of the necessary words are still in use:

So the literal reading would simply be

さんせん

山川

いいき

異域

、

ふうげつ

風月

どう

同

てん

天

.

A more poetic rendition into modern Japanese might be something like the following: