Lol the title translates: Bread of Peace. I seriously don't doubt that I'll see a lot of spanish people reading this xD
Also 'pan' translates as bread in both spanish and japanese.
As I recall, Japan adopted the word "pan" from the Dutch.
It wasn't from the Portuguese?
Afaik from my japanese teacher portuguese christians came to japan and brought bread with them and they called it pan ( パン) thats why its written in katakana cause the origin came frim abroad and they didnt knew what bread was before the portuguese came.
That may be right ans my memory is slightly off. It's definitely not from the French "pain", even though it's a homophone. I do know that European traders, mostly Portugese and Dutch, were very much present in Japan long before Admiral Perry's day, acting as vital trading intermediaries with China, who Japan was officially at odds with but were happy to trade with indirectly. The Jesuits were a big part of that, as I recall, and one of the big universities where I come from is named after Francis Xavier, who was one of the major players. At least until the Franciscans came along and fucked things up.
Oh god I seriously did not expect a debate about this o.o But anyways I just meant that 'pan' means the same in spanish too, but since you guys brought up an interesting topic I did my research to the point that I know that the word originally came from the Latin word 'patina' (meaning 'dish') and throughout there the word itself evolved in other languages. Yes the Dutch had an influence, and so did others. It just happens that the Portuguese travelers first introduced the bread into Japanese culture and since they didn't have a word for it they basically borrowed the word and that's why they write pan in katakana because it's a foreign word. Oh and 'pan' is pronounced almost the exact same way in all europe, or it's atlease similar in some way.
