Noncompositional

Though it is currently trendy for Japanese writers to use foreign words in their prose, this was not always the case. In fact, during the Meiji period, Japanese scholars faced the problem of translating a large amount of foreign (Western) literature into Japanese. In order to accomplish this task, they coined many hundreds of new words from Chinese morphemes. In some cases they took previously-existing compounds and assigned them new meanings. Such is the case for 経済 ‘economy’ and 社会 ’society.’ The former is an abbreviation of 経世済民 (or 経世済俗), which means ‘govern the world and save the people.’ The latter, 社会, referred to a religious ceremony held in the spring and autumn during which sacrifices were made to god(s) of the Earth (this is according to this site, assuming I made correct sense of the Chinese). Examples of what I believe are totally new terms include 主義 ‘ideology,’ literally ‘main meaning/significance’ and 抽象 ‘abstraction,’ literally ‘extract image.’)

In their modern meanings, these compounds were born in Japan and then imported by the rest of the sinosphere, including Korea, China, and (occasionally) Vietnam. When I first learned that so many intermediate-level Sino-Japanese words were actually invented in Japan, I was a bit surprised. How many, exactly? I had thought maybe a few dozen, or a hundred tops. Turns out there are quite a few more, at least according to this list on Chinese Wikipedia. You’ve got words like subjective, library, constitution, system, background, necessity, cash, time, space, and absolute. If the list is correct, these were all coined in Japan. Seriously: words that I would have bet were native to Chinese, like 必要, 時間, 空間, and 現金 are there.