Abstract
Very early on, Japanese civilization asserted itself in a relationship of " linguistic competition " with Chinese, in the religious, literary and intellectual spheres alike. This cultural symbiosis based on the shaping of language, which Jean-Noël Robert proposes to call hieroglossia, is the ultimate source of Yasunari Kawabata's Nobel Prize speech in 1968. Drawing on Japanese Buddhist poetry, it is in line with the Zen tradition and the language mysticism of the Shingon school, according to which there is a direct link between linguistic signs and the substance of things.
