Japanese Vs. Chinese for ‘'Face"

Hello everyone!

I just came across the Chinese character for face, it was 脸 or 臉 for traditional. I was happy I had learned a new Kanji only that it turned out that 顔 is the Japanese character for face!

How come?

顔 (yan) also means "face" in Chinese. It is used more in poetic references. The simplified version is 颜.

When the Japanese imported Chinese characters to represent existing Japanese words, they chose 顔. Back then the simplified versions didn't exist yet.

Those are two different languages - though the origin, or the idea of creating kanji to express meanings/concepts is common, over the years different kanji were developed in respective country (there are some kanji that were created later in Japan, so they would not even recognized in Japan), and even some common kanji can have different meanings/nuances.

It is a bit like some Western European languages..many of their words come from ancient Greek or Latin but are somewhat different in English, French, Italian etc...