Simplified or traditional Chinese?

I've just started my Chinese intensive class for fun during the summer, and I'm not sure if I should learn traditional or simplified characters. I'm a Japanese focus majoring in Japanese Literature with classical literature as an interest, and I have a Cantonese background. So for those of you who know both Japanese and Chinese, which one would be more useful for Japanese in similarity? Regardless of difficulty or usefulness.

Edit: I'm not learning Chinese to further my Japanese. Although I do believe it'll help somewhat, to an extent at least.

 

Traditional..

 

Simplified...
1) Much more learning materials
2) Easier to relate to Japanese Shinjitai
3) Easier to write

 

Thanks. I originally thought kanji was more relatable to traditional Chinese, but perhaps not.

 

Simplified
Since Japanese now used simplified Kanji (Shinjitai) which had some similarity to Chinese Simplified Form.

 

Simplified. It's easier to learn. And more commonly used.

 

Traditional Chinese for sure. But Japanese and Chinese are different languages. Japanese uses chinese characters differently to make a word, chinese the other way. Their grammar is different. Also, Chinese got many characters not used in Japanese, while some Japanese self-made kanji characters aren't used in Chinese.

So I'd recommend just learn Japanese Kanji (jouyou) for learning Japanese.

EDIT: As for the Shinjitai stuff people said above, well Japanese Kanji still uses way mooore Chinese Characters that are considered Traditional in China, but are considered as Shinjitai. Even the simplified versions are different.
For example: Chinese_Dragon. (trad)龍 (simp)龙. Japanese_Dragon. (trad)龍 (simp)竜.
See different

 

I think traditional Chinese is more helpful for your Japanese side.
And while traditional Chinese is tougher and more complicated, it is still widely used. Especially in Taiwan.

 

Don't forget HK, Singapore, and all other areas outside of Mainland China!

Sorry, I probably wasn't clear in my post. I'm learning Chinese so I can be "more Chinese" lol. Anyway, I believe only 9 kanji characters are not used in Chinese while the rest are similar in meaning or slightly different.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji
See Local developments and divergences from Chinese

 

I'm not sure about HK, but I live in Singapore at the moment. People here mainly use simplified chinese Malaysia as well.

Traditional chinese is still used for material from Taiwan of course, and quite a lot of people can still read it even though they learned simplified chinese

 

Oh... Huh, my Chinese professor said only
Mainland China uses simplified. Interesting.

 

Mandarin Chinese (trad or simp) in written form are intelligible across all places, but such is not the case in spoken Chinese.
So, you may learn whatever form you wish to learn, others would understand you just fine.
To be more Chinese, I'd say go learn Simplified, and only after that, if you wish to torture yourself, learn Traditional...or vice-versa.

 

The problem with that is I'm from a Cantonese speaking family, and Cantonese speakers (primarily in Guangdong and HK) use traditional Chinese, or they do in HK at least.

 

In that case, just learn traditional. There are ways to convert simplified Chinese to Traditional and vice versa these days. Traditional Chinese will help with your Japanese more anyways.

 

Old Korean text is traditional. If any Koreans use Chinese letters like in manwha it's traditional.

 

HK, Macau and Taiwan use traditional Chinese. That's about it.

And no, Catonese speakers don't always used traditional Chinese, it's only in HK and Macau.

 

Yeah, I guess that's true if I think about it. My mom is from Guangdong, but she also lived in HK for several years and she uses traditional from what I've seen so I assumed it was like that.

 

Good luck, can't wait till you get good enough to translate chapters....wait your not?!?
Feel the peer pressure +.+

 

lol I would be more likely to be translating Japanese novels instead though. I'll have to see what happens.

 

The entire mainland uses simplified since a few decades ago (my parents learned simplified, my grandparents learned traditional). Before that, traditional was mostly used. Most education institutions abroad teaches simplified today, but most will also accept traditional. I would recommend learning simplified and just learning a few of the quirks to help you recognize traditional, they are not that difficult. Way more people use simplified chinese in the world today, so it's bound to be more useful.