The article is devoted to the study of the phraseological fund of the Chinese and Japanese languages, in particular to the comparative analysis of phraseological units from the point of view of their form, structure, features of drawing hieroglyphic signs, semantics and national-cultural components contained in them. The national-cultural specificity of the Chinese and Japanese phraseology is closely related to the characteristic features of the people’s consciousness, the relationship between the language and thinking, the language and culture, therefore the main research approach is primarily comparative, linguistic and cultural. The work examines the development of the Chinese language and culture on the formation and development of the phraseological system of the Japanese language, outlines the relationship between the Chinese and the Japanese idioms. A comparison of the forms of drawing hieroglyphs represents changes in the writing systems of the Chinese and Japanese languages, caused by the historical processes of the development of both languages. The diversity of language habits is reflected in the change in the order of words in a phraseological unit in the Japanese language while preserving the original meaning of the Chinese original source. A number of Japanese idioms borrowed from the Chinese language demonstrate the process of adaptation to the features of the Japanese language, which is determined by the change of certain components in the structure of the phraseology. Despite the close ties and borrowing of elements of the Chinese language and culture, the Japanese language has created its own, purely Japanese, phraseological units that contain national and cultural components that reproduce elements of the people’s lifestyle, customs and historical facts. The composition, structure, national and cultural connotation of the actual Japanese idioms distinguish them from idioms built with the norms of the wenyan, the classical Chinese language. They came from the Chinese language and then became entrenched in the language and consciousness of the Japanese people.