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Kanji

Chinese characters used in Japanese writing

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After the Meiji Restoration, Japan made its own efforts to simplify kanji, producing the forms now known as shinjitai (新字体; 'new character forms'). Since the 1920s, the Japanese government has periodically issued lists to guide character use and education. The principal lists comprise 2,136 jōyō kanji for general use and 863 additional jinmeiyō kanji permitted in names; a further character, 勒, is scheduled to become name-permitted in December 2026.

The term kanji is a direct borrowing and phonetic reading (on'yomi) of the Chinese word hanzi (traditional Chinese: 漢字; simplified Chinese: 汉字; pinyin: hànzì), which is one of the formal terms used when referring to Chinese characters. The significant use of Chinese characters in Japan first began to take hold around the 5th century CE and has since had a profound influence in shaping Japanese culture, language, literature, history, and records. Inkstone artifacts at archaeological sites dating back to the earlier Yayoi period were also found to contain Chinese characters.

Although many characters retain related meanings across Japanese and Chinese, their pronunciations and some of their meanings have diverged. For example, 誠 means 'sincerity' in both languages but has the Japanese readings makoto and sei, alongside Mandarin chéng. Japanese-created characters and words formed from Sino-Japanese morphemes have also sometimes been borrowed into other East Asian languages; Japanese-coined Sino-Japanese words are called wasei-kango.

History

Chinese characters first reached Japan on imported seals, coins, mirrors, swords and other inscribed objects. The best-known early example is the King of Na gold seal, presented by Emperor Guangwu of Han to an emissary from Wa in 57 CE. Chinese coins and possible writing implements have also been found at Yayoi period sites, but widespread production and use of writing in Japan developed later, especially from the fifth century onward. The Kojiki and Nihon Shoki preserve the traditional account that the scholar Wani came from Baekje during the reign of Emperor Ōjin, bringing Confucian texts and knowledge of Chinese writing; modern accounts treat the episode as a literary tradition rather than a precisely datable event.

The earliest Japanese documents were probably written by bilingual Chinese or Korean officials employed at the Yamato court. For example, the diplomatic correspondence from King Bu of Wa to Emperor Shun of Liu Song in 478 CE has been praised for its skillful use of allusion. Later, groups of people called fuhito were organized under the monarch to read and write Classical Chinese. During the reign of Empress Suiko (593–628), the Yamato court began sending full-scale diplomatic missions to China, which resulted in a large increase in Chinese literacy at the Japanese court.

From the seventh century, large numbers of inscribed wooden tablets called mokkan (木簡) document administrative records, labels for goods, correspondence and writing practice. Their survival provides direct evidence for the spread of literacy and bureaucratic writing, although earlier inscriptions are known from other objects.

Chinese characters initially served to write Sinitic texts in Japan. By the Nara and Heian periods, reading practices now called kanbun kundoku used glosses and diacritical marks to render such texts with Japanese word order, particles, and inflections.

Chinese characters also came to be used to write texts in the vernacular Japanese language, resulting in the modern kana syllabaries. Around 650 CE, a writing system called man'yōgana (used in the ancient poetry anthology Man'yōshū) evolved that used a number of Chinese characters for their sound, rather than for their meaning. Man'yōgana written in cursive style evolved into hiragana (literally "fluttering kana" in reference to the motion of the brush during cursive writing), or onna-de, that is, "ladies' hand", a style strongly associated with women's writing at the Heian court. Major works of Heian-era literature by women were written in hiragana. Katakana (literally "partial kana", in reference to the practice of using a part of a kanji character) emerged via a parallel path: monastery students simplified man'yōgana to a single constituent element. Thus the two other writing systems, hiragana and katakana, referred to collectively as kana, are descended from kanji. In contrast with kana (仮名, literally "borrowed name", in reference to the character being "borrowed" as a label for its sound), kanji are also called mana (真名, literally "true name", in reference to the character being used as a label for its meaning).

In modern Japanese, kanji are used to write certain words or parts of words (usually content words such as nouns, adjective stems, and verb stems), while hiragana are used to write inflected verb and adjective endings, phonetic complements to disambiguate readings (okurigana), particles, and miscellaneous words which have no kanji or whose kanji are considered obscure or too difficult to read or remember. Katakana are mostly used for representing onomatopoeia, non-Japanese loanwords (except those borrowed from ancient Chinese), the names of plants and animals (with exceptions), and for emphasis on certain words.

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