Japanese writing system
Encyclopedia
The modern Japanese writing system uses three main scripts:
Several thousand kanji are in regular use, while the two syllabaries each contain 48 basic characters. Almost all Japanese sentences contain both kanji and hiragana, while some additionally use katakana. (For those with no knowledge of either language, the frequent appearance of the relatively distinctive hiragana characters is an easy way to distinguish written Japanese from Chinese.) Because of its mixture of scripts, the Japanese writing system is often considered to be the most complicated in use anywhere in the world.
To a lesser extent, modern written Japanese also uses acronyms from the Latin alphabet
, for example in terms such as "BC/AD", "a.m./p.m.", "FBI", and "CD". Romanized Japanese
, called rōmaji, is frequently used by foreign students of Japanese who have not yet mastered the three main scripts, and by native speakers for computer input
.
Here is an example of a newspaper headline (from the Asahi Shimbun
on 19 April 2004) that uses all four scripts: (kanji (red), hiragana (blue), katakana (green), and Latin Alphabet and Hindu-Arabic numerals (black)):
The same headline, transliterated to the Latin alphabet:
The same headline, translated to English:
Below are further examples of words written in Japanese. (Note that all Japanese words can be spelled out in hiragana or katakana, even when they are normally written using kanji.)
Some Japanese words are written with different kanji depending on the specific usage of the word—for instance, the word naosu (to fix, or to cure) is written when it refers to curing a person, and when it refers to fixing an object. Most kanji have more than one possible pronunciation (or "reading"), and some common kanji have many.
are used to write the following:
—inflection
al endings for adjective
s and verb
s—such as る in 見る (miru, "see") and い in 白い (shiroi, "white").—grammatical particles—small, common words that, for example, mark sentence topics, subjects and objects, or function similarly to English prepositions like "in", "to", etc.
Some lexical items that are normally written using kanji have become grammaticalized
in certain contexts, where they are instead written in hiragana. For example, the root of the verb 見る (miru, "see") is normally written with the kanji 見. However, when used as a suffix meaning "try out", the whole verb is written in hiragana as みる, as in 食べてみる (tabetemiru, "try eating [it] and see").
are used to write the following:
The Latin alphabet
, and its utilization in Japanese called , is used to write the following:
Arabic numerals are commonly used to write numbers in horizontal text.
, a set of archaic kana obsoleted by the Meiji reformation, are sometimes used to impart an archaic flavour, such as in items of foods.
(fifty-sound) ordering, or the old-fashioned iroha
ordering. Kanji dictionaries
are usually collated using the radical
system, though other systems, such as SKIP, also exist.
Modern Japanese also uses another writing format, called . This writing format is horizontal and reads from left to right, just like English.
A book printed in tategaki opens from what a Westerner would call the back, while a book printed in yokogaki opens from what traditionally in Japan would have been considered the back.
) were introduced to Japan through Baekje
. No definitive evidence of any native Japanese writing system that predates the introduction of kanji exists. A variety of supposedly ancient scripts including , also read as kamiyo moji, surfaced during the 1930s following the rise of Japanese nationalism
—some pictographic, some runic
in appearance, and some very close to hangul
.
Initially Chinese character
s were not used for writing Japanese, as literacy meant fluency in Classical Chinese
, not the vernacular. Eventually a system called developed, which, along with kanji
and something very similar to Chinese grammar, employed diacritics to hint at the Japanese translation. The earliest written history of Japan, the , compiled sometime before 712, was written in kanbun. Even today Japanese high schools and some junior high schools teach kanbun as part of the curriculum.
, namely hiragana
and katakana
, are simplifications and systemizations of man'yōgana.
Due to the large number of words and concepts entering Japan
from China
which had no native equivalent, many words entered Japanese directly, with a pronunciation similar to the original Chinese
. This Chinese-derived reading is known as , and this vocabulary as a whole is referred to as Sino-Japanese in English and in Japanese. At the same time, native Japanese already had words corresponding to many borrowed kanji. Authors increasingly used kanji to represent these words. This Japanese-derived reading is known as . A kanji may have none, one, or several on'yomi and kun'yomi. Okurigana
are written after the initial kanji for verbs and adjectives to give inflection and to help disambiguate a particular kanji's reading. The same character may be read several different ways depending on the word. For example, the character is read i as the first syllable of , okona as the first three syllables of , gyō in the compound word , kō in the word , and an in the word .
Some linguists
have compared the Japanese borrowing of Chinese-derived vocabulary as akin to the influx of Romance vocabulary into English during the Norman conquest of England
. Like English, Japanese has many synonym
s of differing origin, with words from both Chinese and native Japanese. Sino-Japanese is often considered more formal or literary, just as latinate words in English often mark a higher register
.
In 1900, the Education Ministry introduced three reforms aimed at improving the education in Japanese writing:
The first two of these were generally accepted, but the third was hotly contested, particularly by conservatives, to the extent that it was withdrawn in 1908.
saw numerous proposals to restrict the number of kanji in use, and several newspapers voluntarily restricted their kanji usage and increased usage of furigana; however, there was no official endorsement of these, and indeed much opposition.
saw a rapid and significant reform of the writing system. This was in part due to influence of the Occupation authorities, but to a significant extent was due to the removal of conservatives from control of the educational system, which meant that previously stalled revisions could proceed. The major reforms were:
—alignment of kana usage with modern pronunciation, replacing the old historical kana usage
(1946);
} (1946), a collection of 1850 characters for use in schools, textbooks, etc.;
At one stage an advisor in the Occupation administration proposed a wholesale conversion to rōmaji; however it was not endorsed by other specialists and did not proceed.
In addition, the practice of writing horizontally in a right-to-left direction was generally replaced by left-to-right writing. The right-to-left order was considered a special case of vertical writing, with columns one character high, rather than horizontal writing per se; it was used for single lines of text on signs, etc. (e.g. the station sign at Tokyo reads ).
The post-war reforms have mostly survived, although some of the restrictions have been relaxed. The replacement of the tōyō kanji in 1981 with the 1,945 —a modification of the tōyō kanji—was accompanied by a change from "restriction" to "recommendation", and in general the educational authorities have become less active in further script reform.
In 2004, the , maintained by the Ministry of Justice for use in personal names, was significantly enlarged. The jōyō kanji list was extended to 2,136 characters in 2010.
's short story The Fifth Night, the author uses for tsunagatte, the gerund
ive -te form of the verb tsunagaru ("to connect"), which would usually be written as or . The word , meaning "connection", is normally pronounced setsuzoku.
Signs sometimes drop the hiragana endings from the kanji for brevity.
The Japanese writing system allows for transmitting information that is usually communicated in other languages by using different words or by adding extra descriptive words. For example, writing a word in English may give it a modern or 'hip' flair. Some words are colloquially written in hiragana and writing them in kanji might give them a more formal tone.
method of romanization
, designed for English speakers, is a de facto
standard widely used inside and outside Japan. The Kunrei-shiki
system has a better correspondence with kana, making it easier for the Japanese themselves to learn; it is officially sanctioned by the Ministry of Education, and often used by non-native speakers who are learning Japanese as a second language. Other systems of romanization include Nihon-shiki
, JSL, and Wāpuro rōmaji
.
- KanjiKanjiKanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
, adopted Chinese characterChinese characterChinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
s - KanaKanaKana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...
, a pair of syllabariesSyllabaryA syllabary is a set of written symbols that represent syllables, which make up words. In a syllabary, there is no systematic similarity between the symbols which represent syllables with the same consonant or vowel...
(like phonetic alphabets), consisting of:- HiraganaHiraganais a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
, used, along with kanji, for native or naturalised Japanese words, and for grammatical elements - KatakanaKatakanais a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
, used for foreign words and names, loanwordsGairaigoGairaigo is Japanese for "loan word" or "borrowed word", and indicates a transliteration into Japanese. In particular, the word usually refers to a Japanese word of foreign origin that was not borrowed from Chinese, primarily from English. Japanese also has a large number of loan words from...
, onomatopoeia, scientific names, and sometimes to replace kanji or hiragana for emphasis.
- Hiragana
Several thousand kanji are in regular use, while the two syllabaries each contain 48 basic characters. Almost all Japanese sentences contain both kanji and hiragana, while some additionally use katakana. (For those with no knowledge of either language, the frequent appearance of the relatively distinctive hiragana characters is an easy way to distinguish written Japanese from Chinese.) Because of its mixture of scripts, the Japanese writing system is often considered to be the most complicated in use anywhere in the world.
To a lesser extent, modern written Japanese also uses acronyms from the Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
, for example in terms such as "BC/AD", "a.m./p.m.", "FBI", and "CD". Romanized Japanese
Romanization of Japanese
The romanization of Japanese is the application of the Latin alphabet to write the Japanese language. This method of writing is known as , less strictly romaji, literally "Roman letters", sometimes incorrectly transliterated as romanji or rōmanji. There are several different romanization systems...
, called rōmaji, is frequently used by foreign students of Japanese who have not yet mastered the three main scripts, and by native speakers for computer input
Japanese language and computers
In relation to the Japanese language and computers many adaptation issues arise, some unique to Japanese and others common to languages which have a very large number of characters. The number of characters needed in order to write English is very small, and thus it is possible to use only one byte...
.
Here is an example of a newspaper headline (from the Asahi Shimbun
Asahi Shimbun
The is the second most circulated out of the five national newspapers in Japan. Its circulation, which was 7.96 million for its morning edition and 3.1 million for its evening edition as of June 2010, was second behind that of Yomiuri Shimbun...
on 19 April 2004) that uses all four scripts: (kanji (red), hiragana (blue), katakana (green), and Latin Alphabet and Hindu-Arabic numerals (black)):
The same headline, transliterated to the Latin alphabet:
- Radokurifu, Marason gorin daihyō ni ichi-man mētoru shutsujō ni mo fukumi
The same headline, translated to English:
- "Radcliffe hints she may compete in Olympic 10,000 m as well as marathon"
Below are further examples of words written in Japanese. (Note that all Japanese words can be spelled out in hiragana or katakana, even when they are normally written using kanji.)
| Kanji | Hiragana | Katakana | Rōmaji | English |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| watashi | I, me | |||
| kingyo | goldfish | |||
| or | tabako | tobacco, cigarette | ||
| tōkyō | Tokyo Tokyo , ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family... , literally meaning "eastern capital" |
Usage of scripts
are used to write most content words of native Japanese or (historically) Chinese origin, including:- most nounNounIn linguistics, a noun is a member of a large, open lexical category whose members can occur as the main word in the subject of a clause, the object of a verb, or the object of a preposition .Lexical categories are defined in terms of how their members combine with other kinds of...
s, such as 川 (kawa, "river") and 学校 (gakkō, "school") - the stems of most verbVerbA verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
s and adjectiveAdjectiveIn grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s, such as 見 in 見る (miru, "see") and 白 in 白い (shiroi, "white") - most Japanese personal namesJapanese namein modern times usually consist of a family name , followed by a given name. "Middle names" are not generally used.Japanese names are usually written in kanji, which are characters of usually Chinese origin in Japanese pronunciation...
and place names, such as 田中 (Tanaka) and 東京 (Tōkyō). (Certain names may be written in hiragana or katakana, or some combination of these and kanji.)
Some Japanese words are written with different kanji depending on the specific usage of the word—for instance, the word naosu (to fix, or to cure) is written when it refers to curing a person, and when it refers to fixing an object. Most kanji have more than one possible pronunciation (or "reading"), and some common kanji have many.
are used to write the following:
—inflection
Inflection
In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the modification of a word to express different grammatical categories such as tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, aspect, person, number, gender and case...
al endings for adjective
Adjective
In grammar, an adjective is a 'describing' word; the main syntactic role of which is to qualify a noun or noun phrase, giving more information about the object signified....
s and verb
Verb
A verb, from the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word that in syntax conveys an action , or a state of being . In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive...
s—such as る in 見る (miru, "see") and い in 白い (shiroi, "white").—grammatical particles—small, common words that, for example, mark sentence topics, subjects and objects, or function similarly to English prepositions like "in", "to", etc.
- words that lack a kanji rendition, or whose kanji is obscure, difficult to typeset, or considered too difficult to understand (as in children's books).—phonetic renderings of kanji placed above or beside the kanji character. Furigana may aid children or nonnative speakers or clarify nonstandard, rare, or ambiguous readings.
Some lexical items that are normally written using kanji have become grammaticalized
Grammaticalisation
In linguistics, grammaticalization is a process by which words representing objects and actions transform through sound change and language migration to become grammatical objects...
in certain contexts, where they are instead written in hiragana. For example, the root of the verb 見る (miru, "see") is normally written with the kanji 見. However, when used as a suffix meaning "try out", the whole verb is written in hiragana as みる, as in 食べてみる (tabetemiru, "try eating [it] and see").
are used to write the following:
- transliteration of foreign words and names, such as コンピュータ (konpyūta, "computer") and ロンドン (Rondon, "London"). (Some foreign borrowings that have become naturalized may not be rendered in katakana.)
- commonly used names of animals and plants, such as トカゲ (tokage, "lizard") and バラ (bara, "rose"), and certain other technical and scientific terms, such as mineral names
- occasionally, the names of miscellaneous other objects whose kanji are rare, such as ローソク (rōsoku, "candle")
- onomatopoeia, such as ワンワン (wan-wan, "woof-woof")
- emphasis, much like italicisationItalic typeIn typography, italic type is a cursive typeface based on a stylized form of calligraphic handwriting. Owing to the influence from calligraphy, such typefaces often slant slightly to the right. Different glyph shapes from roman type are also usually used—another influence from calligraphy...
in European languages.
The Latin alphabet
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
, and its utilization in Japanese called , is used to write the following:
- Latin-alphabet acronyms and initialisms, such as NATO or UFO
- Japanese personal names, corporate brands, and other words intended for international use (for example, on business cards, in passports, etc.)
- foreign names, words, and phrases, often in scholarly contexts
- foreign words deliberately rendered to impart a foreign flavour, for instance, in commercial contexts
Arabic numerals are commonly used to write numbers in horizontal text.
, a set of archaic kana obsoleted by the Meiji reformation, are sometimes used to impart an archaic flavour, such as in items of foods.
Collation
Collation (word ordering) in Japanese is based on the kana, which express the pronunciation of the words, rather than the kanji. The kana may be ordered using two common orderings, the prevalent gojūonGojuon
The is a Japanese ordering of kana.It is named for the 5×10 grid in which the characters are displayed, but the grid is not completely filled, and, further, there is an extra character added outside the grid at the end: with 5 gaps and 1 extra character, the current number of distinct kana in a...
(fifty-sound) ordering, or the old-fashioned iroha
Iroha
The is a Japanese poem, probably written in the Heian era . Originally the poem was attributed to the founder of the Shingon Esoteric sect of Buddhism in Japan, Kūkai, but more modern research has found the date of composition to be later in the Heian Period. The first record of its existence...
ordering. Kanji dictionaries
Japanese dictionaries
Japanese dictionaries have a history that began over 1300 years ago when Japanese Buddhist priests, who wanted to understand Chinese sutras, adapted Chinese character dictionaries. Present-day Japanese lexicographers are exploring computerized editing and electronic dictionaries...
are usually collated using the radical
Radical (Chinese character)
A Chinese radical is a component of a Chinese character. The term may variously refer to the original semantic element of a character, or to any semantic element, or, loosely, to any element whatever its origin or purpose...
system, though other systems, such as SKIP, also exist.
Direction of writing
Traditionally, Japanese is written in a format called , which copies the traditional Chinese system. In this format, the characters are written in columns going from top to bottom, with columns ordered from right to left. After reaching the bottom of each column, the reader continues at the top of the column to the left of the current one.Modern Japanese also uses another writing format, called . This writing format is horizontal and reads from left to right, just like English.
A book printed in tategaki opens from what a Westerner would call the back, while a book printed in yokogaki opens from what traditionally in Japan would have been considered the back.
Importation of kanji
The current Japanese writing system traces its history back to the 4th century, when Chinese characters (kanjiKanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
) were introduced to Japan through Baekje
Baekje
Baekje or Paekche was a kingdom located in southwest Korea. It was one of the Three Kingdoms of Korea, together with Goguryeo and Silla....
. No definitive evidence of any native Japanese writing system that predates the introduction of kanji exists. A variety of supposedly ancient scripts including , also read as kamiyo moji, surfaced during the 1930s following the rise of Japanese nationalism
Japanese nationalism
encompasses a broad range of ideas and sentiments harbored by the Japanese people over the last two centuries regarding their native country, its cultural nature, political form and historical destiny...
—some pictographic, some runic
Runic alphabet
The runic alphabets are a set of related alphabets using letters known as runes to write various Germanic languages before the adoption of the Latin alphabet and for specialized purposes thereafter...
in appearance, and some very close to hangul
Hangul
Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
.
Initially Chinese character
Chinese character
Chinese characters are logograms used in the writing of Chinese and Japanese , less frequently Korean , formerly Vietnamese , or other languages...
s were not used for writing Japanese, as literacy meant fluency in Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...
, not the vernacular. Eventually a system called developed, which, along with kanji
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
and something very similar to Chinese grammar, employed diacritics to hint at the Japanese translation. The earliest written history of Japan, the , compiled sometime before 712, was written in kanbun. Even today Japanese high schools and some junior high schools teach kanbun as part of the curriculum.
The development of man'yōgana
No full-fledged script for written Japanese existed until the development of , which appropriated kanji for their phonetic value (derived from their Chinese readings) rather than their semantic value. Man'yōgana was initially used to record poetry, as in the , compiled sometime before 759, whence the writing system derives its name. The modern kanaKana
Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...
, namely hiragana
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
and katakana
Katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
, are simplifications and systemizations of man'yōgana.
Due to the large number of words and concepts entering Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
from China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
which had no native equivalent, many words entered Japanese directly, with a pronunciation similar to the original Chinese
Chinese language
The Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
. This Chinese-derived reading is known as , and this vocabulary as a whole is referred to as Sino-Japanese in English and in Japanese. At the same time, native Japanese already had words corresponding to many borrowed kanji. Authors increasingly used kanji to represent these words. This Japanese-derived reading is known as . A kanji may have none, one, or several on'yomi and kun'yomi. Okurigana
Okurigana
are kana suffixes following kanji stems in Japanese written words. They serve two purposes: to inflect adjectives and verbs, and to disambiguate kanji with multiple readings...
are written after the initial kanji for verbs and adjectives to give inflection and to help disambiguate a particular kanji's reading. The same character may be read several different ways depending on the word. For example, the character is read i as the first syllable of , okona as the first three syllables of , gyō in the compound word , kō in the word , and an in the word .
Some linguists
Linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....
have compared the Japanese borrowing of Chinese-derived vocabulary as akin to the influx of Romance vocabulary into English during the Norman conquest of England
Norman conquest of England
The Norman conquest of England began on 28 September 1066 with the invasion of England by William, Duke of Normandy. William became known as William the Conqueror after his victory at the Battle of Hastings on 14 October 1066, defeating King Harold II of England...
. Like English, Japanese has many synonym
Synonym
Synonyms are different words with almost identical or similar meanings. Words that are synonyms are said to be synonymous, and the state of being a synonym is called synonymy. The word comes from Ancient Greek syn and onoma . The words car and automobile are synonyms...
s of differing origin, with words from both Chinese and native Japanese. Sino-Japanese is often considered more formal or literary, just as latinate words in English often mark a higher register
Register (linguistics)
In linguistics, a register is a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. For example, when speaking in a formal setting an English speaker may be more likely to adhere more closely to prescribed grammar, pronounce words ending in -ing with a velar nasal...
.
Meiji period
The significant reforms of the 19th century Meiji era did not initially impact the Japanese writing system. However, the language itself was changing due to the increase in literacy resulting from education reforms, the massive influx of words (both borrowed from other languages or newly coined), and the ultimate success of movements such as the influential which resulted in Japanese being written in the colloquial form of the language instead of the wide range of historical and classical styles used previously. The difficulty of written Japanese was a topic of debate, with several proposals in the late 1800s that the number of kanji in use be limited. In addition, exposure to non-Japanese texts led to unsuccessful proposals that Japanese be written entirely in kana or rōmaji. This period saw Western-style punctuation marks introduced into Japanese writing.In 1900, the Education Ministry introduced three reforms aimed at improving the education in Japanese writing:
- standardization of hiragana, eliminating the range of hentaigana then in use;
- restriction of the number of kanji taught in elementary schools to about 1,200;
- reform of the irregular kana representation of the Sino-Japanese readings of kanji to make them conform with the pronunciation.
The first two of these were generally accepted, but the third was hotly contested, particularly by conservatives, to the extent that it was withdrawn in 1908.
pre–World War II
The partial failure of the 1900 reforms combined with the rise of nationalism in Japan effectively prevented further significant reform of the writing system. The period before World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
saw numerous proposals to restrict the number of kanji in use, and several newspapers voluntarily restricted their kanji usage and increased usage of furigana; however, there was no official endorsement of these, and indeed much opposition.
post–World War II
The period immediately following World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
saw a rapid and significant reform of the writing system. This was in part due to influence of the Occupation authorities, but to a significant extent was due to the removal of conservatives from control of the educational system, which meant that previously stalled revisions could proceed. The major reforms were:
—alignment of kana usage with modern pronunciation, replacing the old historical kana usage
Historical kana usage
The , or , refers to the in general use until orthographic reforms after World War II; the current orthography was adopted by Cabinet order in 1946. By that point the historical orthography was no longer in accord with Japanese pronunciation...
(1946);
- promulgation of various restricted sets of kanji:
} (1946), a collection of 1850 characters for use in schools, textbooks, etc.;
-
- kanji to be used in schools (1949);
- an additional collection of , which, supplementing the tōyō kanji, could be used in personal names (1951);
- simplifications of various complex kanji letter-forms .
At one stage an advisor in the Occupation administration proposed a wholesale conversion to rōmaji; however it was not endorsed by other specialists and did not proceed.
In addition, the practice of writing horizontally in a right-to-left direction was generally replaced by left-to-right writing. The right-to-left order was considered a special case of vertical writing, with columns one character high, rather than horizontal writing per se; it was used for single lines of text on signs, etc. (e.g. the station sign at Tokyo reads ).
The post-war reforms have mostly survived, although some of the restrictions have been relaxed. The replacement of the tōyō kanji in 1981 with the 1,945 —a modification of the tōyō kanji—was accompanied by a change from "restriction" to "recommendation", and in general the educational authorities have become less active in further script reform.
In 2004, the , maintained by the Ministry of Justice for use in personal names, was significantly enlarged. The jōyō kanji list was extended to 2,136 characters in 2010.
Nuances
Kanji compounds can be given arbitrary readings for stylistic purposes. For example, in Natsume SōsekiNatsume Soseki
, born ', is widely considered to be the foremost Japanese novelist of the Meiji period . He is best known for his novels Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat and his unfinished work Light and Darkness. He was also a scholar of British literature and composer of haiku, Chinese-style poetry, and fairy tales...
's short story The Fifth Night, the author uses for tsunagatte, the gerund
Gerund
In linguistics* As applied to English, it refers to the usage of a verb as a noun ....
ive -te form of the verb tsunagaru ("to connect"), which would usually be written as or . The word , meaning "connection", is normally pronounced setsuzoku.
Signs sometimes drop the hiragana endings from the kanji for brevity.
The Japanese writing system allows for transmitting information that is usually communicated in other languages by using different words or by adding extra descriptive words. For example, writing a word in English may give it a modern or 'hip' flair. Some words are colloquially written in hiragana and writing them in kanji might give them a more formal tone.
Romanization
There are a number of methods of rendering Japanese in Roman letters. The HepburnHepburn romanization
The is named after James Curtis Hepburn, who used it to transcribe the sounds of the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet in the third edition of his Japanese–English dictionary, published in 1887. The system was originally proposed by the in 1885...
method of romanization
Romanization
In linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...
, designed for English speakers, is a de facto
De facto
De facto is a Latin expression that means "concerning fact." In law, it often means "in practice but not necessarily ordained by law" or "in practice or actuality, but not officially established." It is commonly used in contrast to de jure when referring to matters of law, governance, or...
standard widely used inside and outside Japan. The Kunrei-shiki
Kunrei-shiki
is a Japanese romanization system, i.e. a system for transcribing the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet. It is abbreviated as Kunrei-shiki. Its name is rendered Kunreisiki using Kunrei-shiki itself....
system has a better correspondence with kana, making it easier for the Japanese themselves to learn; it is officially sanctioned by the Ministry of Education, and often used by non-native speakers who are learning Japanese as a second language. Other systems of romanization include Nihon-shiki
Nihon-shiki
Nihon-shiki or Nippon-shiki Rōmaji is a romanization system for transliterating the Japanese language into the Latin alphabet. In discussion about romaji, it is abbreviated as Nihon-shiki or Nippon-shiki. Among the major romanization systems for Japanese, Nippon-shiki is the most regular, and has...
, JSL, and Wāpuro rōmaji
Wapuro romaji
, or kana spelling, is a style of romanization of Japanese originally devised for entering Japanese into word processors while using a Western QWERTY keyboard....
.
Lettering styles
- ShodōJapanese calligraphyis a form of calligraphy, or artistic writing, of the Japanese language. For a long time, the most esteemed calligrapher in Japan had been Wang Xizhi, a Chinese calligrapher in the 4th century but after the invention of Hiragana and Katakana, the Japanese unique syllabaries, the distinctive...
- EdomojiEdomojiare Japanese lettering styles, which were invented for advertising in the Edo period.The main styles of Edomoji include Kanteiryū, Yosemoji, Kagomoji, Higemoji, Chōchinmoji and Kakuji .-Kanteiryū :...
- Minchō
- East Asian sans-serif typeface
See also
- Genkō yōshiGenko yoshiis a type of Japanese paper used for writing. It is printed with squares, typically 200 or 400 per sheet, each square designed to accommodate a single Japanese character or punctuation mark...
(graph paper for writing Japanese) - Iteration markIteration markIteration marks are characters or punctuation marks that represent a duplicated character or word.-Chinese:In Chinese, 二 or 々 is used in casual writing to represent a doubled character, but it is never used in formal writing or printed matter...
(Japanese duplication marks) - Japanese typographic symbolsJapanese typographic symbolsThis page lists Japanese typographic symbols which are not included in kana or kanji.The links in the Unicode column lead to the Unihan database.-Repetition marks:-Brackets and quotation marks:-Phonetic marks:-Punctuation marks:...
(non-kana, non-kanji symbols) - Chinese writing system
- Okinawan writing systemOkinawan writing systemOkinawan language, spoken in Okinawa Island, was once the official language of the Ryukyuan Kingdom. At the time, documents were written in kanji and hiragana, derived from Japan. However, after Japan annexed the kingdom, the language was labeled as the "dialect" of mainland Japanese...
- Kaidā glyphs (Yonaguni)
- Ainu language#Writing
- Siddhaṃ script (Indic alphabet used for Buddhist scriptures)
- Jindai mojiJindai mojiJindai moji or Kamiyo moji are characters that was said to be scripts used in ancient Japan. Debates since Edo period and Japanese academic society regard Jindai moji as forgeries...
(Shinto divination script)
External links
- The Modern Japanese Writing System: an excerpt from Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan, by J. Marshall Unger.
- The 20th Century Japanese Writing System: Reform and Change by Christopher Seeley
- How to prepare any Linux distribution for the Japanese language, by Manfred Schulenburg.