are the
logographic
In a written language, a logogram, logograph, or lexigraph is a written character that represents a word or morpheme. Chinese characters (pronounced '' hanzi'' in Mandarin, ''kanji'' in Japanese, ''hanja'' in Korean) are generally logograms, a ...
Chinese characters
Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji' ...
taken from the
Chinese script
Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji' ...
and used in the writing of
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
. They were made a major part of the
Japanese writing system
The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana. Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalised Japanese wo ...
during the time of
Old Japanese
is the oldest attested stage of the Japanese language, recorded in documents from the Nara period (8th century). It became Early Middle Japanese in the succeeding Heian period, but the precise delimitation of the stages is controversial.
Old Jap ...
and are still used, along with the subsequently-derived syllabic scripts of ''
hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''.
It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrast ...
'' and ''
katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...
''. The characters have Japanese
pronunciations
Pronunciation is the way in which a word or a language is spoken. This may refer to generally agreed-upon sequences of sounds used in speaking a given word or language in a specific dialect ("correct pronunciation") or simply the way a particular ...
; most have two, with one based on the Chinese sound. A few characters were invented in Japan by constructing character components derived from other Chinese characters. After
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, Japan made its own efforts to simplify the characters, now known as
shinjitai
are the simplified forms of kanji used in Japan since the promulgation of the Tōyō Kanji List in 1946. Some of the new forms found in ''shinjitai'' are also found in Simplified Chinese characters, but ''shinjitai'' is generally not as extensiv ...
, by a process similar to
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
's
simplification efforts, with the intention to increase
literacy
Literacy in its broadest sense describes "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing" with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use. In other words, huma ...
among the common folk. Since the 1920s, the Japanese government has published character lists periodically to help direct the education of its citizenry through the myriad Chinese characters that exist. There are nearly 3,000 kanji
used in Japanese names and
in common communication.
The term ''kanji'' in Japanese literally means "
Han
Han may refer to:
Ethnic groups
* Han Chinese, or Han People (): the name for the largest ethnic group in China, which also constitutes the world's largest ethnic group.
** Han Taiwanese (): the name for the ethnic group of the Taiwanese p ...
characters". It is written in Japanese by using the same characters as in
traditional Chinese
A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays or ...
, and both refer to the character writing system known in Chinese as ''hanzi'' (). The significant use of Chinese characters in Japan first began to take hold around the 5th century AD and has since made a profound influence in shaping Japanese culture, language, literature, history, and records.
[Miyake (2003), 8.] Inkstone
An inkstone is traditional Chinese stationery. It is a stone mortar for the grinding and containment of ink. In addition to stone, inkstones are also manufactured from clay, bronze, iron, and porcelain. The device evolved from a rubbing tool us ...
artifacts at archaeological sites dating back to the earlier
Yayoi period
The started at the beginning of the Neolithic in Japan, continued through the Bronze Age, and towards its end crossed into the Iron Age.
Since the 1980s, scholars have argued that a period previously classified as a transition from the Jōmon p ...
were also found to contain Chinese characters.
Although some characters, as used in Japanese and Chinese, have similar meanings and pronunciations, others have meanings or pronunciations that are unique to one language or the other. For example, means 'honest' in both languages but is pronounced ''makoto'' or ''sei'' in Japanese, and ''chéng'' in
Standard Mandarin Chinese
Standard Chinese ()—in linguistics Standard Northern Mandarin or Standard Beijing Mandarin, in common speech simply Mandarin, better qualified as Standard Mandarin, Modern Standard Mandarin or Standard Mandarin Chinese—is a modern standar ...
. Individual kanji characters invented in Japan, or multi-kanji words coined in Japanese, have also influenced and been borrowed into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese in recent times. For example, the word for
telephone
A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...
, ''denwa'' in Japanese, is
calque
In linguistics, a calque () or loan translation is a word or phrase borrowed from another language by literal word-for-word or root-for-root translation. When used as a verb, "to calque" means to borrow a word or phrase from another language wh ...
d as ''diànhuà'' in Mandarin Chinese, ''điện thoại'' in Vietnamese and ''jeonhwa'' in Korean.
History
Chinese character
Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the Written Chinese, writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are k ...
s first came to
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
on official seals, letters, swords, coins, mirrors, and other decorative items imported from
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
. The earliest known instance of such an import was the
King of Na gold seal
The King of Na gold seal ( ja, 漢委奴国王印) is a solid gold seal discovered in the year 1784 on Shikanoshima Island in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. The seal is designated as a National Treasure of Japan. The seal is believed to have been ca ...
given by
Emperor Guangwu of Han
Emperor Guangwu of Han (; 15 January 5 BC – 29 March AD 57), born Liu Xiu (), courtesy name Wenshu (), was a Chinese monarch. He served as an emperor of the Han dynasty by restoring the dynasty in AD 25, thus founding the Eastern Han (Later ...
to a
Wa emissary in 57 AD.
Chinese coins as well as
inkstone
An inkstone is traditional Chinese stationery. It is a stone mortar for the grinding and containment of ink. In addition to stone, inkstones are also manufactured from clay, bronze, iron, and porcelain. The device evolved from a rubbing tool us ...
s from the first century AD have also been found in
Yayoi period
The started at the beginning of the Neolithic in Japan, continued through the Bronze Age, and towards its end crossed into the Iron Age.
Since the 1980s, scholars have argued that a period previously classified as a transition from the Jōmon p ...
archaeological sites.
However, the Japanese people of that era probably had little to no comprehension of the script, and they would remain relatively illiterate until the fifth century AD, when writing in Japan became more widespread.
According to the ''
Nihon Shoki'' and ''
Kojiki
The , also sometimes read as or , is an early Japanese chronicle of myths, legends, hymns, genealogies, oral traditions, and semi-historical accounts down to 641 concerning the origin of the Japanese archipelago, the , and the Japanese imperia ...
'', a semi-legendary scholar called
Wani
Wani may refer to:
*Vani (custom), a child marriage custom in tribal areas of Pakistan
*Wani (dragon), a Japanese dragon translated as "sea monster", "crocodile", or "shark"
*Wani (scholar), a legendary scholar, sent from Korea to Japan during the ...
was dispatched to Japan by the
Kingdom of Baekje during the reign of
Emperor Ōjin
, also known as (alternatively spelled 譽田別命, 誉田別命, 品陀和気命, 譽田分命, 誉田別尊, 品陀別命) or , was the 15th (possibly legendary) Emperor of Japan, according to the traditional order of succession.
No firm dat ...
in the early fifth century, bringing with him knowledge of
Confucianism
Confucianism, also known as Ruism or Ru classicism, is a system of thought and behavior originating in ancient China. Variously described as tradition, a philosophy, a religion, a humanistic or rationalistic religion, a way of governing, or ...
and Chinese characters.
[Miyake (2003), 9.]
The earliest Japanese documents were probably written by bilingual Chinese or Korean officials employed at the
Yamato
was originally the area around today's Sakurai City in Nara Prefecture of Japan, which became Yamato Province and by extension a name for the whole of Japan.
Yamato is also the dynastic name of the ruling Imperial House of Japan.
Japanese his ...
court.
For example, the diplomatic correspondence from
King Bu of Wa to
Emperor Shun of Liu Song
Emperor Shun of (Liu) Song ((劉)宋順帝) (8 August 469 – 23 June 479Liu Zhun's biography in ''Book of Song'' indicated that he died at the age of 13 (by East Asian reckoning), but this is likely an error. His biography in ''Nan Shi'' indicat ...
in 478 AD has been praised for its skillful use of
allusion
Allusion is a figure of speech, in which an object or circumstance from unrelated context is referred to covertly or indirectly. It is left to the audience to make the direct connection. Where the connection is directly and explicitly stated (as ...
. Later, groups of people called ''fuhito'' were organized under the monarch to read and write
Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese, also known as Literary Chinese (古文 ''gǔwén'' "ancient text", or 文言 ''wényán'' "text speak", meaning
"literary language/speech"; modern vernacular: 文言文 ''wényánwén'' "text speak text", meaning
"literar ...
. During the reign of
Empress Suiko
(554 – 15 April 628) was the 33rd monarch of Japan, Imperial Household Agency (''Kunaichō'') 推古天皇 (33)/ref> according to the traditional order of succession.
Suiko reigned from 593 until her death in 628.
In the history of Japan ...
(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.
In ancient times, paper was so rare that people wrote kanji onto thin, rectangular strips of wood, called ''
mokkan
are wooden tablets found at Japanese archaeological sites.
Most of the tablets date from the mid-7th to mid-8th century, but some are as late as the early modern period.
They have been found in sites across Japan, but mostly around the old capita ...
'' (). These wooden boards were used for communication between government offices, tags for goods transported between various countries, and the practice of writing. The oldest written kanji in Japan discovered so far were written in ink on wood as a wooden strip dated to the 7th century, a record of trading for cloth and salt.
The Japanese language had no written form at the time Chinese characters were introduced, and texts were written and read only in Chinese. Later, during the
Heian period
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kanmu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means "peace" in Japanese. ...
(794–1185), a system known as ''
kanbun
A is a form of Classical Chinese used in Japan from the Nara period to the mid-20th century. Much of Japanese literature was written in this style and it was the general writing style for official and intellectual works throughout the period. A ...
'' emerged, which involved using Chinese text with
diacritical mark
A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacritic ...
s to allow Japanese speakers to read Chinese sentences and restructure them into Japanese on the fly, by changing word order and adding particles and verb endings, in accordance with the rules of
Japanese grammar
Japanese is an agglutinative, synthetic, mora-timed language with simple phonotactics, a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent. Word order is normally subject–object–verb with parti ...
. This was essentially a kind of codified
sight translation.
Chinese characters also came to be used to write texts in the vernacular
Japanese language
is spoken natively by about 128 million people, primarily by Japanese people and primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national language. Japanese belongs to the Japonic or Japanese- Ryukyuan language family. There have been ma ...
, resulting in the modern ''
kana
The term may refer to a number of syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. Such syllabaries include (1) the original kana, or , which were Chinese characters (kanji) used phonetically to transcribe Japanese, the most pr ...
'' syllabaries. Around 650 AD, a writing system called ''
man'yōgana
is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of this ...
'' (used in the ancient poetry
anthology
In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs or excerpts by different authors.
In genre fiction, the term ''anthology'' typically categ ...
''
Man'yōshū
The is the oldest extant collection of Japanese (poetry in Classical Japanese), compiled sometime after AD 759 during the Nara period. The anthology is one of the most revered of Japan's poetic compilations. The compiler, or the last in ...
'') 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
is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''.
It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrast ...
'' (literally "fluttering ''kana''" in reference to the motion of the brush during cursive writing), or ''onna-de'', that is, "ladies' hand", a writing system that was accessible to women (who were denied
higher education
Higher education is tertiary education leading to award of an academic degree. Higher education, also called post-secondary education, third-level or tertiary education, is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after completi ...
). Major works of
Heian-era
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kanmu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means "peace" in Japanese. ...
literature
Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...
by women were written in hiragana. ''
Katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...
'' (literally "partial ''kana''", in reference to the practice of using a part of a kanji character) emerged via a parallel path:
monastery
A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone (hermits). A monastery generally includes a place reserved for prayer which ...
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'' (, literally "borrowed label", in reference to the character being "borrowed" as a "label" for its sound), ''kanji'' are also called ''mana'' (, literally "true label", in reference to the character being used as a "true label" for its meaning).
In modern Japanese, kanji are used to write certain words or parts of words (usually
content word Content words, in linguistics, are words that possess semantic content and contribute to the meaning of the sentence in which they occur. In a traditional approach, nouns were said to name objects and other entities, lexical verbs to indicate actio ...
s such as
noun
A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for:
* Living creatures (including people, alive, d ...
s,
adjective
In linguistics, an adjective (list of glossing abbreviations, abbreviated ) is a word that generally grammatical modifier, modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun.
Tra ...
stems, and
verb
A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...
stems), while ''hiragana'' are used to write
inflected
In linguistic morphology, inflection (or inflexion) is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and defini ...
verb and adjective endings,
phonetic complement
A phonetic complement is a phonetic symbol used to disambiguate word characters (logograms) that have multiple readings, in mixed logographic-phonetic scripts such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, Akkadian cuneiform, Japanese, and Mayan. Often they re ...
s to disambiguate readings (''
okurigana
are kana suffixes following kanji stems in Japanese written words. They serve two purposes: to inflect adjectives and verbs, and to force a particular kanji to have a specific meaning and be read a certain way. For example, the plain verb fo ...
''),
particles
In the physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small localized object which can be described by several physical or chemical properties, such as volume, density, or mass.
They vary greatly in size or quantity, from su ...
, and miscellaneous words which have no kanji or whose kanji are considered obscure or too difficult to read or remember. ''
Katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...
'' are mostly used for representing
onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...
,
non-Japanese loanwords (except those borrowed from
ancient Chinese), the names of plants and animals (with exceptions), and for emphasis on certain words.
Orthographic reform and lists of kanji
![Yōshū Chikanobu Shin Bijin No](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Y%C5%8Dsh%C5%AB_Chikanobu_Shin_Bijin_No._20.jpg)
Since ancient times, there has been a strong opinion in Japan that kanji is the orthodox form of writing, but there were also people who argued against it.
Kamo no Mabuchi
was a ''kokugaku'' scholar, poet and philologist during mid-Edo period Japan. Along with Kada no Azumamaro, Motoori Norinaga, and Hirata Atsutane, he was regarded as one of the Four Great Men of Kokugaku, and through his research into the spiri ...
, a scholar of the
Edo period
The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...
, criticized the large number of characters in kanji. He also appreciated the small number of characters in kana characters and argued for the limitation of kanji.
After the
Meiji Restoration
The , referred to at the time as the , and also known as the Meiji Renovation, Revolution, Regeneration, Reform, or Renewal, was a political event that restored practical imperial rule to Japan in 1868 under Emperor Meiji. Although there were ...
and as Japan entered an era of active exchange with foreign countries, the need for script reform in Japan began to be called for. Some scholars argued for the abolition of kanji and the writing of Japanese using only kana or Latin characters. However, these views were not so widespread.
However, the need to limit the number of kanji characters was understood, and in May 1923, the Japanese government announced 1,962 kanji characters for regular use. In 1940, the
Japanese Army
The Japan Ground Self-Defense Force ( ja, 陸上自衛隊, Rikujō Jieitai), , also referred to as the Japanese Army, is the land warfare branch of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. Created on July 1, 1954, it is the largest of the three service b ...
decided on the which limited the number of kanji that could be used for weapons names to 1,235. In 1942, the National Language Council announced the with a total of 2,528 characters, showing the standard for kanji used by ministries and agencies and in general society.
In 1946, after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
and under the
Allied Occupation of Japan
Japan was occupied and administered by the victorious Allies of World War II from the 1945 surrender of the Empire of Japan at the end of the war until the
Treaty of San Francisco took effect in 1952. The occupation, led by the United States wi ...
, the Japanese government, guided by the
Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers
was the title held by General Douglas MacArthur during the United States-led Allied occupation of Japan following World War II. It issued SCAP Directives (alias SCAPIN, SCAP Index Number) to the Japanese government, aiming to suppress its "milita ...
, instituted a series of
orthographic reforms, to help children learn and to simplify kanji use in literature and periodicals.
The number of characters in circulation was reduced, and formal lists of characters to be learned during each grade of school were established.
Some characters were given simplified
glyph
A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
s, called . Many variant forms of characters and obscure alternatives for common characters were officially discouraged.
These are simply guidelines, so many characters outside these standards are still widely known and commonly used; these are known as .
Kyōiku kanji
The are the 1,026 first kanji characters that Japanese children learn in elementary school, from first grade to sixth grade. The grade-level breakdown is known as the , or the . This list of kanji is maintained by the
Japanese Ministry of Education
The , also known as MEXT or Monka-shō, is one of the eleven Ministries of Japan that composes part of the executive branch of the Government of Japan. Its goal is to improve the development of Japan in relation with the international community. ...
and prescribes which kanji characters and which kanji readings students should learn for each grade.
Jōyō kanji
The are 2,136 characters consisting of all the , plus 1,110 additional kanji taught in junior high and high school. In publishing, characters outside this category are often given . The were introduced in 1981, replacing an older list of 1,850 characters known as the , introduced in 1946. Originally numbering 1,945 characters, the list was expanded to 2,136 in 2010. Some of the new characters were previously ; some are used to write prefecture names: , , , , , , , , , and .
Jinmeiyō kanji
As of September 25, 2017, the consists of 863 characters. Kanji on this list are mostly used in people's names and some are traditional variants of . There were only 92 kanji in the original list published in 1952, but new additions have been made frequently. Sometimes the term refers to all 2,999 kanji from both the and lists combined.
Hyōgai kanji
are any kanji not contained in the and lists. These are generally written using traditional characters, but
extended shinjitai
is the extension of the shinjitai (officially simplified kanji). They are the simplified versions of some of the . They are unofficial characters; the official forms of these hyōgaiji are still kyūjitai (traditional characters).
Simplified fo ...
forms exist.
Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji
The
Japanese Industrial Standards
are the standards used for industrial activities in Japan, coordinated by the Japanese Industrial Standards Committee (JISC) and published by the Japanese Standards Association (JSA). The JISC is composed of many nationwide committees and plays ...
for kanji and kana define character code-points for each kanji and kana, as well as other forms of writing such as the
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...
,
Cyrillic script
The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, ...
,
Greek alphabet
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as we ...
,
Arabic numerals
Arabic numerals are the ten numerical digits: , , , , , , , , and . They are the most commonly used symbols to write Decimal, decimal numbers. They are also used for writing numbers in other systems such as octal, and for writing identifiers ...
, etc. for use in information processing. They have had numerous revisions. The current standards are:
*
JIS X 0208
JIS X 0208 is a 2-byte character set specified as a Japanese Industrial Standard, containing 6879 graphic characters suitable for writing text, place names, personal names, and so forth in the Japanese language. The official title of the current ...
, the most recent version of the main standard. It has 6,355 kanji.
*
JIS X 0212
JIS X 0212 is a Japanese Industrial Standard defining a coded character set for encoding supplementary characters for use in Japanese. This standard is intended to supplement JIS X 0208 (Code page 952). It is numbered 953 or 5049 as an IBM code p ...
, a supplementary standard containing a further 5,801 kanji. This standard is rarely used, mainly because the common
Shift JIS
Shift JIS (Shift Japanese Industrial Standards, also SJIS, MIME name Shift_JIS, known as PCK in Solaris contexts) is a character encoding for the Japanese language, originally developed by a Japanese company called ASCII Corporation in conjunctio ...
encoding system could not use it. This standard is effectively obsolete.
*
JIS X 0213
JIS X 0213 is a Japanese Industrial Standard defining coded character sets for encoding the characters used in Japan. This standard extends JIS X 0208. The first version was published in 2000 and revised in 2004 (JIS2004) and 2012. As well as add ...
, a further revision which extended the JIS X 0208 set with 3,695 additional kanji, of which 2,743 (all but 952) were in JIS X 0212. The standard is in part designed to be compatible with Shift JIS encoding.
*JIS X 0221:1995, the Japanese version of the ISO 10646/
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
standard.
Gaiji
are kanji that are not represented in existing Japanese
encoding systems. These include variant forms of common kanji that need to be represented alongside the more conventional
glyph
A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
in reference works and can include non-kanji symbols as well.
can be either user-defined characters, system-specific characters or third-party add-on products. Both are a problem for information interchange, as the
code point
In character encoding terminology, a code point, codepoint or code position is a numerical value that maps to a specific character. Code points usually represent a single grapheme—usually a letter, digit, punctuation mark, or whitespace—but ...
used to represent an external character will not be consistent from one computer or operating system to another.
were nominally prohibited in JIS X 0208-1997 where the available number of code-points was reduced to only 940. JIS X 0213-2000 used the entire range of code-points previously allocated to , making them completely unusable. Most desktop and mobile systems have moved to
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
negating the need for ''gaiji'' for most users. Nevertheless, they persist today in Japan's three major mobile phone information portals, where they are used for
emoji
An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversat ...
(pictorial characters).
Unicode
Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology Technical standard, standard for the consistent character encoding, encoding, representation, and handling of Character (computing), text expre ...
allows for optional encoding of in
private use areas
In Unicode, a Private Use Area (PUA) is a range of code points that, by definition, will not be assigned characters by the Unicode Consortium. Three private use areas are defined: one in the Basic Multilingual Plane (), and one each in, and nearl ...
, while
Adobe's SING (Smart INdependent Glyphlets) technology allows the creation of customized gaiji.
The
Text Encoding Initiative
The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is a text-centric community of practice in the academic field of digital humanities, operating continuously since the 1980s. The community currently runs a mailing list, meetings and conference series, and main ...
uses a element to encode any non-standard character or glyph, including gaiji. (The ''g'' stands for .)
Total number of kanji
There is no definitive count of kanji characters, just as there is none of Chinese characters generally. The ''
Dai Kan-Wa Jiten'', which is considered to be comprehensive in Japan, contains about 50,000 characters. The ''
Zhonghua Zihai
''Zhonghua Zihai'' () is the largest Chinese character dictionary available for print, compiled in 1994 and consisting of 85,568 different characters. Victor H. MairWho Has the Biggest Dictionary? October 9, 2008
Details
The ''Zhonghua Zihai'' c ...
'', published in 1994 in China, contains about 85,000 characters, but the majority of them are not in common use in any country, and many are obscure variants or archaic forms.
[Kuang-Hui Chiu, Chi-Ching Hsu (2006)]
Chinese Dilemmas : How Many Ideographs are Needed
, National Taipei University
A list of 2,136 ''
jōyō kanji
The is the guide to kanji characters and their readings, announced officially by the Japanese Ministry of Education. Current ''jōyō kanji'' are those on a list of 2,136 characters issued in 2010. It is a slightly modified version of the ''tō ...
'' (常用漢字) is regarded as necessary for functional literacy in Japanese. Approximately a thousand more characters are commonly used and readily understood by the majority in Japan and a few thousand more find occasional use, particularly in specialized fields of study but those may be obscure to most out of context. A total of 13,108 characters can be encoded in various
Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji.
Readings
Because of the way they have been adopted into Japanese, a single kanji may be used to write one or more different words—or, in some cases,
morphemes
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology.
In English, morphemes are often but not necessarily words. Morphemes that stand alone a ...
—and thus the same character may be pronounced in different ways. From the reader's point of view, kanji are said to have one or more different "readings". Although more than one reading may become activated in the brain, deciding which reading is appropriate depends on recognizing which word it represents, which can usually be determined from context, intended meaning, whether the character occurs as part of a compound word or an independent word, and sometimes location within the sentence. For example, is usually read ''kyō'', meaning "today", but in formal writing is instead read ''konnichi'', meaning "nowadays"; this is understood from context. Nevertheless, some cases are ambiguous and require a ''
furigana
is a Japanese reading aid consisting of smaller kana or syllabic characters printed either above or next to kanji (logographic characters) or other characters to indicate their pronunciation. It is one type of ruby text. Furigana is also known ...
'' gloss, which are used to simplify difficult readings or to specify a non-standard reading.
Kanji readings are categorized as either ''on'yomi'' (, literally "sound reading", from Chinese) or ''kun'yomi'' (, literally "meaning reading", native Japanese), and most characters have at least two readings, at least one of each.
However, some characters have only a single reading, such as or ; ''kun''-only are common for Japanese-coined kanji (''kokuji'').
Some common kanji have ten or more possible readings; the most complex common example is , which is read as ''sei, shō, nama, ki, o-u, i-kiru, i-kasu, i-keru, u-mu, u-mareru, ha-eru'', and ''ha-yasu'', totaling eight basic readings (the first two are ''on'', while the rest are ''kun''), or 12 if related verbs are counted as distinct; see
okurigana § 生 for details.
Most often, a character will be used for both sound and meaning, and it is simply a matter of choosing the correct reading based on which word it represents.
''On'yomi'' (Sino-Japanese reading)
The , the
Sino-Japanese reading, is the modern descendant of the Japanese approximation of the base Chinese pronunciation of the character at the time it was introduced. It was often previously referred to as translation reading, as it was recreated readings of the Chinese pronunciation but was not the Chinese pronunciation or reading itself, similar to the English pronunciation of Latin loanwords. Old Japanese scripts often stated that ''on'yomi'' readings were also created by the Japanese during their arrival and re-borrowed by the Chinese as their own. There also exist kanji created by the Japanese and given an ''on'yomi'' reading despite not being a Chinese-derived or a Chinese-originating character. Some kanji were introduced from different parts of China at different times, and so have multiple ''on'yomi'', and often multiple meanings. ''Kanji'' invented in Japan (
kokuji
are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequent ...
) would not normally be expected to have ''on'yomi'', but there are exceptions, such as the character "to work", which has the ''kun'yomi'' "''hatara(ku)''" and the ''on'yomi'' "''dō''", and "gland", which has only the ''on'yomi'' "''sen''"—in both cases these come from the ''on'yomi'' of the phonetic component, respectively "''dō''" and "''sen''".
Generally, ''on'yomi'' are classified into four types according to their region and time of origin:
* readings are from the pronunciation during the
Northern and Southern dynasties
The Northern and Southern dynasties () was a period of political division in the history of China that lasted from 420 to 589, following the tumultuous era of the Sixteen Kingdoms and the Eastern Jin dynasty. It is sometimes considered as ...
of China during the 5th and 6th centuries. ''Go'' refers to the
Wu region (in the vicinity of modern
Shanghai
Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...
), which still maintains linguistic similarities with modern Sino-Japanese vocabulary. See also:
Wu Chinese
The Wu languages (; Romanization of Wu Chinese, Wu romanization and Romanization of Wu Chinese#IPA, IPA: ''wu6 gniu6'' [] (Shanghainese), ''ng2 gniu6'' [] (Suzhounese), Mandarin pinyin and IPA: ''Wúyǔ'' []) is a major group of Sinitic languag ...
and Shanghainese language.
* readings are from the pronunciation during the
Tang dynasty
The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an Zhou dynasty (690–705), interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dyn ...
of China in the 7th to 9th centuries, primarily from the standard speech of the capital,
Chang'an
Chang'an (; ) is the traditional name of Xi'an. The site had been settled since Neolithic times, during which the Yangshao culture was established in Banpo, in the city's suburbs. Furthermore, in the northern vicinity of modern Xi'an, Qin Shi ...
(modern
Xi'an
Xi'an ( , ; ; Chinese: ), frequently spelled as Xian and also known by #Name, other names, is the list of capitals in China, capital of Shaanxi, Shaanxi Province. A Sub-provincial division#Sub-provincial municipalities, sub-provincial city o ...
). Here, ''Kan'' refers to
Han Chinese people
The Han Chinese () or Han people (), are an East Asian people, East Asian ethnic group native to China. They constitute the list of contemporary ethnic groups, world's largest ethnic group, making up about 18% of the World population, global ...
or
China proper
China proper, Inner China, or the Eighteen Provinces is a term used by some Western writers in reference to the "core" regions of the Manchu-led Qing dynasty of China. This term is used to express a distinction between the "core" regions popu ...
.
* readings are from the pronunciations of later dynasties of China, such as the
Song
A song is a musical composition intended to be performed by the human voice. This is often done at distinct and fixed pitches (melodies) using patterns of sound and silence. Songs contain various forms, such as those including the repetitio ...
and
Ming
The Ming dynasty (), officially the Great Ming, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China, ruling from 1368 to 1644 following the collapse of the Mongol Empire, Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. The Ming dynasty was the last ort ...
. They cover all readings adopted from the
Heian era
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. It followed the Nara period, beginning when the 50th emperor, Emperor Kanmu, moved the capital of Japan to Heian-kyō (modern Kyoto). means "peace" in Japanese. ...
to the
Edo period
The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional '' daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was characteriz ...
. This is also known as .
* readings, which are mistaken or changed readings of the kanji that have become accepted into the Japanese language. In some cases, they are the actual readings that accompanied the character's introduction to Japan but do not match how the character
"should" (is prescribed to) be read according to the rules of character construction and pronunciation.
The most common form of readings is the ''kan-on'' one, and use of a non-''kan-on'' reading in a word where the ''kan-on'' reading is well known is a common cause of reading mistakes or difficulty, such as in (''go-on''), where is usually instead read as ''kai''. The ''go-on'' readings are especially common in
Buddhist
Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
terminology such as , as well as in some of the earliest loans, such as the Sino-Japanese numbers. The ''tō-on'' readings occur in some later words, such as , , and . The go-on, kan-on, and tō-on readings are generally
cognate
In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymology, etymological ancestor in a proto-language, common parent language. Because language c ...
(with rare exceptions of homographs; see below), having a common origin in
Old Chinese
Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese language, Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones ...
, and hence form
linguistic doublets or triplets, but they can differ significantly from each other and from modern Chinese pronunciation.
In Chinese, most characters are associated with a single Chinese sound, though there are distinct
literary and colloquial readings. However, some homographs ( ) such as (' or ') (Japanese: ''an, gō, gyō'') have more than one reading in Chinese representing different meanings, which is reflected in the carryover to Japanese as well. Additionally, many Chinese syllables, especially those with an
entering tone
A checked tone, commonly known by the Chinese calque entering tone, is one of the four syllable types in the phonology of Middle Chinese. Although usually translated as "tone", a checked tone is not a tone in the phonetic sense but rather a syl ...
, did not fit the largely consonant-vowel (CV)
phonotactics
Phonotactics (from Ancient Greek "voice, sound" and "having to do with arranging") is a branch of phonology that deals with restrictions in a language on the permissible combinations of phonemes. Phonotactics defines permissible syllable struc ...
of classical Japanese. Thus most ''on'yomi'' are composed of two
morae
A mora (plural ''morae'' or ''moras''; often symbolized μ) is a basic timing unit in the phonology of some spoken languages, equal to or shorter than a syllable. For example, a short syllable such as ''ba'' consists of one mora (''monomoraic'') ...
(beats), the second of which is either a lengthening of the vowel in the first mora (to ''ei'', ''ō'', or ''ū''), the vowel ''i'', or one of the syllables ''ku'', ''ki'', ''tsu'', ''chi'', ''fu'' (historically, later merged into ''ō'' and ''ū''), or moraic ''n'', chosen for their approximation to the final consonants of Middle Chinese. It may be that
palatalized consonants before vowels other than ''i'' developed in Japanese as a result of Chinese borrowings, as they are virtually unknown in words of native Japanese origin, but are common in Chinese.
''On'yomi'' primarily occur in , many of which are the result of the adoption, along with the kanji themselves, of Chinese words for concepts that either did not exist in Japanese or could not be articulated as elegantly using native words. This borrowing process is often compared to the
English borrowings from Latin, Greek, and Norman French, since Chinese-borrowed terms are often more specialized, or considered to sound more erudite or formal, than their native counterparts (occupying a higher
linguistic register
In sociolinguistics, a register is a variety of language used for a particular purpose or in a particular communicative situation. For example, when speaking officially or in a public setting, an English speaker may be more likely to follow pres ...
). The major exception to this rule is
family name
In some cultures, a surname, family name, or last name is the portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family, tribe or community.
Practices vary by culture. The family name may be placed at either the start of a person's full name ...
s, in which the native ''kun'yomi'' are usually used (though ''on'yomi'' are found in many personal names, especially men's names).
''Kun'yomi'' (native reading)
The , the native reading, is a reading based on the pronunciation of a native
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
word, or ''
yamato kotoba
are native Japanese words, meaning those words in Japanese that have been inherited from Old Japanese, rather than being borrowed at some stage. Together with kango () and gairaigo (), they form one of the three main sources of Japanese word ...
'', that closely approximated the meaning of the
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
character when it was introduced. As with ''on'yomi'', there can be multiple ''kun'yomi'' for the same kanji, and some kanji have no ''kun'yomi'' at all.
For instance, the character for
east
East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth.
Etymology
As in other languages, the word is formed from the fa ...
, , has the ''on'yomi'' ''tō'', from
Middle Chinese
Middle Chinese (formerly known as Ancient Chinese) or the Qieyun system (QYS) is the historical variety of Chinese recorded in the '' Qieyun'', a rime dictionary first published in 601 and followed by several revised and expanded editions. The ...
'. However,
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
already had two words for "east": ''higashi'' and ''azuma''. Thus the kanji had the latter readings added as ''kun'yomi''. In contrast, the kanji , denoting a Chinese unit of measurement (about 30 mm or 1.2 inch), has no native
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
equivalent; it only has an ''on'yomi'', ''
sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...
'', with no native ''kun'yomi''. Most ''
kokuji
are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequent ...
'', Japanese-created Chinese characters, only have ''kun'yomi'', although some have back-formed a pseudo-''on'yomi'' by analogy with similar characters, such as ''dō'', from ''dō'', and there are even some, such as ''sen'' "gland", that have only an ''on'yomi''.
''Kun'yomi'' are characterized by the strict (C)V syllable structure of ''yamato kotoba''. Most noun or adjective ''kun'yomi'' are two to three syllables long, while verb ''kun'yomi'' are usually between one and three syllables in length, not counting trailing
hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''.
It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrast ...
called ''
okurigana
are kana suffixes following kanji stems in Japanese written words. They serve two purposes: to inflect adjectives and verbs, and to force a particular kanji to have a specific meaning and be read a certain way. For example, the plain verb fo ...
''. ''Okurigana'' are not considered to be part of the internal reading of the character, although they are part of the reading of the word. A beginner in the language will rarely come across characters with long readings, but readings of three or even four syllables are not uncommon. This contrasts with ''on'yomi'', which are monosyllabic, and is unusual in the
Chinese family of scripts
The Chinese family of scripts are writing systems descended from the Chinese oracle bone script and used for a variety of languages in East Asia. They include logosyllabic systems such as the Chinese script itself (or ''hanzi'', now in two forms, t ...
, which generally use one character per syllable—not only in Chinese, but also in Korean, Vietnamese, and Zhuang;
polysyllabic Chinese character
Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji' ...
s are rare and considered non-standard.
''uketamawaru'', ''kokorozashi'', and ''mikotonori'' have five syllables represented by a single kanji, the longest readings in the
''jōyō'' character set. These unusually long readings are due to a single character representing a compound word:
* is a single character for a compound verb, one component of which has a long reading.
** It has an alternative spelling as ''u(ke)-tamawa(ru)'', hence (1+1)+3=5.
** Compare common ''u(ke)-tsu(keru)''.
* is a nominalization of the verb which has a long reading ''kokoroza(su)''.
** This is due to its being derived from a noun-verb compound, ''kokoro-za(su)''.
** The nominalization removes the okurigana, hence increasing the reading by one mora, yielding 4+1=5.
** Compare common ''hanashi'' 2+1=3, from ''hana(su)''.
* is a triple compound.
** It has an alternative spelling ''mi-koto-nori'', hence 1+2+2=5.
Further, some Jōyō characters have long non-Jōyō readings (students learn the character, but not the reading), such as ''omonpakaru'' for .
In a number of cases, multiple kanji were assigned to cover a single
Japanese
Japanese may refer to:
* Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia
* Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan
* Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture
** Japanese diaspor ...
word. Typically when this occurs, the different kanji refer to specific shades of meaning. For instance, the word , ''naosu'', when written , means "to heal an illness or sickness". When written it means "to fix or correct something". Sometimes the distinction is very clear, although not always. Differences of opinion among reference works are not uncommon; one dictionary may say the kanji are equivalent, while another dictionary may draw distinctions of use. As a result, native speakers of the language may have trouble knowing which kanji to use and resort to personal preference or by writing the word in
hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''.
It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrast ...
. This latter strategy is frequently employed with more complex cases such as もと ''moto'', which has at least five different kanji: , and , the first three of which have only very subtle differences. Another notable example is ''sakazuki'' "sake cup", which may be spelt as at least five different kanji: , and ; of these, the first two are common—formally is a small cup and a large cup.
Local dialectical readings of kanji are also classified under ''kun'yomi'', most notably readings for words in
Ryukyuan languages
The , also Lewchewan or Luchuan (), are the indigenous languages of the Ryukyu Islands, the southernmost part of the Japanese archipelago. Along with the Japanese language and the Hachijō language, they make up the Japonic language family.
Al ...
. Further, in rare cases gairaigo (borrowed words) have a
single character associated with them, in which case this reading is formally classified as a ''kun'yomi'', because the character is being used for meaning, not sound.
Ateji
''
Ateji
In modern Japanese, principally refers to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters. This is similar to in Old Japanese. Conversely, also refers to kanji used s ...
'' (当て字, 宛字 or あてじ) are characters used only for their sounds. In this case, pronunciation is still based on a standard reading, or used only for meaning (broadly a form of ''ateji'', narrowly ''jukujikun''). Therefore, only the full compound—not the individual character—has a reading. There are also
special cases where the reading is completely different, often based on a historical or traditional reading.
The analogous phenomenon occurs to a much lesser degree in
Chinese varieties
Chinese, also known as Sinitic, is a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family consisting of hundreds of local varieties, many of which are not mutually intelligible. Variation is particularly strong in the more mountainous southeast of main ...
, where there are
literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters
Differing literary and colloquial readings for certain Chinese characters are a common feature of many Chinese varieties, and the reading distinctions for these linguistic doublets often typify a dialect group. Literary readings (/) are usuall ...
—borrowed readings and native readings. In Chinese these borrowed readings and native readings are etymologically related, since they are between Chinese varieties (which are related), not from Chinese to Japanese (which are not related). They thus form
doublets and are generally similar, analogous to different on'yomi, reflecting different stages of Chinese borrowings into Japanese.
Gairaigo
Longer readings exist for non-Jōyō characters and non-kanji symbols, where a long
gairaigo
is Japanese for "loan word", and indicates a transcription into Japanese. In particular, the word usually refers to a Japanese word of foreign origin that was not borrowed in ancient times from Old or Middle Chinese (especially Literary Chinese) ...
word may be the reading (this is classed as ''kun'yomi''—see
single character gairaigo, below)—the character has the seven kana reading ''senchimētoru'' "centimeter", though it is generally written as "cm" (with two half-width characters, so occupying one space); another common example is '%' (the percent sign), which has the five kana reading ''pāsento''.
Mixed readings
![Pail,yutou,soba-yu,katori-city,japan](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Pail%2Cyutou%2Csoba-yu%2Ckatori-city%2Cjapan.JPG)
There are many kanji compounds that use a mixture of ''on'yomi'' and ''kun'yomi'', known as or words (depending on the order), which are themselves examples of this kind of compound (they are
autological word
An autological word (also called homological word) is a word that expresses a property that it also possesses (e.g., "word" is a word, "noun" is a noun, "English" is an English word, " pentasyllabic" has five syllables, and "writable" is writab ...
s): the first character of ''jūbako'' is read using ''on'yomi'', the second ''kun'yomi'' (''on-kun'', 重箱読み).
It is the other way around with ''yu-tō'' (''kun-on'', 湯桶読み).
Formally, these are referred to as and . Note that in both these words, the ''on'yomi'' has a long vowel; long vowels in Japanese generally are derived from sound changes common to loans from Chinese, hence distinctive of ''on'yomi''. These are the Japanese form of
hybrid word
A hybrid word or hybridism is a word that etymologically derives from at least two languages.
Common hybrids
The most common form of hybrid word in English combines Latin and Greek parts. Since many prefixes and suffixes in English are of Latin ...
s. Other examples include , and .
''
Ateji
In modern Japanese, principally refers to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters. This is similar to in Old Japanese. Conversely, also refers to kanji used s ...
'' often use mixed readings. For instance the city of
Sapporo
( ain, サッ・ポロ・ペッ, Satporopet, lit=Dry, Great River) is a city in Japan. It is the largest city north of Tokyo and the largest city on Hokkaido, the northernmost main island of the country. It ranks as the fifth most populous city ...
(サッポロ), whose name derives from the
Ainu language
Ainu (, ), or more precisely Hokkaido Ainu, is a language spoken by a few elderly members of the Ainu people on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. It is a member of the Ainu language family, itself considered a language family isolate ...
and has no meaning in Japanese, is written with the ''on-kun'' compound (which includes ''
sokuon
The is a Japanese symbol in the form of a small hiragana or katakana '' tsu''. In less formal language it is called or , meaning "small ''tsu''". It serves multiple purposes in Japanese writing.
Appearance
In both hiragana and katakana, t ...
'' as if it were a purely ''on'' compound).
Special readings
''Gikun'' () and ''jukujikun'' () are readings of kanji combinations that have no direct correspondence to the characters' individual ''on'yomi'' or ''kun'yomi''. From the point of view of the character, rather than the word, this is known as a (''nankun'', "difficult reading"), and these are listed in kanji dictionaries under the entry for the character.
''Gikun'' are other readings assigned to a character instead of its standard readings. An example is reading (meaning "cold") as ''fuyu'' ("winter") rather than the standard readings ''samu'' or ''kan'', and instead of the usual spelling for ''fuyu'' of . Another example is using (lit. "smoke grass") with the reading ''tabako'' ("tobacco") rather than the otherwise-expected readings of ''kemuri-gusa'' or ''ensō''. Some of these, such as for ''tabako'', have become
lexicalized
In linguistics, lexicalization is the process of adding words, set phrases, or word patterns to a language's lexicon.
Whether ''word formation'' and ''lexicalization'' refer to the same process is controversial within the field of linguistics. Mo ...
, but in many cases this kind of use is typically non-standard and employed in specific contexts by individual writers. Aided with
furigana
is a Japanese reading aid consisting of smaller kana or syllabic characters printed either above or next to kanji (logographic characters) or other characters to indicate their pronunciation. It is one type of ruby text. Furigana is also known ...
, ''gikun'' could be used to convey complex literary or poetic effect (especially if the readings contradict the kanji), or clarification if the referent may not be obvious.
''Jukujikun'' are when the standard kanji for a word are related to the meaning, but not the sound. The word is pronounced as a whole, not corresponding to sounds of individual kanji. For example, ("this morning") is jukujikun. This word is not read as *''ima'asa'', the expected ''kun'yomi'' of the characters, and only infrequently as ''konchō'', the ''on'yomi'' of the characters. The most common reading is ''kesa'', a native bisyllabic Japanese word that may be seen as a single
morpheme
A morpheme is the smallest meaningful Constituent (linguistics), constituent of a linguistic expression. The field of linguistics, linguistic study dedicated to morphemes is called morphology (linguistics), morphology.
In English, morphemes are ...
, or as a compound of ''ke'' (“this”, as in ''kefu'', the older reading for , “today”), and ''asa'', “morning”. Likewise, ("today") is also jukujikun, usually read with the native reading ''kyō''; its on'yomi, ''konnichi'', does occur in certain words and expressions, especially in the broader sense "nowadays" or "current", such as ("present-day"), although in the phrase ''konnichi wa'' ("good day"), ''konnichi'' is typically spelled wholly with hiragana rather than with the kanji .
Jukujikun are primarily used for some native Japanese words, such as
Yamato
was originally the area around today's Sakurai City in Nara Prefecture of Japan, which became Yamato Province and by extension a name for the whole of Japan.
Yamato is also the dynastic name of the ruling Imperial House of Japan.
Japanese his ...
( or , the name of the dominant ethnic group of Japan, a former Japanese province as well as ancient name for Japan), and for some old borrowings, such as (''
shishamo
, or ''Spirinchus lanceolatus'', is an anadromous fish (smelt) native to Hokkaido, Japan.
Description
This fish averages 15 centimeters in length, with a maximum recorded length of 70 cm. It is generally dark on the back with a silver-white u ...
'', literally "willow leaf fish") from Ainu, (''tabako'', literally “smoke grass”) from Portuguese, or (''bīru'', literally “wheat alcohol”) from Dutch, especially if the word was borrowed before the
Meiji Period
The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912.
The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...
. Words whose kanji are jukujikun are often usually written as hiragana (if native), or katakana (if borrowed); some old borrowed words are also written as hiragana, especially Portuguese loanwords such as
かるた (''karuta'') from Portuguese "
carta" (English “card”) or (''tempura'') from Portuguese "
tempora
Tempora is the codeword for a formerly-secret computer system that is used by the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). This system is used to buffer most Internet communications that are extracted from fibre-optic cables, so t ...
" (English “times, season”), as well as (''tabako'').
Sometimes, jukujikun can even have more kanji than there are syllables, examples being ''kera'' (, “woodpecker”), ''gumi'' (, “silver berry, oleaster”), and ''Hozumi'' (, a surname).
This phenomenon is observed in animal names that are shortened and used as suffixes for zoological compound names, for example when , normally read as ''koganemushi'', is shortened to ''kogane'' in ''kurokogane'', although zoological names are commonly spelled with katakana rather than with kanji. Outside zoology, this type of shortening only occurs on a handful of words, for example ''daigen(sui)'', or the historical male name suffix ''-emon'', which was shortened from the word ''uemon''.
Jukujikun are quite varied. Often the kanji compound for jukujikun is idiosyncratic and created for the word, and there is no corresponding Chinese word with that spelling. In other cases a kanji compound for an existing Chinese word is reused, where the Chinese word and ''on'yomi'' may or may not be used in Japanese. For example, (“reindeer”) is jukujikun for ''tonakai'', from Ainu, but the ''on'yomi'' reading of ''junroku'' is also used. In some cases, Japanese coinages have subsequently been
borrowed back into Chinese, such as (''ankō'', “
monkfish
Members of the genus ''Lophius'', also sometimes called monkfish, fishing-frogs, frog-fish, and sea-devils, are various species of lophiid anglerfishes found in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. ''Lophius'' is known as the "monk" or "monkfish" ...
”).
The underlying word for jukujikun is a native Japanese word or foreign borrowing, which either does not have an existing kanji spelling (either ''kun'yomi'' or ''ateji'') or for which a new kanji spelling is produced. Most often the word is a noun, which may be a simple noun (not a compound or derived from a verb), or may be a verb form or a fusional pronunciation. For example, the word (''sumō'', “
sumo
is a form of competitive full-contact wrestling where a ''rikishi'' (wrestler) attempts to force his opponent out of a circular ring (''dohyō'') or into touching the ground with any body part other than the soles of his feet (usually by thr ...
”) is originally from the verb (''sumau'', “to vie, to compete”), while (''kyō'', “today”) is fusional (from older ''ke'', “this” + ''fu'', “day”).
In rare cases jukujikun is also applied to inflectional words (verbs and adjectives), in which case there is frequently a corresponding Chinese word. The most common example of an inflectional jukujikun is the adjective (''kawai-i'', “cute”), originally ''kawafayu-i;'' the word is used in
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
, but the corresponding ''on'yomi'' is not used in Japanese. By contrast, "appropriate" can be either (''fusawa-shii'', as jukujikun) or (''sōō'', as ''on'yomi''). Which reading to use can be discerned by the presence or absence of the ''-shii'' ending (''
okurigana
are kana suffixes following kanji stems in Japanese written words. They serve two purposes: to inflect adjectives and verbs, and to force a particular kanji to have a specific meaning and be read a certain way. For example, the plain verb fo ...
''). A common example of a verb with jukujikun is (''haya-ru'', “to spread, to be in vogue”), corresponding to ''on'yomi'' (''ryūkō''). A sample jukujikun deverbal (noun derived from a verb form) is (''yusuri'', “extortion”), from (''yusu-ru'', “to extort”), spelling from (''kyōsei'', “extortion”). See the
義訓 and
熟字訓 articles in the Japanese Wikipedia for many more examples. Note that there are also compound verbs and, less commonly, compound adjectives, and while these may have multiple kanji without intervening characters, they are read using the usual ''kun'yomi''. Examples include (''omo-shiro-i'', “interesting”, literally “face + white”) and (''zuru-gashiko-i'', “sly”, literally “cunning, crafty + clever, smart”).
Typographically, the
furigana
is a Japanese reading aid consisting of smaller kana or syllabic characters printed either above or next to kanji (logographic characters) or other characters to indicate their pronunciation. It is one type of ruby text. Furigana is also known ...
for jukujikun are often written so they are centered across the entire word, or for inflectional words over the entire root—corresponding to the reading being related to the entire word—rather than each part of the word being centered over its corresponding character, as is often done for the usual phono-semantic readings.
Broadly speaking, jukujikun can be considered a form of ''
ateji
In modern Japanese, principally refers to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters. This is similar to in Old Japanese. Conversely, also refers to kanji used s ...
'', though in narrow usage "ateji" refers specifically to using characters for sound and not meaning (sound-spelling), whereas "jukujikun" refers to using characters for their meaning and not sound (meaning-spelling).
Many jukujikun (established meaning-spellings) began life as gikun (improvised meaning-spellings). Occasionally a single word will have many such kanji spellings. An extreme example is , which may be spelt in a great many ways, including , , , , , , , ,, , and —many of these variant spellings are particular to
haiku
is a type of short form poetry originally from Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases that contain a ''kireji'', or "cutting word", 17 '' on'' (phonetic units similar to syllables) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern, and a ''kigo'', or se ...
poems.
Single character gairaigo
In some rare cases, an individual kanji has a reading that is borrowed from a modern foreign language (
gairaigo
is Japanese for "loan word", and indicates a transcription into Japanese. In particular, the word usually refers to a Japanese word of foreign origin that was not borrowed in ancient times from Old or Middle Chinese (especially Literary Chinese) ...
), though most often these words are written in katakana. Notable examples include , , , and . See
list of single character gairaigo for more. These are classed as ''kun'yomi'' of a single character, because the character is being used for meaning only (without the Chinese pronunciation), rather than as
ateji
In modern Japanese, principally refers to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters. This is similar to in Old Japanese. Conversely, also refers to kanji used s ...
, which is the classification used when a gairaigo term is written as a compound (2 or more characters). However, unlike the vast majority of other ''kun'yomi'', these readings are not native Japanese, but rather borrowed, so the "kun'yomi" label can be misleading. The readings are also written in katakana, unlike the usual hiragana for native ''kun'yomi''. Note that most of these characters are for units, particularly
SI units
The International System of Units, known by the international abbreviation SI in all languages and sometimes Pleonasm#Acronyms and initialisms, pleonastically as the SI system, is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most wid ...
, in many cases using new characters (
kokuji
are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequent ...
) coined during the
Meiji period
The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912.
The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization ...
, such as .
Nanori
Some kanji also have lesser-known readings called , which are mostly used for names (often
given name
A given name (also known as a forename or first name) is the part of a personal name quoted in that identifies a person, potentially with a middle name as well, and differentiates that person from the other members of a group (typically a fa ...
s) and, in general, are closely related to the ''kun'yomi''. Place names sometimes also use ''nanori'' or, occasionally, unique readings not found elsewhere.
When to use which reading
Although there are general rules for when to use ''on'yomi'' and when to use ''kun'yomi'', the language is littered with exceptions, and it is not always possible for even a native speaker to know how to read a character without prior knowledge (this is especially true for names, both of people and places); further, a given character may have multiple ''kun'yomi'' or ''on'yomi''. When reading Japanese, one primarily recognizes ''words'' (multiple characters and okurigana) and their readings, rather than individual characters, and only guess readings of characters when trying to "sound out" an unrecognized word.
Homographs exist, however, which can sometimes be deduced from context, and sometimes cannot, requiring a glossary. For example, may be read either as ''kyō'' "today (informal)" (special fused reading for native word) or as ''konnichi'' "these days (formal)" (''on'yomi''); in formal writing this will generally be read as ''konnichi''.
In some cases multiple readings are common, as in "pork soup", which is commonly pronounced both as ''ton-jiru'' (mixed ''on-kun'') and ''buta-jiru'' (''kun-kun''), with ''ton'' somewhat more common nationally. Inconsistencies abound—for example ''gyū-niku'' "beef" and ''yō-niku'' "mutton" have ''on-on'' readings, but ''buta-niku'' "pork" and ''tori-niku'' "poultry" have ''kun-on'' readings.
The main guideline is that a single kanji followed by ''okurigana'' (hiragana characters that are part of the word)—as used in native verbs and adjectives—''always'' indicates ''kun'yomi'', while kanji compounds (kango) usually use ''on'yomi'', which is usually ''kan-on;'' however, other ''on'yomi'' are also common, and ''kun'yomi'' are also commonly used in kango.
For a kanji in isolation without okurigana, it is typically read using their ''kun'yomi'', though there are numerous exceptions. For example, "iron" is usually read with the ''on'yomi'' ''tetsu'' rather than the ''kun'yomi'' ''kurogane''. Chinese ''on'yomi'' which are not the common ''kan-on'' reading are a frequent cause of difficulty or mistakes when encountering unfamiliar words or for inexperienced readers, though skilled natives will recognize the word; a good example is (''go-on''), where is usually instead read as ''kai''.
Okurigana
are kana suffixes following kanji stems in Japanese written words. They serve two purposes: to inflect adjectives and verbs, and to force a particular kanji to have a specific meaning and be read a certain way. For example, the plain verb fo ...
(送り仮名) are used with ''kun'yomi'' to mark the inflected ending of a native verb or adjective, or by convention. Note that Japanese verbs and adjectives are
closed class
In grammar, a part of speech or part-of-speech (abbreviated as POS or PoS, also known as word class or grammatical category) is a category of words (or, more generally, of lexical items) that have similar grammatical properties. Words that are assi ...
, and do not generally admit new words (borrowed Chinese vocabulary, which are nouns, can form verbs by adding at the end, and adjectives via ''-no'' or ''-na'', but cannot become native Japanese vocabulary, which inflect). For example: ''aka-i'' "red", ''atara-shii'' "new", ''mi-ru'' "(to) see". Okurigana can be used to indicate which ''kun'yomi'' to use, as in ''ta-beru'' versus ''ku-u'' (casual), both meaning "(to) eat", but this is not always sufficient, as in , which may be read as ''a-ku'' or ''hira-ku'', both meaning "(to) open". is a particularly complicated example, with multiple ''kun'' and ''on'yomi''—see
okurigana: 生 for details. Okurigana is also used for some nouns and adverbs, as in ''nasake'' "sympathy", ''kanarazu'' "invariably", but not for ''kane'' "money", for instance.
Okurigana
are kana suffixes following kanji stems in Japanese written words. They serve two purposes: to inflect adjectives and verbs, and to force a particular kanji to have a specific meaning and be read a certain way. For example, the plain verb fo ...
is an important aspect of kanji usage in Japanese; see that article for more information on ''kun'yomi'' orthography
Kanji occurring in are generally read using ''on'yomi'', especially for four-character compounds (''
yojijukugo
is a Japanese lexeme consisting of four kanji (Chinese characters). English translations of include "four-character compound", "four-character idiom", "four-character idiomatic phrase", and "four-character idiomatic compound". It is equivalent ...
''). Though again, exceptions abound, for example, ''jōhō'' "information", ''gakkō'' "school", and ''shinkansen'' "bullet train" all follow this pattern. This isolated kanji versus compound distinction gives words for similar concepts completely different pronunciations. "north" and "east" use the ''kun'yomi'' ''kita'' and ''higashi'', being stand-alone characters, but "northeast", as a compound, uses the ''on'yomi'' ''hokutō''. This is further complicated by the fact that many kanji have more than one ''on'yomi'': is read as ''sei'' in ''sensei'' "teacher" but as ''shō'' in ''isshō'' "one's whole life". Meaning can also be an important indicator of reading; is read ''i'' when it means "simple", but as ''eki'' when it means "divination", both being ''on'yomi'' for this character.
These rules of thumb have many exceptions. ''Kun'yomi'' compound words are not as numerous as those with ''on'yomi'', but neither are they rare. Examples include ''tegami'' "letter", ''higasa'' "parasol", and the famous ''
kamikaze
, officially , were a part of the Japanese Special Attack Units of military aviators who flew suicide attacks for the Empire of Japan against Allied naval vessels in the closing stages of the Pacific campaign of World War II, intending to d ...
'' "divine wind". Such compounds may also have okurigana, such as (also written ) ''karaage'' "Chinese-style fried chicken" and ''
origami
) is the Japanese paper art, art of paper folding. In modern usage, the word "origami" is often used as an inclusive term for all folding practices, regardless of their culture of origin. The goal is to transform a flat square sheet of pape ...
'', although many of these can also be written with the okurigana omitted (for example, or ). In general, compounds coined in Japan using japanese roots will be read in kun'yomi while those imported from China will be read in on'yomi.
Similarly, some ''on'yomi'' characters can also be used as words in isolation: ''ai'' "love", ''
Zen
Zen ( zh, t=禪, p=Chán; ja, text= 禅, translit=zen; ko, text=선, translit=Seon; vi, text=Thiền) is a school of Mahayana Buddhism that originated in China during the Tang dynasty, known as the Chan School (''Chánzong'' 禪宗), and ...
'', ''ten'' "mark, dot". Most of these cases involve kanji that have no ''kun'yomi'', so there can be no confusion, although exceptions do occur. Alone may be read as ''kin'' "gold" or as ''kane'' "money, metal"; only context can determine the writer's intended reading and meaning.
Multiple readings have given rise to a number of
homograph
A homograph (from the el, ὁμός, ''homós'', "same" and γράφω, ''gráphō'', "write") is a word that shares the same written form as another word but has a different meaning. However, some dictionaries insist that the words must also ...
s, in some cases having different meanings depending on how they are read. One example is , which can be read in three different ways: ''jōzu'' (skilled), ''uwate'' (upper part), or ''kamite'' (
stage left/house right). In addition, has the reading ''umai'' (skilled). More subtly, has three different readings, all meaning "tomorrow": ''ashita'' (casual), ''asu'' (polite), and ''myōnichi'' (formal).
Furigana
is a Japanese reading aid consisting of smaller kana or syllabic characters printed either above or next to kanji (logographic characters) or other characters to indicate their pronunciation. It is one type of ruby text. Furigana is also known ...
(reading glosses) is often used to clarify any potential ambiguities.
Conversely, in some cases homophonous terms may be distinguished in writing by different characters, but not so distinguished in speech, and hence potentially confusing. In some cases when it is important to distinguish these in speech, the reading of a relevant character may be changed. For example, (privately established, esp. school) and (city established) are both normally pronounced ''shi-ritsu;'' in speech these may be distinguished by the alternative pronunciations ''watakushi-ritsu'' and ''ichi-ritsu''. More informally, in legal jargon "preamble" and "full text" are both pronounced ''zen-bun'', so may be pronounced ''mae-bun'' for clarity, as in "Have you memorized the preamble
ot 'whole text'of the constitution?". As in these examples, this is primarily using a ''kun'yomi'' for one character in a normally ''on'yomi'' term.
As stated above,
''jūbako'' and ''yutō'' readings are also not uncommon. Indeed, all four combinations of reading are possible: ''on-on'', ''kun-kun'', ''kun-on'' and ''on-kun''.
Legalese
Certain words take different readings depending on whether the context concerns legal matters or not. For example:
For legal contexts where distinction must be made for homophonous words such as ''baishun'' and ''karyō'', see
Ambiguous readings below.
Ambiguous readings
In some instances where even context cannot easily provide clarity for
homophone
A homophone () is a word that is pronounced the same (to varying extent) as another word but differs in meaning. A ''homophone'' may also differ in spelling. The two words may be spelled the same, for example ''rose'' (flower) and ''rose'' (p ...
s, alternative readings or mixed readings can be used instead of regular readings to avoid ambiguity. For example:
Place names
Several famous place names, including
those of Japan itself ( ''Nihon'' or sometimes ''Nippon''), those of some cities such as
Tokyo
Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...
( ''Tōkyō'') and
Kyoto
Kyoto (; Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the ci ...
( ''Kyōto''), and those of the main islands
Honshu
, historically called , is the largest and most populous island of Japan. It is located south of Hokkaidō across the Tsugaru Strait, north of Shikoku across the Inland Sea, and northeast of Kyūshū across the Kanmon Straits. The island separ ...
( ''Honshū''),
Kyushu
is the third-largest island of Japan's five main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands ( i.e. excluding Okinawa). In the past, it has been known as , and . The historical regional name referred to Kyushu and its surroun ...
( ''Kyūshū''),
Shikoku
is the smallest of the four main islands of Japan. It is long and between wide. It has a population of 3.8 million (, 3.1%). It is south of Honshu and northeast of Kyushu. Shikoku's ancient names include ''Iyo-no-futana-shima'' (), '' ...
( ''Shikoku''), and
Hokkaido
is Japan's second largest island and comprises the largest and northernmost prefecture, making up its own region. The Tsugaru Strait separates Hokkaidō from Honshu; the two islands are connected by the undersea railway Seikan Tunnel.
The la ...
( ''Hokkaidō'') are read with ''on'yomi''; however, the majority of Japanese place names are read with ''kun'yomi'': ''Ōsaka'', ''
Aomori
is the capital city of Aomori Prefecture, in the Tōhoku region of Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 278,964 in 136,457 households, and a population density of 340 people per square kilometer spread over the city's total area of ...
'', ''
Hakone
is a town in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. , the town had a population of 11,293 and a population density of 122 persons per km². The total area of the town is . The town is a popular tourist destination due to its many hot springs and views of ...
''. Names often use characters and readings that are not in common use outside of names. When characters are used as abbreviations of place names, their reading may not match that in the original. The
Osaka
is a designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the third most populous city in Japan, following Special wards of Tokyo and Yokohama. With a population of 2. ...
() and
Kobe
Kobe ( , ; officially , ) is the capital city of Hyōgo Prefecture Japan. With a population around 1.5 million, Kobe is Japan's seventh-largest city and the third-largest port city after Tokyo and Yokohama. It is located in Kansai region, whic ...
() baseball team, the
Hanshin
, derived from the second kanji from and the first kanji from (but in ''on''-reading instead of ''kun''-reading), refers generally to Osaka, Kobe, and the surrounding area in the Kansai region of Japan.
In the context of a region of Hyōgo ...
() Tigers, take their name from the ''on'yomi'' of the second kanji of ''Ōsaka'' and the first of ''Kōbe''. The name of the
Keisei Keisei may refer to:
*Keisei (monk)
*Keisei Electric Railway
*Keisei Bus
The is a bus company within the Keisei Group which was established on 1 October 2003 to inherit all business of the Keisei Electric Railway bus department.
Local bus ser ...
() railway line—linking Tokyo () and
Narita ()—is formed similarly, although the reading of from is ''kei'', despite ''kyō'' already being an ''on'yomi'' in the word ''Tōkyō''.
Japanese family name
in modern times consist of a family name (surname) followed by a given name, in that order. Nevertheless, when a Japanese name is written in the Roman alphabet, ever since the Meiji era, the official policy has been to cater to Western expecta ...
s are also usually read with ''kun'yomi'': ''Yamada'', ''Tanaka'', ''Suzuki''. Japanese
given name
A given name (also known as a forename or first name) is the part of a personal name quoted in that identifies a person, potentially with a middle name as well, and differentiates that person from the other members of a group (typically a fa ...
s often have very irregular readings. Although they are not typically considered ''jūbako'' or ''yutō'', they often contain mixtures of ''kun'yomi'', ''on'yomi'' and ''nanori'', such as ''Daisuke''
'on-kun'' ''Natsumi''
'kun-on'' Being chosen at the discretion of the parents, the readings of given names do not follow any set rules, and it is impossible to know with certainty how to read a person's name without independent verification. Parents can be quite creative, and rumours abound of children called ''Āsu'' ("Earth") and ''Enjeru'' ("Angel"); neither are common names, and have normal readings ''chikyū'' and ''tenshi'' respectively. Some common Japanese names can be written in multiple ways, e.g. Akira can be written as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and many other characters and kanji combinations not listed, Satoshi can be written as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , etc., and Haruka can be written as , , , , , , , , and several other possibilities. Common patterns do exist, however, allowing experienced readers to make a good guess for most names. To alleviate any confusion on how to pronounce the names of other Japanese people, most official Japanese documents require Japanese to write their names in both kana and kanji.
Chinese place names and
Chinese personal name
Chinese names or Chinese personal names are names used by individuals from Greater China and other parts of the Sinophone, Chinese-speaking world throughout East Asia, East and Southeast Asia (ESEA). In addition, many names used in Japanese name, ...
s appearing in Japanese texts, if spelled in kanji, are almost invariably read with ''on'yomi''. Especially for older and well-known names, the resulting Japanese pronunciation may differ widely from that used by modern Chinese speakers. For example,
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong pronounced ; also romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the founder of the People's Republic of China (PRC) ...
's name is pronounced as in Japanese, and the name of the legendary Monkey King,
Sun Wukong
The Monkey King, also known as Sun Wukong ( zh, t=孫悟空, s=孙悟空, first=t) in Mandarin Chinese, is a legendary mythical figure best known as one of the main characters in the 16th-century Chinese novel ''Journey to the West'' ( zh, ...
, is pronounced ''
Son Gokū'' () in Japanese.
Today, Chinese names that are not well known in Japan are often spelled in
katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...
instead, in a form much more closely approximating the native Chinese pronunciation. Alternatively, they may be written in kanji with katakana furigana. Many such cities have names that come from non-
Chinese language
Chinese (, especially when referring to written Chinese) is a group of languages spoken natively by the ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in Greater China. About 1.3 billion people (or approximately 16% of the wor ...
s like
Mongolian or
Manchu
The Manchus (; ) are a Tungusic East Asian ethnic group native to Manchuria in Northeast Asia. They are an officially recognized ethnic minority in China and the people from whom Manchuria derives its name. The Later Jin (1616–1636) and ...
. Examples of such not-well-known Chinese names include:
Internationally renowned Chinese-named cities tend to imitate the older English pronunciations of their names, regardless of the kanji's ''on'yomi'' or the Mandarin or Cantonese pronunciation, and can be written in either katakana or kanji. Examples include:
Notes:
*Guangzhou, the city, is pronounced ''Kōshū'', while Guangdong, its province, is pronounced ''Kanton'', not ''Kōtō'' (in this case, opting for a Tō-on reading rather than the usual Kan-on reading).
*Kaohsiung was originally pronounced ''Takao'' (or similar) in
Hokkien
The Hokkien () variety of Chinese is a Southern Min language native to and originating from the Minnan region, where it is widely spoken in the south-eastern part of Fujian in southeastern mainland China. It is one of the national languages in ...
and Japanese. It received this written
name
A name is a term used for identification by an external observer. They can identify a class or category of things, or a single thing, either uniquely, or within a given context. The entity identified by a name is called its referent. A personal ...
(kanji/Chinese) from Japanese, and later its spoken Mandarin name from the corresponding characters. The English name "Kaohsiung" derived from its Mandarin pronunciation. Today it is pronounced either カオシュン or タカオ in Japanese.
*Taipei is generally pronounced たいほく in Japanese.
In some cases the same kanji can appear in a given word with different readings. Normally this occurs when a character is duplicated and the reading of the second character has voicing (''
rendaku
is a phenomenon in Japanese morphophonology that governs the voicing of the initial consonant of a non-initial portion of a compound or prefixed word. In modern Japanese, ''rendaku'' is common but at times unpredictable, with certain words una ...
''), as in ''hito-bito'' "people" (more often written with the
iteration mark
Iteration marks are characters or punctuation marks that represent a duplicated character or word. Chinese
In Chinese, (usually appearing as ) or is used in casual writing to represent a doubled character. However, it is not used in formal writ ...
as ), but in rare cases the readings can be unrelated, as in .
Pronunciation assistance
Because of the ambiguities involved, kanji sometimes have their pronunciation for the given context spelled out in
ruby character
Ruby characters or rubi characters () are small, annotative gloss (annotation), glosses that are usually placed above or to the right of logogram, logographic characters of languages in the East Asian cultural sphere, such as Sinitic languages, Ch ...
s known as ''
furigana
is a Japanese reading aid consisting of smaller kana or syllabic characters printed either above or next to kanji (logographic characters) or other characters to indicate their pronunciation. It is one type of ruby text. Furigana is also known ...
'', (small ''
kana
The term may refer to a number of syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. Such syllabaries include (1) the original kana, or , which were Chinese characters (kanji) used phonetically to transcribe Japanese, the most pr ...
'' written above or to the right of the character) or ''kumimoji'' (small ''kana'' written in-line after the character). This is especially true in texts for children or foreign learners. It is also used in
newspaper
A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background.
Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports a ...
s and ''
manga
Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...
'' for rare or unusual readings, or for situations like the first time a character's name is given, and for characters not included in the officially recognized set of
essential kanji. Works of fiction sometimes use ''furigana'' to create new "words" by giving normal kanji non-standard readings, or to attach a foreign word rendered in katakana as the reading for a kanji or kanji compound of the same or similar meaning.
Spelling words
Conversely, specifying a given kanji, or spelling out a kanji word—whether the pronunciation is known or not—can be complicated, due to the fact that there is not a commonly used standard way to refer to individual kanji (one does not refer to "kanji #237"), and that a given reading does not map to a single kanji—indeed there are many homophonous ''words'', not simply individual characters, particularly for ''kango'' (with ''on'yomi''). Easiest is to write the word out—either on paper or tracing it in the air—or look it up (given the pronunciation) in a dictionary, particularly an electronic dictionary; when this is not possible, such as when speaking over the phone or writing implements are not available (and tracing in air is too complicated), various techniques can be used. These include giving ''kun'yomi'' for characters—these are often unique—using a well-known word with the same character (and preferably the same pronunciation and meaning), and describing the character via its components. For example, one may explain how to spell the word via the words , , and —the first two use the ''kun'yomi'', the third is a well-known compound—saying "''kaori'', ''karai'', ''ryō'' as in ''inryō''."
Dictionaries
In dictionaries, both words and individual characters have readings glossed, via various conventions. Native words and Sino-Japanese vocabulary are glossed in hiragana (for both ''kun'' and ''on'' readings), while borrowings (''gairaigo'')—including modern borrowings from Chinese—are glossed in katakana; this is the standard writing convention also used in furigana. By contrast, readings for individual characters are conventionally written in katakana for ''on'' readings, and hiragana for ''kun'' readings. Kun readings may further have a separator to indicate which characters are okurigana, and which are considered readings of the character itself. For example, in the entry for , the reading corresponding to the basic verb may be written as (''ta.beru''), to indicate that ''ta'' is the reading of the character itself. Further,
kanji dictionaries often list compounds including irregular readings of a kanji.
Local developments and divergences from Chinese
Since kanji are essentially Chinese ''
hanzi
Chinese characters () are logograms developed for the writing of Chinese. In addition, they have been adapted to write other East Asian languages, and remain a key component of the Japanese writing system where they are known as ''kanji' ...
'' used to write Japanese, the majority of characters used in modern Japanese still retain their Chinese meaning, physical resemblance with some of their modern
traditional Chinese characters
Traditional Chinese characters are one type of standard Chinese character sets of the contemporary written Chinese. The traditional characters had taken shapes since the clerical change and mostly remained in the same structure they took at ...
counterparts, and a degree of similarity with
Classical Chinese
Classical Chinese, also known as Literary Chinese (古文 ''gǔwén'' "ancient text", or 文言 ''wényán'' "text speak", meaning
"literary language/speech"; modern vernacular: 文言文 ''wényánwén'' "text speak text", meaning
"literar ...
pronunciation imported to Japan from 5th to 9th century. Nevertheless, after centuries of development, there is a notable number of kanji used in modern Japanese which have different meaning from ''hanzi'' used in modern Chinese. Such differences are the result of:
* the use of characters created in Japan,
* characters that have been given different meanings in Japanese, and
* post-
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
simplifications (''
shinjitai
are the simplified forms of kanji used in Japan since the promulgation of the Tōyō Kanji List in 1946. Some of the new forms found in ''shinjitai'' are also found in Simplified Chinese characters, but ''shinjitai'' is generally not as extensiv ...
'') of the character.
Likewise, the process of
character simplification in
mainland China
"Mainland China" is a geopolitical term defined as the territory governed by the People's Republic of China (including islands like Hainan or Chongming), excluding dependent territories of the PRC, and other territories within Greater China. ...
since the 1950s has resulted in the fact that Japanese speakers who have not studied Chinese may not recognize some simplified characters.
Kokuji
In Japanese, refers to Chinese characters made outside of China. Specifically, kanji made in Japan are referred to as . They are primarily formed in the usual way of Chinese characters, namely by combining existing components, though using a combination that is not used in China. The corresponding phenomenon in Korea is called ''
gukja
Hanja (Hangul: ; Hanja: , ), alternatively known as Hancha, are Chinese characters () used in the writing of Korean. Hanja was used as early as the Gojoseon period, the first ever Korean kingdom.
(, ) refers to Sino-Korean vocabulary, whi ...
'' (), a cognate name; there are however far fewer Korean-coined characters than Japanese-coined ones.
Other languages using the
Chinese family of scripts
The Chinese family of scripts are writing systems descended from the Chinese oracle bone script and used for a variety of languages in East Asia. They include logosyllabic systems such as the Chinese script itself (or ''hanzi'', now in two forms, t ...
sometimes have far more extensive systems of native characters, most significantly Vietnamese
chữ Nôm
Chữ Nôm (, ; ) is a logographic writing system formerly used to write the Vietnamese language. It uses Chinese characters (''Chữ Hán'') to represent Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary and some native Vietnamese words, with other words represented ...
, which comprises over 20,000 characters used throughout traditional Vietnamese writing, and
Zhuang sawndip
Zhuang characters or ''Sawndip'' (Sawndip: ; ) are logograms derived from Chinese characters and used by the Zhuang people of Guangxi and Yunnan provinces in China to write the Zhuang languages for more than one thousand years. The script is used ...
, which comprises over 10,000 characters, which are still in use.
Since kokuji are generally devised for existing native words, these usually only have native
''kun'' readings. However, they occasionally have a Chinese
''on'' reading, derived from a phonetic, as in , ''dō'', and in rare cases only have an ''on'' reading, as in , ''sen'', from , which was derived for use in technical compounds ( means "gland", hence used in medical terminology).
The majority of kokuji are
ideogrammatic compounds (), meaning that they are composed of two (or more) characters, with the meaning associated with the combination. For example, is composed of (person radical) plus (action), hence "action of a person, work". This is in contrast to kanji generally, which are overwhelmingly phono-semantic compounds. This difference is because kokuji were coined to express Japanese words, so borrowing existing (Chinese) readings could not express these—combining existing characters to logically express the meaning was the simplest way to achieve this. Other illustrative examples (below) include ''
sakaki
''Cleyera japonica'' (sakaki) is a flowering evergreen tree native to warm areas of Japan, Taiwan, China, Myanmar, Nepal, and northern India (Min and Bartholomew 2015). It can reach a height of 10 m. The leaves are 6–10 cm long, smooth, ...
'' tree, formed as "tree" and "god", literally "divine tree", and ''tsuji'' "crossroads, street" formed as () "road" and "cross", hence "cross-road".
In terms of meanings, these are especially for natural phenomena (esp.
flora
Flora is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring (indigenous) native plants. Sometimes bacteria and fungi are also referred to as flora, as in the terms '' gut flora'' or '' skin flora''.
E ...
and
fauna
Fauna is all of the animal life present in a particular region or time. The corresponding term for plants is ''flora'', and for fungi, it is '' funga''. Flora, fauna, funga and other forms of life are collectively referred to as '' biota''. Zoo ...
species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...
), including a very large number of fish, such as (
sardine
"Sardine" and "pilchard" are common names for various species of small, oily forage fish in the herring family Clupeidae. The term "sardine" was first used in English during the early 15th century, a folk etymology says it comes from the Ital ...
), (
codfish
Cod is the common name for the demersal fish genus ''Gadus'', belonging to the family Gadidae. Cod is also used as part of the common name for a number of other fish species, and one species that belongs to genus ''Gadus'' is commonly not calle ...
), (
seaperch
The SeaPerch is an educational tool and kit that allows elementary, middle, and high-school students to construct a simple, remotely operated underwater vehicle, or Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), from polyvinyl chloride (PVC) pipe and other re ...
), and (
sillago
''Sillago'' is a genus of fish in the family Sillaginidae and the only non-monotypic genus in the family. Distinguishing the species can be difficult, with many similar in appearance and colour, forcing the use of swim bladder morphology as a d ...
), and trees, such as (
evergreen oak
Live oak or evergreen oak is any of a number of oaks in several different sections of the genus ''Quercus'' that share the characteristic of evergreen foliage. These oaks are not more closely related to each other than they are to other oaks.
...
), (
Japanese cedar
''Cryptomeria'' (literally "hidden parts") is a Monotypic taxon, monotypic genus of Pinophyta, conifer in the cypress family (biology), family Cupressaceae, formerly belonging to the family Taxodiaceae. It includes only one species, ''Cryptomeri ...
), (
birch
A birch is a thin-leaved deciduous hardwood tree of the genus ''Betula'' (), in the family Betulaceae, which also includes alders, hazels, and hornbeams. It is closely related to the beech-oak family Fagaceae. The genus ''Betula'' contains 30 ...
,
maple
''Acer'' () is a genus of trees and shrubs commonly known as maples. The genus is placed in the family Sapindaceae.Stevens, P. F. (2001 onwards). Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 9, June 2008 nd more or less continuously updated since http ...
) and (
spindle tree
''Euonymus'' is a genus of flowering plants in the staff vine family, Celastraceae. Common names vary widely among different species and between different English-speaking countries, but include spindle (or spindle tree), burning-bush, strawb ...
). In other cases they refer to specifically Japanese abstract concepts, everyday words (like , "crossroads", see above), or later technical coinages (such as , "gland", see above).
There are hundreds of ''kokuji'' in existence. Many are rarely used, but a number have become commonly used components of the written Japanese language. These include the following:
Jōyō kanji has about nine kokuji; there is some dispute over classification, but generally includes these:
* ''dō'', ''hatara(ku)'' "work", the most commonly used kokuji, used in the fundamental verb , included in elementary texts and on the
Proficiency Test N5.
* ''ko(mu)'', used in the fundamental verb
* ''nio(u)'', used in common verb
* ''hatake'' "field of crops"
* ''sen'', "gland"
* ''tōge'' "mountain pass"
* ''waku'', "frame"
* ''hei'', "wall"
* ''shibo(ru)'', "to squeeze" (disputed; see below);
''jinmeiyō kanji''
* ''sakaki'' "tree, genus ''
Cleyera
''Cleyera'' is a plant genus consisting of 21 speciesThe Plant List (2013). ''Cleyera''. Version 1.1. Published on the Internet; http://www.theplantlist.org/ Accessed 24 August 2020/ref> of tender, evergreen shrubs to small trees, mostly native t ...
''"
* ''tsuji'' "crossroads, street"
* ''monme'' (unit of weight)
Hyōgaiji:
* ''shitsuke'' "training, rearing (an animal, a child)"
Some of these characters (for example, , "gland") have been introduced to China. In some cases the Chinese reading is the inferred Chinese reading, interpreting the character as a phono-semantic compound (as in how ''on'' readings are sometimes assigned to these characters in Chinese), while in other cases (such as ), the Japanese ''on'' reading is borrowed (in general this differs from the modern Chinese pronunciation of this phonetic). Similar coinages occurred to a more limited extent in Korea and Vietnam.
Historically, some kokuji date back to very early Japanese writing, being found in the ''
Man'yōshū
The is the oldest extant collection of Japanese (poetry in Classical Japanese), compiled sometime after AD 759 during the Nara period. The anthology is one of the most revered of Japan's poetic compilations. The compiler, or the last in ...
'', for example— ''iwashi'' "sardine" dates to the
Nara period
The of the history of Japan covers the years from CE 710 to 794. Empress Genmei established the capital of Heijō-kyō (present-day Nara). Except for a five-year period (740–745), when the capital was briefly moved again, it remained the cap ...
(8th century)—while they have continued to be created as late as the late 19th century, when a number of characters were coined in the
Meiji era
The is an era of Japanese history that extended from October 23, 1868 to July 30, 1912.
The Meiji era was the first half of the Empire of Japan, when the Japanese people moved from being an isolated feudal society at risk of colonization b ...
for new scientific concepts. For example, some characters were produced as regular compounds for some (but not all) SI units, such as ( "meter" + "thousand, kilo-") for kilometer, ( "liter" + "thousand, kilo-") for kiloliter, and ( "gram" + "thousand, kilo-") for kilogram. However, SI units in Japanese today are almost exclusively written using rōmaji or katakana such as or for km, for kl, and or for kg.
In Japan, the kokuji category is strictly defined as characters whose ''earliest'' appearance is in Japan. If a character appears earlier in the Chinese literature, it is not considered a kokuji even if the character was independently coined in Japan and unrelated to the Chinese character (meaning "not borrowed from Chinese"). In other words, kokuji are not simply characters that were made in Japan, but characters that were ''first'' made in Japan. An illustrative example is . This spelling was created in Edo period Japan from the
ateji
In modern Japanese, principally refers to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters. This is similar to in Old Japanese. Conversely, also refers to kanji used s ...
(phonetic kanji spelling) for the existing word ''ankō'' by adding the radical to each character—the characters were "made in Japan". However, is not considered kokuji, as it is found in ancient Chinese texts as a corruption of (魚匽). is considered kokuji, as it has not been found in any earlier Chinese text. Casual listings may be more inclusive, including characters such as . Another example is , which is sometimes not considered kokuji due to its earlier presence as a corruption of Chinese .
Kokkun
In addition to ''kokuji'', there are kanji that have been given meanings in Japanese that are different from their original Chinese meanings. These are not considered ''kokuji'' but are instead called ''kok
kun'' () and include characters such as the following:
Types of kanji by category
Han-dynasty
The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a warr ...
scholar
Xu Shen
Xu Shen ( CE) was a Chinese calligrapher, philologist, politician, and writer of the Eastern Han Dynasty (25-189). He was born in the Zhaoling district of Run'an prefecture (today known as Luohe in Henan Province). During his own lifetime, ...
in his 2nd-century dictionary ''
Shuowen Jiezi
''Shuowen Jiezi'' () is an ancient Chinese dictionary from the Han dynasty. Although not the first comprehensive Chinese character dictionary (the '' Erya'' predates it), it was the first to analyze the structure of the characters and to give ...
'' classified Chinese characters into six categories ( ''liùshū'', Japanese: ''rikusho''). The traditional classification is still taught but is problematic and no longer the focus of modern lexicographic practice, as some categories are not clearly defined, nor are they mutually exclusive: the first four refer to structural composition, while the last two refer to usage.
''Shōkei moji'' ()
''Shōkei'' (Mandarin: ''xiàngxíng'') characters are
pictograph
A pictogram, also called a pictogramme, pictograph, or simply picto, and in computer usage an icon, is a graphic symbol that conveys its meaning through its pictorial resemblance to a physical object. Pictographs are often used in writing and gr ...
ic sketches of the object they represent. For example, is an eye, while is a tree. The current forms of the characters are very different from the originals, though their representations are more clear in
oracle bone script
Oracle bone script () is an ancient form of Chinese characters that were engraved on oracle bonesanimal bones or Turtle shell#Plastron, turtle plastrons used in pyromancy, pyromantic divination. Oracle bone script was used in the late 2nd millen ...
and
seal script
Seal script, also sigillary script () is an ancient style of writing Chinese characters that was common throughout the latter half of the 1st millennium BC. It evolved organically out of the Zhou dynasty bronze script. The Qin variant of seal ...
. These pictographic characters make up only a small fraction of modern characters.
''Shiji moji'' ()
''Shiji'' (Mandarin: ''zhǐshì'') characters are
ideograph
An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek "idea" and "to write") is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept, independent of any particular language, and specific words or phrases. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by familiarit ...
s, often called "simple ideographs" or "simple indicatives" to distinguish them and tell the difference from compound ideographs (below). They are usually simple graphically and represent an abstract concept such as "up" or "above" and "down" or "below". These make up a tiny fraction of modern characters.
''Kaii moji'' ()
''Kaii'' (Mandarin: ''huìyì'') characters are compound ideographs, often called "compound indicatives", "associative compounds", or just "ideographs". These are usually a combination of pictographs that combine semantically to present an overall meaning. An example of this type is (rest) from (person radical) and (tree). Another is the ''kokuji'' (mountain pass) made from (mountain), (up) and (down). These make up a tiny fraction of modern characters.
''Keisei moji'' ()
''Keisei'' (Mandarin: ''xíngshēng'') characters are phono-semantic or
radical
Radical may refer to:
Politics and ideology Politics
*Radical politics, the political intent of fundamental societal change
*Radicalism (historical), the Radical Movement that began in late 18th century Britain and spread to continental Europe and ...
-phonetic compounds, sometimes called "semantic-phonetic", "semasio-phonetic", or "phonetic-ideographic" characters, are by far the largest category, making up about 90% of the characters in the standard lists; however, some of the most frequently used kanji belong to one of the three groups mentioned above, so ''keisei moji'' will usually make up less than 90% of the characters in a text. Typically they are made up of two components, one of which (most commonly, but by no means always, the left or top element) suggests the general category of the meaning or semantic context, and the other (most commonly the right or bottom element) approximates the pronunciation. The pronunciation relates to the original Chinese, and may now only be distantly detectable in the modern Japanese ''on'yomi'' of the kanji; it generally has no relation at all to ''kun'yomi''. The same is true of the semantic context, which may have changed over the centuries or in the transition from Chinese to Japanese. As a result, it is a common error in folk etymology to fail to recognize a phono-semantic compound, typically instead inventing a compound-indicative explanation.
''Tenchū moji'' ()
''Tenchū'' (Mandarin: ''zhuǎnzhù'') characters have variously been called "derivative characters", "derivative
cognate
In historical linguistics, cognates or lexical cognates are sets of words in different languages that have been inherited in direct descent from an etymology, etymological ancestor in a proto-language, common parent language. Because language c ...
s", or translated as "mutually explanatory" or "mutually synonymous" characters; this is the most problematic of the six categories, as it is vaguely defined. It may refer to kanji where the meaning or application has become extended. For example, is used for 'music' and 'comfort, ease', with different pronunciations in Chinese reflected in the two different ''on'yomi'', ''gaku'' 'music' and ''raku'' 'pleasure'.
''Kasha moji'' ()
''Kasha'' (Mandarin: ''jiǎjiè'') are
rebus
A rebus () is a puzzle device that combines the use of illustrated pictures with individual letters to depict words or phrases. For example: the word "been" might be depicted by a rebus showing an illustrated bumblebee next to a plus sign (+) ...
es, sometimes called "phonetic loans". The etymology of the characters follows one of the patterns above, but the present-day meaning is completely unrelated to this. A character was appropriated to represent a similar-sounding word. For example, in ancient Chinese was originally a pictograph for "wheat". Its syllable was homophonous with the verb meaning "to come", and the character is used for that verb as a result, without any embellishing "meaning" element attached. The character for wheat , originally meant "to come", being a ''keisei moji'' having 'foot' at the bottom for its meaning part and "wheat" at the top for sound. The two characters swapped meaning, so today the more common word has the simpler character. This borrowing of sounds has a very long history.
Related symbols
The
iteration mark
Iteration marks are characters or punctuation marks that represent a duplicated character or word. Chinese
In Chinese, (usually appearing as ) or is used in casual writing to represent a doubled character. However, it is not used in formal writ ...
() is used to indicate that the preceding kanji is to be repeated, functioning similarly to a
ditto mark
The ditto mark is a shorthand sign, used mostly in hand-written text, indicating that the words or figures above it are to be repeated.
The mark is made using 'a pair of apostrophes'; 'a pair of marks used underneath a word'; the symbol (quota ...
in English. It is pronounced as though the kanji were written twice in a row, for example and . This mark also appears in personal and place names, as in the
surname
In some cultures, a surname, family name, or last name is the portion of one's personal name that indicates one's family, tribe or community.
Practices vary by culture. The family name may be placed at either the start of a person's full name ...
Sasaki (). This symbol is a simplified version of the kanji , a variant of .
Another abbreviated symbol is , in appearance a small
katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...
"ke", but actually a simplified version of the kanji , a general counter. It is pronounced "ka" when used to indicate quantity (such as , ''rokkagetsu'' "six months") or "ga" if used as a genitive (as in 関ヶ原 ''sekigahara'' "Sekigahara").
The way how these symbols may be produced on a computer depends on the operating system. In
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
, typing will reveal the symbol as well as , and . To produce , type . Under Windows, typing will reveal some of these symbols, while in Google IME, may be used.
Collation
Kanji, whose thousands of symbols defy ordering by conventions such as those used for the
Latin script
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...
, are often
collated
Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office filin ...
using the traditional Chinese
radical-and-stroke sorting
Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office filin ...
method. In this system, common components of characters are identified; these are called
radicals. Characters are grouped by their primary radical, then ordered by number of pen strokes within radicals. For example, the kanji character , meaning "cherry", is sorted as a ten-stroke character under the four-stroke primary radical meaning "tree". When there is no obvious radical or more than one radical, convention governs which is used for collation.
Other kanji sorting methods, such as the
SKIP
Skip or Skips may refer to:
Acronyms
* SKIP (Skeletal muscle and kidney enriched inositol phosphatase), a human gene
* Simple Key-Management for Internet Protocol
* SKIP of New York (Sick Kids need Involved People), a non-profit agency aidin ...
system, have been devised by various authors.
Modern general-purpose
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 di ...
(as opposed to specifically character dictionaries) generally collate all entries, including words written using kanji, according to their
kana
The term may refer to a number of syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae. Such syllabaries include (1) the original kana, or , which were Chinese characters (kanji) used phonetically to transcribe Japanese, the most pr ...
representations (reflecting the way they are pronounced). The
gojūon
In the Japanese language, the is a traditional system ordering kana characters by their component phonemes, roughly analogous to alphabetical order
Alphabetical order is a system whereby character strings are placed in order based on the ...
ordering of kana is normally used for this purpose.
Kanji education
![3002_Kanji](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/3002_Kanji.svg)
Japanese schoolchildren are expected to learn 1,026 basic kanji characters, the ''
kyōiku kanji
, also known as is a list of 1,026 kanji and associated readings developed and maintained by the Japanese Ministry of Education that prescribes which kanji, and which readings of kanji, Japanese students should learn from first grade to the sixt ...
'', before finishing the sixth grade. The order in which these characters are learned is fixed. The ''kyōiku kanji'' list is a subset of a larger list, originally of 1,945 kanji characters and extended to 2,136 in 2010, known as the ''
jōyō kanji
The is the guide to kanji characters and their readings, announced officially by the Japanese Ministry of Education. Current ''jōyō kanji'' are those on a list of 2,136 characters issued in 2010. It is a slightly modified version of the ''tō ...
''—characters required for the level of fluency necessary to read newspapers and literature in Japanese. This larger list of characters is to be mastered by the end of the ninth grade. Schoolchildren learn the characters by repetition and
radical
Radical may refer to:
Politics and ideology Politics
*Radical politics, the political intent of fundamental societal change
*Radicalism (historical), the Radical Movement that began in late 18th century Britain and spread to continental Europe and ...
.
Students studying Japanese as a foreign language are often required by a curriculum to acquire kanji without having first learned the vocabulary associated with them. Strategies for these learners vary from copying-based methods to
mnemonic
A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding.
Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imag ...
-based methods such as those used in
James Heisig
James Wallace Heisig (born 1944) is a philosopher who specialises in the field of philosophy of religion. He has published a number of books on topics ranging from the notion of God in analytical psychology, the Kyoto School of Philosophy (includi ...
's series ''
Remembering the Kanji
''Remembering the Kanji'' is a series of three volumes by James Heisig, intended to teach the 3,000 most frequent Kanji to students of the Japanese language. The series is available in English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, Hu ...
''. Other textbooks use methods based on the
etymology
Etymology ()The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p. 633 "Etymology /ˌɛtɪˈmɒlədʒi/ the study of the class in words and the way their meanings have changed throughout time". is the study of the history of the Phonological chan ...
of the characters, such as Mathias and Habein's ''The Complete Guide to Everyday Kanji'' and Henshall's ''A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters''. Pictorial
mnemonic
A mnemonic ( ) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory for better understanding.
Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imag ...
s, as in the text ''Kanji Pict-o-graphix'', are also seen.
The Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation provides the ''
Kanji kentei'' ( ''Nihon kanji nōryoku kentei shiken''; "Test of Japanese Kanji Aptitude"), which tests the ability to read and write kanji. The highest level of the ''Kanji kentei'' tests about six thousand kanji.
See also
*
Chinese influence on Japanese culture
Chinese influence on Japanese culture refers to the impact of Chinese influences transmitted through or originating in China on Japanese institutions, culture, language and society. Many aspects of traditional Japanese culture such as Taoism, Budd ...
*
Braille kanji
*
Hanja
Hanja (Hangul: ; Hanja: , ), alternatively known as Hancha, are Chinese characters () used in the writing of Korean. Hanja was used as early as the Gojoseon period, the first ever Korean kingdom.
(, ) refers to Sino-Korean vocabulary, wh ...
(Korean equivalent)
*
Chữ Hán
Chữ Hán (𡨸漢, literally "Chinese characters", ), Chữ Nho (𡨸儒, literally "Confucian characters", ) or Hán tự (漢字, ), is the Vietnamese term for Chinese characters, used to write Văn ngôn (which is a form of Classical Chinese ...
(Vietnamese equivalent)
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Han unification
Han unification is an effort by the authors of Unicode and the Universal Character Set to map multiple character sets of the Han characters of the so-called CJK languages into a single set of unified characters. Han characters are a feature s ...
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Chinese family of scripts
The Chinese family of scripts are writing systems descended from the Chinese oracle bone script and used for a variety of languages in East Asia. They include logosyllabic systems such as the Chinese script itself (or ''hanzi'', now in two forms, t ...
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Japanese script reform
The Japanese script reform is the attempt to correlate standard spoken Japanese with the written word, which began during the Meiji period. This issue is known in Japan as the . The reforms led to the development of the modern Japanese written ...
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Japanese typefaces
is the Japanese word for writing style and typeface. ''Shotai'' covers the calligraphic writing styles, such as:
* regular script,
* seal script,
* clerical script,
* running script, and
* cursive script
as well as Japanese styles like
* Edom ...
(''shotai'')
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Japanese writing system
The modern Japanese writing system uses a combination of logographic kanji, which are adopted Chinese characters, and syllabic kana. Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries: hiragana, used primarily for native or naturalised Japanese wo ...
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Kanji of the year
The is a character chosen by the through a national ballot in Japan, starting in 1995. The character with the most votes, selected to represent the events of that year, is announced in a ceremony on December 12 (Kanji Day) at Kiyomizu Temple. ...
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List of kanji by concept
A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to:
People
* List (surname)
Organizations
* List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
* SC Germania List, German rugby union ...
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List of kanji by stroke count
A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to:
People
* List (surname)
Organizations
* List College, an undergraduate division of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America
* SC Germania List, German rugby unio ...
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Radical (Chinese character)
A Chinese radical () or indexing component is a graphical component of a Chinese character under which the character is traditionally listed in a Chinese dictionary. This component is often a semantic indicator similar to a morpheme, though ...
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Stroke order
Stroke order is the order in which the strokes of a Chinese character (or Chinese derivative character) are written. A stroke is a movement of a writing instrument on a writing surface. Chinese characters are used in various forms in Chinese ...
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Table of kanji radicals
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Rōmaji
The romanization of Japanese is the use of Latin script to write the Japanese language. This method of writing is sometimes referred to in Japanese as .
Japanese is normally written in a combination of logographic characters borrowed from Ch ...
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Cangjie
Cangjie () is a legendary ancient Chinese figure said to have been an official historian of the Yellow Emperor and the inventor of Chinese characters.
Legend has it that he had four eyes, and that when he invented the characters, the deities an ...
Notes
References
Citations
Sources
* DeFrancis, John (1990). ''The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy''. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. .
* Hadamitzky, W., and Spahn, M., (1981) ''Kanji and Kana'', Boston: Tuttle.
* Hannas, William. C. (1997). ''Asia's Orthographic Dilemma''. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. (paperback); (hardcover).
* Kaiser, Stephen (1991). "Introduction to the Japanese Writing System". In ''Kodansha's Compact Kanji Guide''. Tokyo: Kondansha International. .
*
Miyake, Marc Hideo (2003). ''Old Japanese: A Phonetic Reconstruction''. New York, NY; London, England: RoutledgeCurzon.
* Morohashi, Tetsuji. ''
Dai Kan-Wa Jiten'' (Comprehensive Chinese–Japanese Dictionary) 1984–1986. Tokyo: Taishukan.
* Mitamura, Joyce Yumi and Mitamura, Yasuko Kosaka (1997). ''Let's Learn Kanji''. Tokyo: Kondansha International. .
* Unger, J. Marshall (1996). ''Literacy and Script Reform in Occupation Japan: Reading Between the Lines''. .
External links
Jim Breen's WWWJDIC serverused to find Kanji from English or romanized Japanese
discussion paper by Takako Tomoda in the
ttp://www.japanesestudies.org.uk/ ''Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies'' August 19, 2005.
JishoOnline Japanese dictionary
Glyph conversion
A simple Shinjitai—Kyūjitai converter*
ttps://web.archive.org/web/20090204033300/http://homepage3.nifty.com/jgrammar/ja/tools/tradkan0.htm A complex Shinjitai—Kyūjitai converterA downloadable Shinjitai—Kyūjitai—Simplified Chinese character converter
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East Asian culture
East Asia
Southeast Asia
Japanese writing system terms
Logographic writing systems
Japanese writing system