The termkanji in Japanese literally means "Han characters".[7] Japanese kanji and Chinesehanzi (traditional Chinese:漢字;simplified Chinese:汉字;pinyin:hànzì;lit. 'Han characters') share a common foundation.[8] The significant use of Chinese characters in Japan first began to take hold around the 5th century AD and has since had a profound influence in shaping Japanese culture, language, literature, history, and records.[9]Inkstone artifacts at archaeological sites dating back to the earlierYayoi period were also found to contain Chinese characters.[10]
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,誠 means 'honest' in both languages but is pronouncedmakoto orsei in Japanese, andchéng inStandard Mandarin Chinese. Individual kanji characters and multi-kanji words invented in Japan from Chinesemorphemes have been borrowed into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese in recent times. These are known asWasei-kango, or Japanese-made Chinese words. For example, the word fortelephone,電話denwa in Japanese, was derived from the Chinese words for "electric" and "conversation." It was thencalqued asdiànhuà in Mandarin Chinese,điện thoại in Vietnamese and전화jeonhwa in Korean.[11]
Nihon Shoki (720 AD), considered by historians and archaeologists as the most complete extant historical record of ancient Japan, was written entirely in kanji.
Chinese characters first came toJapan on official seals, letters, swords, coins, mirrors, and other decorative items imported fromChina.[12] The earliest known instance of such an import was theKing of Na gold seal given byEmperor Guangwu of Han to aWa emissary in 57 AD.[13] Chinese coins as well asinkstones from the first century AD have also been found inYayoi period archaeological sites.[9][10] 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.[9] According to theNihon Shoki andKojiki, a semi-legendary scholar calledWani was dispatched to Japan by theKingdom of Baekje during the reign ofEmperor Ōjin in the early fifth century, bringing with him knowledge ofConfucianism and Chinese characters.[14]
The earliest Japanese documents were probably written by bilingual Chinese or Korean officials employed at theYamato court.[9] For example, the diplomatic correspondence fromKing Bu of Wa toEmperor Shun of Liu Song in 478 AD has been praised for its skillful use ofallusion. Later, groups of people calledfuhito were organized under the monarch to read and writeClassical Chinese. During the reign ofEmpress Suiko (593–628), the Yamato court began sending full-scale diplomatic missions to China, which resulted in a large increase in Chinese literacy at the Japanese court.[14]
In ancient times, paper was so rare that people wrote kanji onto thin, rectangular strips of wood, calledmokkan (木簡). 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.[15]
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 theHeian period (794–1185), a system known askanbun emerged, which involved using Chinese text withdiacritical marks 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 ofJapanese grammar. This was essentially a kind of codifiedsight translation.[citation needed]
Chinese characters also came to be used to write texts in the vernacularJapanese language, resulting in the modernkana syllabaries. Around 650 AD, a writing system calledman'yōgana (used in the ancient poetryanthologyMan'yōshū) evolved that used a number of Chinese characters for their sound, rather than for their meaning.Man'yōgana written incursive style evolved intohiragana (literally "flutteringkana" in reference to the motion of the brush during cursive writing), oronna-de, that is, "ladies' hand",[16] a writing system that was accessible to women (who were deniedhigher education). Major works ofHeian-eraliterature by women were written inhiragana.Katakana (literally "partialkana", in reference to the practice of using a part of a kanji character) emerged via a parallel path:monastery students simplifiedman'yōgana to a single constituent element. Thus the two other writing systems,hiragana andkatakana, referred to collectively askana, are descended from kanji. In contrast withkana (仮名, literally "borrowed name", in reference to the character being "borrowed" as a label for its sound), kanji are also calledmana (真名, literally "true name", in reference to the character being used as a label for its meaning).[citation needed]
Since ancient times, there has been a strong opinion in Japan that kanji is the orthodox form of writing, but others have argued against it.[17]Kamo no Mabuchi, a scholar of theEdo period, criticized the large number of characters in kanji. He also appreciated the small number of characters inkana characters and argued for the limitation of kanji.[citation needed]
After theMeiji Restoration 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 onlykana or Latin characters. These views were not widespread.[18]
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, theJapanese Army decided on the "Table of Restricted Kanji for Weapons Names" (兵器名称用制限漢字表,heiki meishō yō seigen kanji hyō) which limited the number of kanji that could be used for weapons names to 1,235. In 1942, the National Language Council announced the "Standard Kanji Table" (標準漢字表,hyōjun kanji-hyō) with a total of 2,528 characters, showing the standard for kanji used by ministries and agencies and in general society.[19]
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 simplifiedglyphs, calledshinjitai (新字体). Many variant forms of characters and obscure alternatives for common characters were officially discouraged.[citation needed]
These are simply guidelines, so many characters outside these standards are still widely known and commonly used; these are known ashyōgaiji (表外字).[citation needed]
Thekyōiku kanji (教育漢字;lit. "education kanji") 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 thegakunen-betsu kanji haitōhyō (学年別漢字配当表), or thegakushū kanji (学習漢字). This list of kanji is maintained by theJapanese Ministry of Education and prescribes which kanji characters and which kanji readings students should learn for each grade.
Thejōyō kanji (常用漢字; regular-use kanji) are 2,136 characters consisting of all thekyōiku kanji, plus 1,110 additional kanji taught in junior high and high school.[20] In publishing, characters outside this category are often givenfurigana. Thejōyō kanji were introduced in 1981, replacing an older list of 1,850 characters known as thetōyō kanji (当用漢字; general-use kanji), introduced in 1946. Originally numbering 1,945 characters, thejōyō kanji list was expanded to 2,136 in 2010. Some of the new characters were previouslyjinmeiyō kanji; some are used to write prefecture names:阪,熊,奈,岡,鹿,梨,阜,埼,茨,栃 and媛.
As of September 25, 2017, thejinmeiyō kanji (人名用漢字; kanji for use in personal names) consists of 863 characters. Kanji on this list are mostly used in people's names and some are traditional variants ofjōyō kanji. There were only 92 kanji in the original list published in 1952, but new additions have been made frequently. Sometimes the termjinmeiyō kanji refers to all 2,999 kanji from both thejōyō andjinmeiyō lists combined.
Hyōgai kanji (表外漢字; "unlisted characters") are any kanji not contained in thejōyō kanji andjinmeiyō kanji lists. These are generally written using traditional characters, butextendedshinjitai forms exist.
JIS X 0208,[21] the most recent version of the main standard. It has 6,355 kanji.
JIS X 0212,[22] a supplementary standard containing a further 5,801 kanji. This standard is rarely used, mainly because the commonShift JIS encoding system could not use it. This standard is effectively obsolete.
JIS X 0213,[23] 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 standard.
Gaiji (外字; literally "external characters") are kanji that are not represented in existing Japaneseencoding systems. These include variant forms of common kanji that need to be represented alongside the more conventionalglyph in reference works and can include non-kanji symbols as well.
Gaiji can be either user-defined characters, system-specific characters or third-party add-on products.[24] Both are a problem for information interchange, as thecode point used to represent an external character will not be consistent from one computer or operating system to another.
Gaiji were nominally prohibited in JIS X 0208-1997 where the available number of code-points was reduced to only 940.[25] JIS X 0213-2000 used the entire range of code-points previously allocated togaiji, making them completely unusable. Most desktop and mobile systems have moved toUnicode negating the need forgaiji for most users. Historically,gaiji were used by Japanese mobile service providers foremoji.
There is no definitive count of kanji characters, just as there is none of Chinese characters generally. TheDai Kan-Wa Jiten, which is considered to be comprehensive in Japan, contains about 50,000 characters. TheZhonghua Zihai, 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.[30][31][32]
A list of 2,136jōyō kanji 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 variousJapanese Industrial Standards for kanji.
Individual kanji may be used to write one or more different words ormorphemes, leading to different pronunciations or "readings." The correct reading may be determined by contextual cues (such as whether the character represents part of a compound word versus an independent word), the exact intended meaning of the word, and its position within the sentence. For example,今日 is mostly readkyō, meaning "today", but in formal writing it is readkonnichi, meaning "nowadays".Furigana is used to specify ambiguous readings, such as rare, literary, or otherwise non-standard readings.[33]
Readings are categorized as either kun'yomi (訓読み,literally "meaning reading"), native Japanese, or on'yomi (音読み,literally "sound reading"), borrowed from Chinese. Most kanji have at least a single reading of each category, though some have only one, such askiku (菊; "chrysanthemum", anon-reading) oriwashi (鰯; "sardine", akun-reading); Japanese-coined kanji (kokuji) often only havekun'yomi readings.
Some common kanji have ten or more possible readings; the most complex common example is生, which is read assei,shō,nama,ki,o-u,i-kiru,i-kasu,i-keru,u-mu,u-mareru,ha-eru, andha-yasu, totaling eight basic readings (the first two areon, while the rest arekun), or 12 if related verbs are counted as distinct.
Theon'yomi (音読み;[oɰ̃jomi],lit. "sound(-based) reading"), theSino-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 astranslation 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. There also exist kanji created by the Japanese and given anon'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 multipleon'yomi, and often multiple meanings. Kanji invented in Japan (kokuji) would not normally be expected to haveon'yomi, but there are exceptions, such as the character働 "to work", which has thekun'yomi "hatara(ku)" and theon'yomi "dō", and腺 "gland", which has only theon'yomi "sen"—in both cases these come from theon'yomi of the phonetic component, respectively動 "dō" and泉 "sen".
Thekun'yomi (訓読み;[kɯɰ̃jomi],lit. "meaning reading"), the native reading, is a reading based on the pronunciation of a nativeJapanese word, oryamato kotoba, that closely approximated the meaning of theChinese character when it was introduced. As withon'yomi, there can be multiplekun'yomi for the same kanji, and some kanji have nokun'yomi at all.
Ateji (当て字) 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 ofateji, narrowlyjukujikun). Therefore, only the full compound—not the individual character—has a reading. There are alsospecial cases where the reading is completely different, often based on a historical or traditional reading.
The analogous phenomenon occurs to a much lesser degree inChinese varieties, where there areliterary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters—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 formdoublets and are generally similar, analogous to differenton'yomi, reflecting different stages of Chinese borrowings into Japanese.
Longer readings exist for non-Jōyō characters and non-kanji symbols, where a longgairaigo word may be the reading (this is classed askun'yomi—seesingle character gairaigo, below)—the character糎 has the sevenkana readingセンチメートル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パーセントpāsento.
Ajūbako (重箱), which has a mixedon-kun readingAyutō (湯桶), which has a mixedkun-on reading
There are many kanji compounds that use a mixture ofon'yomi andkun'yomi; these may be consideredhybrid words. Readings in which the first kanji ison'yomi and the second iskun'yomi are classified asjūbakoyomi (重箱読み; multi-layered food box reading), whilekun-on words are classified asyutōyomi (湯桶読み; hot liquid pail reading). The wordsjūbako andyutō are themselves examples of the reading patterns they represent (they areautological words). Other examples includebasho (場所; "place",kun-on),kin'iro (金色; "golden",on-kun) andaikidō (合気道; the martial artAikido",kun-on-on).
Ateji often use mixed readings. For instance, the city ofSapporo (サッポロ), whose name derives from theAinu language and has no meaning in Japanese, is written with theon-kun compound 札幌 (sapporo) (which includessokuon as if it were a purelyon compound).
Gikun (義訓) andjukujikun (熟字訓) are readings of kanji combinations that have no direct correspondence to the characters' individualon'yomi orkun'yomi. From the point of view of the character, rather than the word, this is known as anankun (難訓; "difficult reading"), and these are listed in kanji dictionaries under the entry for the character.
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,今朝 ("this morning") isjukujikun. This word is not read as*ima'asa, the expectedkun'yomi of the characters, and only infrequently askonchō, theon'yomi of the characters. The most common reading iskesa, a native bisyllabic Japanese word that may be seen as a singlemorpheme, or as a compound ofke (“this”, as inkefu, the older reading for今日, “today”), andasa, “morning”.[34] Likewise,今日 ("today") is alsojukujikun, usually read with the native readingkyō; itson'yomi,konnichi, does occur in certain words and expressions, especially in the broader sense "nowadays" or "current", such as今日的 ("present-day"), although in the phrasekonnichi wa ("good day"),konnichi is typically spelled wholly withhiragana rather than with the kanji今日.
Jukujikun are primarily used for some native Japanese words, such asYamato大和 or倭, 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柳葉魚 (shishamo, literally "willow leaf fish") from Ainu,煙草 (tabako, literally “smoke grass”) from Portuguese, or麦酒 (bīru, literally “wheat alcohol”) from Dutch, especially if the word was borrowed before theMeiji period. Words whose kanji arejukujikun are often usually written ashiragana (if native), orkatakana (if borrowed); some old borrowed words are also written ashiragana, especially Portuguese loanwords such asかるた (karuta) from Portuguese "carta" (English "card") orてんぷら (tempura) from Portuguese "tempora" (English “times, season”),[citation needed] as well asたばこ (tabako).
A case wherejukujikun is used forSino-Japanese is the wordkyōdai, which, prototypically, means "brothers" and is spelt兄弟 ("big and little brothers"). However, the meaning has been expanded to "siblings" in general, and can assume such spellings as姉妹 ("(big and little) sisters", alternatively pronouncedshimai),兄妹 ("big brother and little sister") and姉弟 ("big sister and little brother"). It is also possible to sayotoko kyōdai ("male siblings; brothers") andonna kyōdai ("female siblings; sisters").[35]
Sometimes,jukujikun can even have more kanji than there are syllables, examples beingkera (啄木鳥, “woodpecker”),gumi (胡頽子, “silver berry, oleaster”),[36] andHozumi (八月朔日, a surname).[37] This phenomenon is observed in animal names that are shortened and used as suffixes for zoological compound names, for example when黄金虫, normally read askoganemushi, is shortened tokogane in黒黄金虫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大元帥daigen(sui), or the historical male name suffix右衛門-emon, which was shortened from the worduemon.
The kanji compound forjukujikun is often 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 andon'yomi may or may not be used in Japanese. For example,馴鹿 ("reindeer") isjukujikun fortonakai, from Ainu, but theon'yomi reading ofjunroku is also used. In some cases, Japanese coinages have subsequently beenborrowed back into Chinese, such as鮟鱇 (ankō, "monkfish").
The underlying word forjukujikun is a native Japanese word or foreign borrowing, which either does not have an existing kanji spelling (eitherkun'yomi orateji) 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相撲 (sumō, "sumo") is originally from the verb争う (sumau, “to vie, to compete”), while今日 (kyō, "today") is fusional (from olderke, "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 inflectionaljukujikun is the adjective可愛い (kawai-i, “cute”), originallykawafayu-i; the word(可愛) is used inChinese, but the correspondingon'yomi is not used in Japanese. By contrast, "appropriate" can be either相応しい (fusawa-shii, asjukujikun) or相応 (sōō, ason'yomi). Which reading to use can be discerned by the presence or absence of the-shii ending (okurigana). A common example of a verb withjukujikun is流行る (haya-ru, “to spread, to be in vogue”), corresponding toon'yomi流行 (ryūkō). A samplejukujikun deverbal (noun derived from a verb form) is強請 (yusuri, "extortion"), from強請る (yusu-ru, “to extort”), spelling from強請 (kyōsei, "extortion"). 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 usualkun'yomi. Examples include面白い (omo-shiro-i, "interesting", literally "face + white") and狡賢い (zuru-gashiko-i, "sly",lit. "cunning, crafty + clever, smart").
Typographically, thefurigana forjukujikun 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.
In some rare cases, kanji may have a reading borrowed from a modern foreign language (gairaigo), though usuallygairaigo are written inkatakana. Notable examples includepēji (頁、ページ; page),botan (釦／鈕、ボタン; button),zero (零、ゼロ; zero), andmētoru (米、メートル; meter). These are classed askun'yomi, because the character is used for its meaning—thekun'yomi label may sometimes be misleading, since mostkun'yomi are native Japanese readings. The readings are also rendered inkatakana, unlike the usualhiragana for nativekun'yomi. Note that most of these characters are for units, particularlySI units, in many cases using new characters (kokuji) coined during theMeiji period, such askiromētoru (粁、キロメートル; kilometer,米 "meter" +千 "thousand").
Some kanji also have lesser-known readings callednanori (名乗り), which are mostly used for names (oftengiven names) and, in general, are closely related to thekun'yomi. Place names sometimes also usenanori or, occasionally, unique readings not found elsewhere.
Although there are general rules for when to useon'yomi and when to usekun'yomi, many kanji have multiple on- or kun-readings, and the language is littered with exceptions; how a character was meant to be read is sometimes ambiguous even to native speakers (this is especially true for names, both of people and places).
A single kanji followed byokurigana (hiragana forming part of a word)—such as the inflectable suffixes forming native verbs and adjectives like 赤い (akai; red) and 見る (miru; to see)—always indicateskun'yomi.Okurigana can indicate whichkun'yomi to use, as in食べる (ta-beru) versus食う (ku-u), both meaning "(to) eat", but this is not always sufficient, as in開く, which may be read asa-ku orhira-ku, both meaning "(to) open".
Kanji compounds (jukuji), especiallyyojijukugo, usually, but not always, useon'yomi, usually (but not always)kan-on. Inge-doku (解毒; detoxification, anti-poison), 解 is read with itskan-on reading instead of its more commongo-on reading,kai. Exceptions are common—情報 (jōhō; information), for example, isgo-kan.牛肉 (gyū-niku; beef) and羊肉 (yō-niku; mutton) haveon-on readings, but豚肉 (buta-niku; pork) and鶏肉 (tori-niku; poultry) havekun-on readings. Examples of fullykun'yomi compounds include手紙 (tegami; letter),日傘 (higasa; parasol), and the infamous神風 (kamikaze; divine wind). Somekun'yomi compounds have non-inflectiveokurigana, such as唐揚げ (karaage; Chinese-style fried chicken) and折り紙 (origami); many can also be written with theokurigana omitted.
Kanji in isolation are typically read using theirkun'yomi; exceptions include theon'yomi愛 (ai; love),禅 (Zen), and点 (ten; mark, dot). Most of theseon'yomi cases involve kanji that have nokun'yomi. For kanji with multiple common isolated readings, such as金, which may be read askin (gold) orkane (money, metal), only context can determine the intended reading.
The isolated kanji versus compound distinction gives words for similar concepts completely different pronunciations. Alone,北 (north) and東 (east) use thekun'yomikita andhigashi, but北東 (northeast), uses theon'yomihokutō. Inconsistencies also occur between compounds;生 is read assei in先生 (sensei; teacher) but asshō in一生 (isshō; one's whole life) (bothon'yomi).
Multiple readings have given rise to a number ofhomographs, in some cases having different meanings depending on how they are read. One example is上手, which can be read in three different ways:jōzu (skilled),uwate (upper part), orkamite (stage left/house right). In addition,上手い has the readingumai (skilled). More subtly,明日 has three different readings, all meaning "tomorrow":ashita (casual),asu (polite), andmyōnichi (formal).
Conversely, some terms are homophonous but not homographic, and thus ambiguous in speech but not in writing. To remedy this, alternate readings may be used for confusable words. For example,私立 (privately established, esp. school) and市立 (municipal) are both normally pronouncedshi-ritsu; in speech these may be distinguished by the alternative pronunciationswatakushi-ritsu andichi-ritsu. More informally, in legal jargon前文 (preamble) and全文 (full text) are both pronouncedzen-bun, so前文 may be pronouncedmae-bun for clarity, as in "Have you memorized the preamble [not 'whole text'] of the constitution?". As in these examples, this is primarily done using akun'yomi for one character in a normallyon'yomi term.
In some instances where even context cannot easily provide clarity forhomophones, alternative readings or mixed readings can be used instead of regular readings to avoid ambiguity. For example:
There are also cases where the words are technically heterophones, but they have similar meanings and pronunciations, therefore liable to mishearing and misunderstanding.
Several famous place names, includingthose of Japan itself (日本Nihon or sometimesNippon), those of some cities such asTokyo (東京Tōkyō) andKyoto (京都Kyōto), and those of the main islandsHonshu (本州Honshū),Kyushu (九州Kyūshū),Shikoku (四国Shikoku), andHokkaido (北海道Hokkaidō) are read withon'yomi; however, the majority of Japanese place names are read withkun'yomi:大阪Ōsaka,青森Aomori,箱根Hakone. 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. TheOsaka (大阪) andKobe (神戸) baseball team, theHanshin (阪神) Tigers, take their name from theon'yomi of the second kanji ofŌsaka and the first ofKōbe. The name of theKeisei (京成) railway line—linking Tokyo (東京) andNarita (成田)—is formed similarly, although the reading of京 from東京 iskei, despitekyō already being anon'yomi in the wordTōkyō.
Japanese family names are also usually read withkun'yomi:山田Yamada,田中Tanaka,鈴木Suzuki. Japanesegiven names often have very irregular readings. Although they are not typically consideredjūbako oryutō, they often contain mixtures ofkun'yomi,on'yomi andnanori, such as大助Daisuke [on-kun],夏美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 rumors abound of children called地球Āsu ("Earth") and天使Enjeru ("Angel"); neither are common names, and have normal readingschikyū andtenshi respectively. Some common Japanese names can be written in multiple ways, e.g., Akira can be written as亮,彰,明,顕,章,聴,光,晶,晄,彬,昶,了,秋良,明楽,日日日,亜紀良,安喜良 and many other characters and kanji combinations not listed,[43] Satoshi can be written as聡,哲,哲史,悟,佐登史,暁,訓,哲士,哲司,敏,諭,智,佐登司,總,里史,三十四,了,智詞, etc.,[44] and Haruka can be written as遥,春香,晴香,遥香,春果,晴夏,春賀,春佳, and several other possibilities.[45] 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 bothkana and kanji.[37]
Chinese place names andChinese personal names appearing in Japanese texts, if spelled in kanji, are almost invariably read withon'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's name is pronounced asMō Takutō (毛沢東) in Japanese, and the name of the legendary Monkey King,Sun Wukong, is pronouncedSon Gokū (孫悟空) in Japanese.
Today, Chinese names that are not well known in Japan are often spelled inkatakana instead, in a form much more closely approximating the native Chinese pronunciation. Alternatively, they may be written in kanji withkatakanafurigana. Many such cities have names that come from non-Chinese languages likeMongolian orManchu. Examples of such not-well-known Chinese names include:
English name
Japanese name
Rōmaji
Katakana
Kanji
Harbin
Harubin
ハルビン
哈爾浜
Ürümqi
Urumuchi
ウルムチ
烏魯木斉
Qiqihar
Chichiharu
チチハル
斉斉哈爾
Lhasa
Rasa
ラサ
拉薩
Internationally renowned Chinese-named cities tend to imitate the older English pronunciations of their names, regardless of the kanji'son'yomi or the Mandarin or Cantonese pronunciation, and can be written in eitherkatakana or kanji. Examples include:
Guangzhou, the city, is pronouncedKōshū, while Guangdong, its province, is pronouncedKanton, not*Kōtō (in this case, opting for atō-on reading rather than the usualkan-on reading).
Hangzhou (expectedKōshū) is often pronouncedKuishū to disambiguate with Guangzhou.
Kaohsiung was originally pronouncedTakao (or similar) inHokkien and Japanese. It received this writtenname (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), as in人人hito-bito "people" (more often written with theiteration mark as人々), but in rare cases the readings can be unrelated, as intobi-haneru (跳び跳ねる; "hop around", more often written飛び跳ねる).
Because of the ambiguities involved, kanji sometimes have their pronunciation for the given context spelled out inruby characters known asfurigana, (smallkana written above or to the right of the character, e.g.振仮名) orkumimoji (smallkana written in-line after the character). This is especially true in texts for children or foreign learners. It is also used innewspapers andmanga 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 ofessential kanji. Works of fiction sometimes usefurigana to create new "words" by giving normal kanji non-standard readings, or to attach a foreign word rendered inkatakana as the reading for a kanji or kanji compound of the same or similar meaning.
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 homophonouswords, not simply individual characters, particularly forkango (withon'yomi). It is easiest 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 givingkun'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 wordkōshinryō (香辛料; spice) via the wordskao-ri (香り; fragrance),kara-i (辛い; spicy), andin-ryō (飲料; beverage)—the first two use thekun'yomi, the third is a well-known compound—saying "kaori,karai,ryō as ininryō."
In dictionaries, both words and individual characters have readings glossed, via various conventions. Native words and Sino-Japanese vocabulary are glossed inhiragana (for bothkun andon readings), while borrowings (gairaigo)—including modern borrowings from Chinese—are glossed inkatakana; this is the standard writing convention also used infurigana. By contrast, readings for individual characters are conventionally written inkatakana foron readings, andhiragana forkun readings. Kun readings may further have a separator to indicate which characters areokurigana, and which are considered readings of the character itself. For example, in the entry for食, the reading corresponding to the basic verbeat (食べる,taberu) may be written asた.べる (ta.beru), to indicate thatta is the reading of the character itself. Further,kanji dictionaries often list compounds including irregular readings of a kanji.
Since kanji are essentially Chinesehanzi used to write Japanese, the majority of characters used in modern Japanese still retain their Chinese meaning, physical resemblance with some of their moderntraditional Chinese characters counterparts, and a degree of similarity withClassical Chinese pronunciation imported to Japan from the 5th to 9th centuries.[46] Nevertheless, after centuries of development, there is a notable number of kanji used in modern Japanese which have different meaning fromhanzi 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
Likewise, the process ofcharacter simplification inmainland China since the 1950s has resulted in the fact that Japanese speakers who have not studied Chinese may not recognize some simplified characters.
In addition to unique Japanese renditions of existing Chinese characters, there also exist kanji that were invented in Japan; these may be referred to askokuji (国字; national characters) orwasei kanji (和製漢字; Japanese-made kanji). They are primarily formed by combining existing components in unique ways, as is typical for Chinese characters. TheJōyō list contains about 9kokuji, of which the most commonly used is働 (dō; work) used in the fundamental verb働く (hataraku; to work). It is formed from the'person' radical 亻 plus 動 (movement). Somekokuji, including 働, have entered the Chinese language.
The termkokuji may also refer to Chinese characters coined in other (non-Chinese) countries; the corresponding phenomenon in Korea is calledgukja (Korean: 국자;Hanja: 國字; national characters); there are however far fewer Korean-coined characters than Japanese-coined ones.Other languages using theChinese family of scripts sometimes have far more extensive systems of native characters, most significantly Vietnamesechữ Nôm, which comprises over 20,000 characters used throughout traditional Vietnamese writing, andZhuangsawndip, which comprises over 10,000 characters, which are still in use.
In addition tokokuji, there are kanji that have been given meanings in Japanese that are different from their original Chinese meanings. These are not consideredkokuji but are instead calledkokkun (国訓) and include characters such as the following:
Han-dynasty scholarXu Shen, in his 2nd-century dictionaryShuowen Jiezi, classified Chinese characters into six categories (Chinese:六書liùshū, Japanese:六書rikusho). The traditional classification is still taught but is problematic and is 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.[47]
Shōkei (Mandarin:xiàngxíng) characters arepictographic sketches of the object they represent. For example,目 is an eye, while木 is a tree. The current forms of the characters are very different from the originals, though their representations are more clear inoracle bone script andseal script. These pictographic characters make up only a small fraction of modern characters.
Shiji (Mandarin:zhǐshì) characters areideographs, 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上 "up" or "above" and下 "down" or "below". These make up a tiny fraction of modern characters.
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休 (rest) from亻 (person radical) and木 (tree). Another is thekokuji峠 (mountain pass) made from山 (mountain),上 (up) and下 (down). These make up a tiny fraction of modern characters.
Keisei (Mandarin:xíngshēng) characters are phono-semantic orradical-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, sokeisei 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 Japaneseon'yomi of the kanji; it generally has no relation at all tokun'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 (Mandarin:zhuǎnzhù) characters have variously been called "derivative characters", "derivativecognates", 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,楽 is used for 'music' and 'comfort, ease', with different pronunciations in Chinese reflected in the two differenton'yomi,gaku "music" andraku "pleasure".
Kasha (Mandarin:jiǎjiè) arerebuses, 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,来 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麦, originally meant "to come", being akeisei 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.
Theiteration mark (々) is used to indicate that the preceding kanji is to be repeated, functioning similarly to aditto mark in English. It is pronounced as though the kanji were written twice in a row, for exampleiroiro (色々; "various") andtokidoki (時々; "sometimes"). This mark also appears in personal and place names, as in thesurname Sasaki (佐々木). This symbol is a simplified version of the kanji仝, a variant ofdō (同; "same").
Another abbreviated symbol isヶ, in appearance a smallkatakanake, but actually a simplified version of the kanji箇, a general counter. It is pronouncedka when used to indicate quantity (such as六ヶ月,rokkagetsu "six months") orga 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. InmacOS, typingじおくり will reveal the symbol々 as well asヽ,ゝ andゞ. To produce〻, typeおどりじ. Under Windows, typingくりかえし will reveal some of these symbols, while in Google IME,おどりじ may be used.
Kanji, whose thousands of symbols defy ordering by conventions such as those used for theLatin script, are oftencollated using the traditional Chineseradical-and-stroke sorting method. In this system, common components of characters are identified; these are calledradicals. Characters are grouped by their primary radical, then ordered by number of pen strokes within radicals. For example, the kanji character桜, meaning "cherry", is sorted as a ten-stroke character under the four-stroke primary radical木 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 theSKIP system, have been devised by various authors.
Modern general-purposeJapanese dictionaries (as opposed to specifically character dictionaries) generally collate all entries, including words written using kanji, according to theirkana representations (reflecting the way they are pronounced). Thegojūon ordering ofkana is normally used for this purpose.
An image that lists mostjōyō-kanji, according toHalpern's KKLD indexing system, with kyo-iku kanji color-coded by grade level
Japanese schoolchildren are expected to learn 1,026 basic kanji, thekyōiku kanji, before finishing the sixth grade. The order in which these characters are learned is fixed. Thekyōiku kanji list is a subset of a larger list, originally of 1,945 kanji and extended to 2,136 in 2010, known as thejōyō kanji 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.[48] Schoolchildren learn the characters by repetition andradical.
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 tomnemonic-based methods such as those used inJames Heisig's seriesRemembering the Kanji. Other textbooks use methods based on theetymology of the characters, such as Mathias and Habein'sThe Complete Guide to Everyday Kanji and Henshall'sA Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters. Pictorialmnemonics, as in the textKanji Pict-o-graphix by Michael Rowley, are also seen.
The Japan Kanji Aptitude Testing Foundation provides theKanji kentei (日本漢字能力検定試験Nihon kanji nōryoku kentei shiken; "Test of Japanese Kanji Aptitude"), which tests the ability to read and write kanji. The highest level of theKanji kentei tests about six thousand kanji.[49]
^Mathieu (November 19, 2017)."The History of Kanji 漢字の歴史".It's Japan Time.Archived from the original on September 12, 2021. RetrievedSeptember 12, 2021.
^"Gold Seal (Kin-in)". Fukuoka City Museum.Archived from the original on February 26, 2017. RetrievedSeptember 1, 2014.
^Hadamitzky, Wolfgang and Spahn, Mark (2012),Kanji and Kana: A Complete Guide to the Japanese Writing System, Third Edition, Rutland, VT: Tuttle Publishing.ISBN4805311169. p. 14.
^"人名用漢字の新字旧字 第82回 「鉄」と「鐵」".三省堂WORD-WISE WEB -Dictionaries & Beyond-.Sanseidō. February 24, 2011.Archived from the original on November 19, 2021. RetrievedAugust 14, 2015.
^Tamaoka, K., Makioka, S., Sanders, S. & Verdonschot, R. G. (2017). "www.kanjidatabase.com: a new interactive online database for psychological and linguistic research on Japanese kanji and their compound words".Psychological Research 81, 696–708.
^"Gogen Yurai Jiten"語源由来辞典 [Etymology Derivation Dictionary] (in Japanese). Lookvise, Inc. March 26, 2006.Archived from the original on February 9, 2022. RetrievedFebruary 9, 2022.「けふ」の「け」は、「今朝（けさ）」と同じ「け」で、「こ（此）」の意味。 [Theke inkefu is the sameke as inkesa, meaning "this".]
DeFrancis, John (1990).The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.ISBN0-8248-1068-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
Hadamitzky, W.; Spahn, M. (1981).Kanji and Kana. Boston: Tuttle.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
Hannas, William. C. (1997).Asia's Orthographic Dilemma. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.ISBN0-8248-1892-X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
Kaiser, Stephen (1991). "Introduction to the Japanese Writing System".Kodansha's Compact Kanji Guide. Tokyo: Kondansha International.ISBN4-7700-1553-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
