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| Chinese characters |
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Collation and standards
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Homographs and readings |
| Shinjitai | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Japanese name | |||||||
| Hiragana | しんじたい | ||||||
| Katakana | シンジタイ | ||||||
| Kyūjitai | 新字體 | ||||||
| Shinjitai | 新字体 | ||||||
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Shinjitai (Japanese:新字体, "new character form") are the simplified forms ofkanji used in Japan since the promulgation of theTōyō Kanji List in 1946. Some of the new forms found inshinjitai are also found insimplified Chinese characters, butshinjitai is generally not as extensive in the scope of its modification.
Shinjitai were created by reducing the number of strokes inkyūjitai ("old character form") orseiji (正字, "proper/correct characters"), which is unsimplified kanji (usually similar totraditional Chinese characters). This simplification was achieved through a process (similar to that ofsimplified Chinese) of either replacing theonpu (音符, "sound mark") indicating theOn reading with anotheronpu of the sameOn reading with fewer strokes, or replacing a complex component of a character with a simpler one.
There have been a few stages of simplifications made since the 1950s, but the only changes that became official were the changes in theJōyō Kanji List in 1981 and 2010.[1]
The following forms were established as a result of thepost-war character reforms. Many were based on widely used handwritten abbreviations (略字,ryakuji) from the prewar era.[2]
| Kyuujitai | → | Shinjitai | On'yomi | Kun'yomi | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 鐵 | → | 鉄 | テツtetsu | くろがねkurogane | n. 'iron' |
| 與 | → | 与 | ヨyo | あた(える)ata(eru) | v. 'give' |
| 學 | → | 学 | ガクgaku | まな(ぶ)mana(bu) | n. 'study' |
| 體 | → | 体 | タイtai | からだkarada | n. 'body' |
| 臺 | → | 台 | ダイdai | n. pedestal | |
| 國 | → | 国 | コクkoku | くにkuni | n. 'country', 'kingdom', 'nation' |
| 關 | → | 関 | カンkan | せきseki | n. 'gate' |
| 寫 | → | 写 | シャsha | うつ(す)utsu(su) | v. 'copy' |
| 廣 | → | 広 | コウkō | ひろ(い)hiro(i) | n. 'expansive', 'wide' |
| 狀 | → | 状 | ジョウjō | n. '(ontological) form' | |
| 歸 | → | 帰 | キki | かえ(る)kae(ru) | v. return |
| 齒 | → | 歯 | シshi | はha | n. tooth |
| 步 | → | 歩 | ホho フfu ブbu | ある(く)aru(ku) | v. walk |
| 圓 | → | 円 | エンen | まる(い)maru(i) | n. 'circle', 'Japanese yen';adj. 'round', 'circular' |
| 區 | → | 区 | クku | くku | n. '(administrative) ward' |
In 332 cases, characters in the new standard have fewer strokes than old forms, in 14 cases they have the same number, and in 11 cases they have one more stroke. The most drastic simplification was廳→庁, removing 20 strokes.[3]
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The simplification in shinjitai were only officially applied to characters in the Tōyō and Jōyō Kanji Lists, with the kyūjitai forms remaining the official forms ofHyōgaiji (表外字, characters not included in the Tōyō and Jōyō Kanji Lists). For example, the character擧 (KYO,agaru,ageru; raise [an example]) was simplified as挙, but the character欅 (keyaki;zelkova tree) which also contained擧, remained unsimplified due to its status as a Hyōgaiji.
Despite this, simplified forms of hyōgaiji do exist in Japanese character sets, and are referred to asextended shinjitai (拡張新字体). However, they are to be seen as unofficial, a position reiterated in the National Language Council's 2000 report on Characters Not Listed in the Jōyō Kanji Table.
TheAsahi Shimbun newspaper is thorough in its simplification of hyōgaiji, and its in-house simplifications are calledAsahi characters.For example,痙攣 (KEIREN; cramp, spasm, convulsion) is simplified following the model of經→経 and攣→挛. This is also said to have been done because in the age oftypewriter-based printing, more complicated kanji could not be clearly printed.
TheJapanese Industrial Standards (JIS) contain numerous simplified forms of Kanji following the model of the shinjitai simplifications, such as﨔 (the simplified form of欅); many of these are included in Unicode, but are not present in most kanji character sets.
Ryakuji for handwriting use, such as the abbreviations for門 (in simplified Chinese, this abbreviation,门, has become official) and第 (which exists inUnicode as 㐧[4]) are not a part of the shinjitai reforms and therefore do not carry official status.
Cursive script (also known as grass script) andsemi-cursive script forms of kanji were adopted as shinjitai. Examples include:
Characters in which there were two or more variants were standardized under one form. The character島 (TŌ,shima; island) also had the variant forms嶋 (still seen in proper names) and嶌, but only the島 form became standard. The 辶 radical was previously printed with two dots (as in the hyōgaiji逞) but was written with one (as in道), so the written form with one dot became standard. The upper 丷 portion of the characters半, 尊, and平 was previously printed as 八 and written 丷 (as in the aforementioned examples), but the old printed form is still seen in the hyōgaiji characters絆 and鮃. The character青 (SEI,SHŌ,ao; blue) was once printed as靑 but written as青, so the written form became standard; the old printed form is still found in the standard form in hyōgaiji characters such as鯖 and蜻, but青 is used in some fonts.
Characters of thekeisei moji (形声文字) group each contain a semantic component and a phonetic component. A choice was made to replace the phonetic parts with homophones which had fewer strokes. For example,圍 was changed to囲, because韋 and井 were homophones.
Other simplifications of this method include竊→窃, 廳→庁, 擔→担. There are also colloquial handwritten simplifications (otherwise known asryakuji) based on this model, in which various non-kanji symbols are used as onpu, for example魔 (MA; demon) [simplification: ⿸广マ, 广+マ {Katakanama}],慶 (KEI; jubilation) [⿸广K, 广+K],藤 (TŌ,fuji; wisteria) [⿱艹ト, 艹+ト {Katakanato}], and機 (KI; machine, opportunity) [⿰木キ, 木+キ {Katakanaki}].
In some cases a standard character was replaced by a variant character that neither is a graphical variant nor shares an On reading, but had a historical basis for standardisation. Examples include證 → 証 and燈 → 灯, replacing登 → 正 and登 → 丁 respectively. In both cases the variant character had a different meaning and reading but was adopted due to its lower stroke count anyway.
Some kanji were simplified by removing entire components. For example,
In five basic cases and six derivations for a total of eleven cases, kanji were modified by adding a stroke, thereby rendering the composition more regular:
Simplification was not carried out uniformly. Firstly, only a select group of characters (the commonjōyō kanji) was simplified, with characters outside this group (the hyōgaiji) generally retaining their earlier form. For example,賣,續 and讀 (with the right-side element in the latter two not being identical, but merely graphically similar) were simplified as売,続, and読, respectively, but the hyōgaiji贖,犢 and牘, which contain the same element (𧶠), were kept in use in their unsimplified variants.
Secondly, even when a simplification was done in some characters within this group, the analogous simplification was not applied to all characters. For instance, the character龍, meaning "dragon", was simplified in isolation and in some compound characters, but not others. The character itself was simplified to竜, as was the compound character瀧 ("waterfall") →滝; however, it wasnot simplified in the characters襲 ("attack") and籠 ("basket"), although an extended shinjitai variant,篭, exists for the latter, and is used in practice rather often over the official variant, for instance in篭手 vs.籠手 ("gauntlet"). Note that despite simplification 龍 can still be found in Japanese.
Conversely, the character貫 ("pierce") was not simplified, nor was the compound character慣 ("accustomed"), but in the other compound character實 it was simplified, resulting in実 ("truth").
Similarly,卒 ("graduate") has been kept unsimplified in isolation, but in compounds has been simplified to卆, such as醉 to酔 "drunk";專 has been simplified to云 in some characters, such as傳 to伝 ("transmit"), and轉 to転 ("revolve"), but it takes a different form in 團, where instead of changing the phonetic element in a regular manner to get the expected 囩 it is shortened to the meaningless component 寸, producing 団.
The latest 2010 jōyō kanji reform has added additional inconsistencies in this regard as in some instances radicals that were previously uniformly simplified across the jōyō set now first appeared in their traditional variants in some of the new jōyō characters; contrary to prior practice no new simplifications of characters have been carried out, likely in consideration of established JIS character set use spanning decades at this point. Compare飮 →飲 ("drink") to 2010 jōyō餌 ("fodder, bait"), or錢 →銭 ("coin") to 2010 jōyō箋 ("label"). For the latter an analogically simplified䇳 character does exist, but was likely ignored due to having no history of use in Japanese character sets. On the other hand, former extended shinjitai艶 ("luster") has been added in favor of艷.
Nevertheless, the guidelines published by the Japanese government explicitly permit simplification in handwriting, and do not object to use of alternate characters in electronic text.[5]
In the 2,136jōyō kanji, there are 364 pairs of simplified and traditional characters. The kanji弁 is used to simplify three different traditional kanji (辨,瓣, and辯). Of these 364 traditional characters, 212 are still used asjinmeiyō kanji in names. The jinmeiyō kanji List also includes 631 kanji that are not elements of the jōyō Kanji List; 18 of them have a variant.For a list of traditional and modern forms of jōyō and jinmeiyō kanji, seeKyūjitai.
Due toHan unification, someshinjitai characters are unified with theirkyūjitai counterparts.Within the jōyō kanji, there are 62 characters whosekyūjitai forms may cause problems displaying:
海 社 勉 暑 漢 神 福 練 者 都 器 殺 祝 節 梅 類 祖 勤 穀 視 署 層 著 諸 難 朗 欄 廊 虜 隆 塚 祥 侮 僧 免 卑 喝 嘆 塀 墨 悔 慨 憎 懲 敏 既 煮 碑 祉 祈 禍 突 繁 臭 褐 謁 謹 賓 贈 逸 響 頻
These characters are Unicode CJK Unified Ideographs for which the old form (kyūjitai) and the new form (shinjitai) have been unified under the Unicode standard. Although the old and new forms are distinguished under the JIS X 0213 standard, the old forms map to Unicode CJK Compatibility Ideographs which are considered by Unicode to be canonically equivalent to the new forms, and may not be distinguished by user agents. Therefore, depending on the user environment, it may not be possible to see the distinction between old and new forms of the characters. In particular, all Unicode normalization methods merge the old characters with the new ones.
蘒 (U+8612), which is not jōyō, is displayed as an (extended)shinjitai character; itskyūjitai counterpart is considered as a duplicate, and is thus not unified, even though some fonts such asSource Han Sans may treat it as unified.
Like one of the controversial aspects of simplified Chinese, some shinjitai were originally separate characters with different meanings. For example, the kanji藝 (GEI; performance, accomplishment) was simplified to芸, but芸 was originally a separate character read with the On readingUN. Many of the original characters which have become merged are no longer used in modern Japanese: for example,豫 (YO, arakaji(me); in advance) and餘 (YO, ama(ri); excess) were merged with予 and余, respectively, both archaic kanji for the first person pronoun "I". However,芸 poses a problem, in that Japan's first public library,Untei (芸亭) (built during theNara Period), uses this character. This character also has significance in classicalJapanese literature, and Japanese history books have had to distinguish between the two by writingUN using the old form of the 艹 radical, (艸).
Mainland China, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan simplified their writing systems independently from each other. After World War II, poor relations prevented cooperation between the nations. Traditional Chinese characters are still officially used in Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, South Korea (as a supplement toHangul, but they are no longer used in North Korea), and by many overseas Chinese.
In Chinese, many more characters were simplified than in Japanese; some characters were simplified only in the one language, but not in the other; other characters were simplified in the same way in both languages, others in different ways. This means that those who want to learn the writing systems of both Chinese and Japanese must sometimes learn three different variations of one character: traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, and modern Japanese (e.g.龍 -龙 -竜 for "dragon").
| traditional Chinese | simplified Chinese | modern Japanese | meaning | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| No simplification in either language Same Unicode character but appearance may vary with script; seeHan unification | 悲 | 悲 | 悲 | sad |
| Same simplification in both languages | 獻 | 献 | 献 | offer |
| Simplified in Chinese only | 緊 | 紧 | 緊 | tight |
| Simplified in Japanese only | 惠 | 惠 | 恵 | benefit |
| Different simplifications in Chinese and Japanese | 棧 | 栈 | 桟 | stack |
| Chinese simplification more drastic | 驅 | 驱 | 駆 | drive |
| Japanese simplification more drastic | 圓 | 圆 | 円 | round |
