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Hyōgaiji (表外字; translated to "characters from outside the table/chart"), also known ashyōgai kanji (表外漢字), is a term for Japanesekanji outside the two major lists ofjōyō kanji, which are taught in primary and secondary school, and thejinmeiyō kanji, which are additional kanji that are officially allowed for use in personal names. The termjōyōgai kanji (常用外漢字) is also encountered, but it designates all the kanji outside the list ofjōyō kanji, including thejinmeiyō kanji.
Becausehyōgaiji is a catch-all category for "all unlisted kanji", there is no comprehensive list, nor is there a definitive count of how manyhyōgaiji exist. The highest level of theKanji kentei (test of kanji aptitude) tests approximately 6,000 characters, of which half arehyōgaiji and 2,999 are from the official lists (2,136jōyō kanji and 863jinmeiyō kanji). While in principle any Chinese character or newly coined variant may be used ashyōgaiji, theKangxi Dictionary and the 20th centuryDai Kan-Wa jiten, both extremely comprehensive, contain about 47,000 and 50,000 characters, respectively, of which over 40,000 would be classed ashyōgaiji or non-standard variants if used in Japanese.
While manyjōyō kanji are printed usingsimplified forms (shinjitai, in opposition totraditional forms,kyūjitai),hyōgaiji are officially printed with traditional forms such as臍, even if some simplified variants are officially recognized in print, such as the simplified唖, from the traditional啞 as well as内 from內.[1]
Thejinmeiyō kanji list (used for names) recognizes in most cases the traditional form along with the simplified form (when one exists).
However, other unofficial simplified forms exist, known asextendedshinjitai (拡張新字体,kakuchō shinjitai)—these come by applying the same simplification processes as in the development ofshinjitai. The newspaperThe Asahi Shimbun developed its own simplified characters, known asAsahi characters, and they have their ownUnicode code points. Some of these simplifications are part of the standardJIS X 0208 and later versions. Among extendedshinjitai, only a few arede facto frequently used, including填,頬 (extendedshinjitai for thejōyō kanji塡,頰) or涜,掴 (extendedshinjitai for thehyōgaiji瀆,摑).
The issue of variant non-jōyō character forms becomes apparent when using many commonly available Japanese fonts. While characters not frequently used generally retain their traditional forms, those commonly used in Japanese writing frequently are reproduced in their unofficial simplified form (extendedshinjitai), rather than their official printed form. Well-known examples include:
Some characters are provided in both their official and simplified forms, as is the case with攪 (official printed form) and撹 (simplified variant), but most of these characters are provided in one form only. Thus, unlike the aforementioned "Asahi characters", simplifications are not comprehensive, meaning thathyōgaiji are rendered as a mix of both standard classical forms and unofficial simplifications. This is perhaps most obvious in the archaic kanji spelling of麺麭,pan,'bread'. The characters, bothhyōgaiji, are displayed with a simplified and an unsimplified "barley" radical side-by-side, which can be visually jarring. The lack of an unsimplified variant in many fonts leaves the user with no choice but to reproduce the word as shown above.
The use ofhyōgaiji in computer fonts was brought to the fore with the 2007 launch ofMac OS X v10.5 "Leopard". This release included the fonts Hiragino Mincho Pro N and Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro N, which reproducehyōgaiji in their official printed forms.
A related weakness (though less relevant to modern language use) is the inability of most commercially available Japanese fonts to show the traditional forms of manyjōyō kanji, particularly those whose component radicals have been comprehensively altered (such as食 in飲,示 in神, and辵 in運 or連, rather than their traditional forms as used in饅,祀, and迴). This is mostly an issue in the verbatim reproduction of old texts, and for academic purposes.
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The character嘘 (uso, "lie, falsehood") is often mentioned as an example of a very commonly usedhyōgaiji.[2] While the official recommendation is to write the word in hiragana or katakana, a corpus survey in 2003 showed the kanji form to be by far the most common in practice.[2]
Hyōgaiji are often used in the names ofwagashi, which draw from ancient literature.
Hyōgai kanji may be often used inmanga works for stylistic purposes in character names, place names and other phrases, typically accompanied byfurigana gloss to aid with their reading.
ModernMandarin Chinese borrowings into Japanese are typically rendered withkatakana like any otherJapanese loanword; however, they may be sometimes stylistically spelled with their original Chinese characters and given a non-standard borrowed pronunciation, many of these characters are technically classified ashyōgaiji due to the difference in common character use between the languages. This is particularly common withmahjong terminology.
