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Tōyō kanji

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List standardized kanji in Japan

Japanese writing

Components
Kanji Stroke order Radicals Jōyō kanji list Kyōiku kanji Tōyō kanji Jinmeiyō kanji Hyōgai kanji on'yomi go-on kan-on tō-on kun'yomi
Kana Hiragana Hentaigana Katakana Man'yōgana Sōgana Gojūon
Typographic symbols Japanese punctuation Iteration mark
Uses
Syllabograms Furigana Okurigana Braille
Transliteration
Rōmaji Hepburn Kunrei-shiki / ISO 3602 Nihon-shiki JSL Wāpuro (keyboard input)
Cyrillization Polivanov system
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Chinese characters

Chinese family of scripts Written Chinese Kanji Hanja Chữ Hán
Evolution ofscript styles Neolithic symbols in China Oracle bone Bronze Seal Large Small Bird-worm Clerical Cursive Semi-cursive Regular Flat brush Modern typefaces Fangsong Ming Hei
Properties andclassification Components Strokes order Radicals Orthography jiu zixing xin zixing Digital encoding
Collation and standards Kangxi Dictionary forms (1716) Commonly Used Characters (PRC, 2013) Commonly-Used Characters (Hong Kong, 2007) Nan Min Recommended Characters (Taiwan, 2009) Standard Form of National Characters (Taiwan, 1982) Jōyō kanji (Japan, 2010)
Reforms Simplified characters second round Traditional characters debate Japanese script reform kyūjitai
Homographs and readings Literary and colloquial readings Kanbun Idu
Variants Zetian characters
Derived systems Kana man'yōgana hiragana katakana Jurchen script Khitan large small Nüshu Bopomofo Slavonic transcription
Transliteration of Chinese
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Thetōyō kanji (当用漢字; lit. "general-use kanji") are thosekanji listed on theTōyō kanji hyō (当用漢字表; literally "list of general-use kanji"), which was released by the JapaneseMinistry of Education (文部省) on 16 November 1946, following a reform of kanji characters of Chinese origin in the Japanese language. The intention of thetōyō list was to declare which kanji could be used in official government documents.

The 1,850-character list was not meant to be exhaustive, as many characters that were in common use at the time, and are today, were not included. It was meant as a baseline for satisfactoryfunctional literacy in Japanese at asecondary education level, as all of the listed characters were to be taught nationwide incompulsory education.^[1]

They were replaced in 1981 by thejōyō kanji, which initially included 1,945 characters, but wasexpanded to 2,136 characters in 2010 following several revisions.^{[citation needed]}

Reform

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Thousands of kanji characters were in use in various writing systems, leading to great difficulties for those learning written Japanese. Additionally, several characters had identical meanings but were written differently from each other, further increasing complexity.

After World War II, the Ministry of Education decided to minimize the number of kanji by choosing the most commonly used kanji, along with simplified kanji (seeShinjitai) commonly appearing in contemporary literature, to form thetōyō kanji. This was an integral part of the postwar reform of Japanese national writing.

This was meant as a preparation for re-introducing their previous unsuccessful reform abolishing Chinese characters. Although the postwar timing meant no public debate was held on the future of the Japanese written language, the defenders of the original kanji system considered and accepted thetōyō kanji as a reasonable compromise. Since this compromise could not then be withdrawn in favour of more radical reform, discussion of kanji abolition ended. Thirty-five years passed before further reforms were brought to the Japanese written form.

The table of the pronunciations of the kanji was published in 1948 and the exposition of altered character forms (Shinjitai) in 1949.

In 1981, the Ministry of Education decided to replace thetōyō kanji with a more flexible system, leading to the publication of thejōyō kanji. This rendered thetōyō kanji obsolete.

Applications and limitations

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In addition to a list of the standardizedtōyō kanji, the reform published by the Ministry for Education in 1946 also contains a set of guidelines for their use.

Regarding provenance and scope, the foreword of the document states that:

The table oftōyō kanji put forth therein, are the selection of kanji recommended for use by the general public, including legal and governmental documents, newspapers, and magazines.
The presented kanji are selected as an approximate set of those characters found to be of no insignificant utility in the lives of today's Japanese citizens.
Concerning proper nouns, there is a wide range of usage beyond what may be formulated as rules, and consequently they are treated as outside the scope of this standard.
The simplified character forms from modern custom are taken as the proper form, and their original forms are provided alongside them for reference.
A systemization of the character forms and their readings is still under consideration (this referring to the later 1948 and 1949 publications that addressed these points in detail).

Regarding guidelines for use, it continues:

If the kanji set forth in this standard do not suffice for the writing of a word, then either a different word should be substituted, or else the word shall be written in kana.
Write pronouns, adverbs, conjunctions, interjections, auxiliary verbs, and particles using kana as much as possible (normally hiragana is used for these).
Foreign placenames and people's names are to be written in kana, except that traditional usage examples such as米国 (beikoku,America) or英国 (eikoku,England) are permitted.
Words of foreign origin are to be written in kana (katakana is customarily used, but exceptions occur).
Names of plants and animals should be written in kana (katakana is frequently but not ubiquitously used for these).
Ateji (words like玉子 (tamago,egg) and多分 (tabun,probably) that use the characters for their sounds, ignoring meaning) are to be written in kana. (This rule is not widely followed in practice.)
As a general rule,furigana should not be used.
Concerning technical and specialized terminology, it is hoped that the list of characters prescribed by the list oftōyō kanji will serve as a template for further standardization (acknowledging that thetōyō list may be insufficient for these applications, but should be used to guide more complete de facto standards).

(In the above, parenthetical remarks are used for exposition and do not reflect text that is present in the document.)

Mazegaki

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Because the majority of character-based words are composed of two (or more) kanji, many words were left with one character included in thetōyō kanji, and the other character missing. In this case, the recommendation was to write the included part in kanji and the excluded part in kana, e.g.ふ頭 for埠頭 and危ぐ for危惧. These words were calledmazegaki (交ぜ書き; "mixed characters").