KANJI
Kanji (Japanese: 漢字 ) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (平仮名), katakana (片仮名), and the Arabic numerals. The Japanese term kanji (漢字) literally means "Han characters".
Kanji History
Chinese characters came to Japan from China with kanji
articles on which they are written. Their early instances include a gold
seal discovered in 1748, which was identified as the one given by the
emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty in 57 CE. It is not clear when Japanese
people started to command Classical Chinese by themselves. At first
documents were probably written by Chinese immigrants. For example, the
diplomatic correspondence from King Bu of Wa to Emperor Shun of the Song
Dynasty in 478 has been praised for its skillful use of allusion. Later,
groups of people called fuhito were organized under the monarch to read and
write Classical Chinese. From the 6th century onwards, Chinese documents
written in Japan tended to show interference from Japanese. This suggests
the wide acceptance of Chinese characters in Japan.
When first introduced, texts were written in the Chinese language and would
have been read as such. Over time, however, a system known as kanbun (漢文)
emerged, essentially using Chinese text with diacritical marks to allow
Japanese speakers to read the characters in accordance with the rules of
Japanese grammar.
The Japanese language itself had no written form at the time. A writing
system called man'yōgana (used in the ancient poetry anthology Man'yōshū)
evolved that used a limited set of Chinese characters for their sound,
rather than for their meaning.
The characters for Kanji, lit. "Han characters".Man'yōgana written in
cursive style became hiragana, a writing system that was accessible to women
(who were denied higher education). Major works of Heian era literature by
women were written in hiragana. Katakana emerged via a parallel path:
monastery students simplified man'yōgana to a single constituent element.
Thus the two other writing systems, hiragana and katakana, referred to
collectively as kana, are actually descended from kanji.
In modern Japanese, kanji are used to write parts of the language such as
nouns, adjective stems and verb stems, while hiragana are used to write
inflected verb and adjective endings (okurigana), particles, native Japanese
words, and words where the kanji is too difficult to read or remember.
Katakana is used for representing onomatopoeia and non-Japanese loanwords.
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Local developments in Kanji
While kanji are essentially Chinese hanzi used to write
Japanese, there are now significant differences between kanji and hanzi,
including the use of characters created in Japan, characters that have been
given different meanings in Japanese, and post World War II simplifications
of the kanji.
Kokuji
Kokuji (国字; literally "national characters") are characters peculiar to
Japan. Kokuji are also known as wasei kanji (和製漢字; lit. "Chinese characters
made in Japan"). There are hundreds of kokuji (see the sci.lang.japan FAQ:
kokuji list). Many are rarely used, but a number have become important
additions to the written Japanese language. These include:
峠 tōge (mountain pass)
榊 sakaki (sakaki tree, genus Camellia)
畑 hatake (field of crops)
辻 tsuji (crossroads, street)
働 dō, hatara(ku) (work)
Some of them like "働" have been introduced to China.
Kokkun
In addition to kokuji, there are kanji that have been given meanings in
Japanese different from their original Chinese meanings. These kanji are not
considered kokuji but are instead called kokkun (国訓) and include characters
such as:
沖 oki (offing, offshore; Ch. chōng rinse)
椿 tsubaki (Camellia japonica; Ch. chūn Ailantus)
Old characters and new characters
The same kanji character can sometimes be written in two different ways, 旧字体
(Kyūjitai; lit. "old character style") (舊字體 in Kyūjitai) and 新字体 (Shinjitai;
"new character style"). The following are some examples of Kyūjitai followed
by the corresponding Shinjitai:
國 国 kuni, koku (country)
號 号 gō (number)
變 変 hen, ka(waru) (change)
Kyūjitai were used before the end of World War II, and are mostly, if not
completely, the same as the Traditional Chinese characters. After the war
the government introduced the simplified Shinjitai in the "Tōyō Kanji
Character Form List" (Tōyō Kanji Jitai Hyō, 当用漢字字体表). Some of the new
characters are similar to simplified characters used in the People's
Republic of China. Also, like the simplification process in China, some of
the shinjitai were once abbreviated forms (略字, Ryakuji) used in handwriting,
but in contrast with the "proper" unsimplified characters (正字 seiji) were
only acceptable in colloquial contexts. This page shows examples of these
handwritten abbreviations, identical to their modern Shinjitai forms, from
the pre WWII era. There are also handwritten simplifications today that are
significantly simpler than their standard forms (either untouched or
received only minor simplification in the postwar reforms), examples of
which can be seen here [1], but despite their wide usage and popularity,
they, like their prewar counterparts, are not considered orthographically
correct and are only used in handwriting.
Many Chinese characters are not used in Japanese at all. Theoretically,
however, any Chinese character can also be a Japanese character-the Daikanwa
Jiten, one of the largest dictionaries of kanji ever compiled, has about
50,000 entries, even though most of the entries have never been used in
Japanese.
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 most cases, morphemes). From the point of view of the reader, kanji are said to have one or more different "readings". Deciding which reading is meant will depend on context, intended meaning, use in compounds, and even location in the sentence. Some common kanji have ten or more possible readings. These readings are normally categorized as either on'yomi (or on) or kun'yomi (or kun).
On'yomi (Chinese reading)
The on'yomi (音読み), the Sino-Japanese reading, is a Japanese approximation of the Chinese pronunciation of the character at the time it was introduced. 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 would not normally be expected to have on'yomi, but there are exceptions, such as the character 働 'to work', which has the kun'yomi hataraku and the on'yomi dō, and 腺 'gland', which has only the on'yomi sen.
Generally, on'yomi are classified into four types:
Go-on (呉音; literally Wu sound) readings, from the pronunciation of the Wu region (in the vicinity of modern Shanghai), during the 5th and 6th centuries.
Kan-on (漢音; literally Han sound) readings, from the pronunciation during the Tang Dynasty in the 7th to 9th centuries, primarily from the standard speech of the capital, Chang'an.
Tō-on (唐音；literally Tang sound) readings, from the pronunciations of later dynasties, such as the Song and Ming, covers all readings adopted from the Heian era to the Edo period
Kan'yō-on (慣用音) readings, which are mistaken or changed readings of the kanji that have become accepted into the language.
Examples (rare readings in parentheses)
| Kanji | Meaning | Go-on | Kan-on | Tō-on | Kan'yō-on |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 明 | bright | myō | mei | (min) | - |
| 行 | go | gyō | kō | (an) | - |
| 極 | extreme | goku | kyoku | - | - |
| 珠 | pearl | shu | shu | ju | (zu) |
| 度 | degree | do | (to) | - | - |
| 輸 | transport | (shu) | (shu) | - | yu |
The most common form of readings is the kan-on one. The
go-on readings are especially common in Buddhist terminology such as
gokuraku 極楽 "paradise". The tō-on readings occur in some words such as isu
"chair" or futon.
In Chinese, most characters are associated with a single Chinese syllable.
However, some homographs called 多音字 (pinyin: duōyīnz�) such as 行 (pinyin:
h�ng or x�ng) (Japanese: kō, gyō) have more than one reading in Chinese
representing different meanings, which is reflected in the carryover to
Japanese as well. Additionally tonality aside, most Chinese syllables
(especially in Middle Chinese, in which final stop consonants were more
prevalent than in most modern dialects) did not fit the largely-CV
(consonant-vowel) phonotactics of classical Japanese. Thus most on'yomi are
composed of two moras (syllables or beats), the second of which is either a
lengthening of the vowel in the first mora (this being i in the case of e
and u in the case of o, due to linguistic drift in the centuries since), or
one of the syllables ku, ki, tsu, chi, or syllabic n, chosen for their
approximation to the final consonants of Middle Chinese. In fact,
palatalized consonants before vowels other than i, as well as syllabic n,
were probably added to Japanese to better simulate Chinese; none of these
features occur in words of native Japanese origin.
On'yomi primarily occur in multi-kanji compound words (熟語 jukugo), many of
which are the result of the adoption (along with the kanji themselves) of
Chinese words for concepts that either didn't 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 and Norman French, since
Chinese-borrowed terms are often more specialized, or considered to sound
more erudite or formal, than their native counterparts. The major exception
to this rule is surnames, in which the native kun'yomi reading is usually
used (see below).
Kun'yomi (Japanese reading)
The kun'yomi (訓読み), Japanese reading, or native reading, is a reading
based on the pronunciation of a native Japanese word, or yamatokotoba, that
closely approximated the meaning of the Chinese character when it was
introduced. As with on'yomi, there can be multiple kun readings for the same
kanji, and some kanji have no kun'yomi at all.
For instance, the kanji for east, 東, has the on reading tō. However,
Japanese already had two words for "east": higashi and azuma. Thus the kanji
character 東 had the latter pronunciations added as kun'yomi. However, the
kanji 寸, denoting a Chinese unit of measurement (slightly over an inch), had
no native Japanese equivalent; thus it only has an on'yomi, sun.
Kun'yomi are characterized by the strict (C)V syllable structure of
yamatokotoba. Most noun or adjective kun'yomi are two to three syllables
long, while verb kun'yomi are more often one or two syllables in length (not
counting trailing hiragana called okurigana, although those are usually
considered part of the reading).
In a number of cases, multiple kanji were assigned to cover a single
Japanese word. Typically when this occurs, the different kanji refer to
specific shades of meaning. For instance, the word なおす, naosu, when written
治す, means "to heal an illness or sickness". When written 直す it means "to fix
or correct something" (e.g. a bicycle or a poorly written Wikipedia
article). Sometimes the differences are very clear; other times they are
quite subtle. Sometimes there are differences of opinion among reference
works -- one dictionary may say the kanji are equivalent, while another
dictionary may draw distinctions of use. Because of this confusion, Japanese
people may have trouble knowing which kanji to use. One workaround is simply
to write the word in hiragana, a method frequently employed with more
complex cases such as もと moto, which has at least five different kanji, 元,
基, 本, 下, 素, three of which have only very subtle differences.
Other readings
There are many kanji compounds that use a mixture of on'yomi and
kun'yomi, known as jūbako (重箱) or yutō (湯桶) words. The words jūbako and yutō
themselves are autological examples: the first character of jūbako is read
using on'yomi, the second kun'yomi, while it is the other way around with
yutō. Other examples include 金色 kin'iro "golden" (on-kun) and 合気道 aikidō
"the martial art Aikido" (kun-on-on).
Some kanji also have lesser-known readings called nanori, which are mostly
used for people's names (often given names), and are generally closely
related to the kun'yomi. Place names sometimes also use nanori (or,
occasionally, unique readings not found elsewhere).
Gikun (義訓) or Jukujikun (熟字訓) are readings of kanji combinations that have
no direct correspondence to the characters' individual on'yomi or kun'yomi.
For example, 今朝 ("this morning") is read neither as *ima'asa, the kun'yomi
of the characters, nor *konchō, the on'yomi of the characters. Instead it is
read as kesa-a native Japanese word with two syllables (which may be seen as
a single morpheme, or as a fusion of kono, "this", and asa, "morning").
Many ateji (kanji used only for their phonetic value) have meanings derived
from their usage: for example, the now-archaic 亜細亜 ajia was formerly used to
write "Asia" in kanji; the character 亜 now means Asia in such compounds as
東亜 tōa, "East Asia". From the written 亜米利加 amerika, the second character was
taken, resulting in the semi-formal coinage 米国 beikoku, lit. "rice country"
but meaning "America".
When to use which reading
Words for similar concepts, such as "east" (東), "north" (北) and
"northeast" (北東), can have completely different pronunciations: the kun
readings higashi and kita are used for the first two, while the on reading
hokutō is used for the third.
The rule of thumb for determining the pronunciation of a particular kanji in
a given context is that kanji occurring in compounds are generally read
using on'yomi. Such compounds are called jukugo (熟語) in Japanese. For
example, 情報 jōhō "information", 学校 gakkō "school", and 新幹線 shinkansen
"bullet train" all follow this pattern.
Kanji occurring in isolation -- that is, written adjacent only to kana, not
to other kanji -- are typically read using their kun'yomi. Together with
their okurigana, if any, they generally function either as a noun or as an
inflected adjective or verb: e.g. 月 tsuki "moon", 情け nasake "sympathy", 赤い
akai "red" (adj), 新しい atarashii "new ", 見る miru "(to) see".
This rule of thumb has many exceptions. Kun'yomi are quite capable of
forming compound words, although they are not as numerous as those with
on'yomi. Examples include 手紙 tegami "letter", 日傘 higasa "parasol", and the
famous 神風 kamikaze "divine wind". Such compounds may also have okurigana,
such as 空揚げ (also written 唐揚げ) karaage "fried food" and 折り紙 origami
"artistic paper folding", although many of these can also be written with
the okurigana omitted (e.g. 空揚 or 折紙).
On the other hand, some on'yomi characters can also be used as words in
isolation: 愛 ai "love", 禅 Zen, 点 ten "mark, dot". Most of these cases
involve kanji that have no kun'yomi, so there can be no confusion.
The situation with on'yomi is further complicated by the fact that many
kanji have more than one on'yomi: witness 先生 sensei "teacher" versus 一生
isshō "one's whole life".
There are also some words that can be read multiple ways, similar to English
words such as "live" or "read" -- 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), or kamite (upper
part). In addition, 上手い has the reading umai (skilled).
Some famous place names, including those of Tokyo (東京 Tōkyō) and Japan
itself (日本 Nihon or sometimes Nippon) are read with on'yomi; however, the
majority of Japanese place names are read with kun'yomi (e.g. 大阪 Ōsaka, 青森
Aomori, 箱根 Hakone). Family names are also usually read with kun'yomi (e.g.,
山田 Yamada, 田中 Tanaka, 鈴木 Suzuki). Personal names, although they are not
typically considered jūbako/yutō, often contain mixtures of kun'yomi,
on'yomi, and nanori, and are generally only readable with some experience
(e.g., 大助 Daisuke [on-kun], 夏美 Natsumi [kun-on]).
Pronunciation assistance
Because of the ambiguities involved, kanji sometimes have their
pronunciation for the given context spelled out in ruby characters known as
furigana (small kana 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 and manga
(comics). It is also used in newspapers for rare or unusual readings and for
characters not included in the officially recognized set of essential kanji
(see below).
Total number of kanji characters
The number of possible characters is disputed. The "Daikanwa
Jiten" contains about 50,000 characters, and this was thought to be
comprehensive, but more recent mainland Chinese dictionaries contain 80,000
or more characters, many consisting of obscure variants. Most of these are
not in common use in either Japan or China.
Orthographic reform and lists of kanji
In 1946, following World War II, the Japanese government instituted a
series of orthographic reforms. Some characters were given simplified
glyphs, called 新字体 (shinjitai). The number of characters in circulation was
reduced, and formal lists of characters to be learned during each grade of
school were established. Many variant forms of characters and obscure
alternatives for common characters were officially discouraged. This was
done with the goal of facilitating learning for children and simplifying
kanji use in literature and periodicals. These are simply guidelines, so
many characters outside these standards are still widely known and commonly
used.
Kyōiku kanji
The Kyōiku kanji 教育漢字 ("education kanji") are 1006 characters that Japanese
children learn in elementary school. The number was 881 until 1981. The
grade-level breakdown of the education kanji is known as the Gakunen-betsu
kanji haitōhyō 学年別漢字配当表), or the gakushū kanji.
Jōyō kanji
The Jōyō kanji 常用漢字 are 1,945 characters consisting of all the kyōiku kanji,
plus an additional 939 kanji taught in junior high and high school. In
publishing, characters outside this category are often given furigana. The
Jōyō kanji were introduced in 1981. They replaced an older list of 1850
characters known as the General-use kanji (tōyō kanji 当用漢字) introduced in
1946.
Jinmeiyō kanji
The Jinmeiyō kanji 人名用漢字 are 2,928 characters consisting of the Jōyō
kanji, plus an additional 983 kanji found in people's names. Over the years,
the Minister of Justice has on several occasions added to this list.
Sometimes the phrase Jinmeiyō kanji refers to all 2928, and sometimes it
only refers to the 983 that are only used for names.
Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji
The Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji and kana
define character code-points for each kanji and kana, as well as other forms
of writing such as Hindu-Arabic numerals, for use in information processing.
They have had numerous revisions. The current standards are:
JIS X 0208:1997, the most recent version of the main standard. It has 6,355
kanji.
JIS X 0212:1990, a supplementary standard containing a further 5,801 kanji.
This standard is rarely used, mainly because the common Shift JIS encoding
system could not use it. This standard is effectively obsolete;
JIS X 0213:2000, a further revision which extended the JIS X 0208 set with
3,625 additional kanji, of which 2,741 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
Gaiji (外字), literally meaning "external characters", 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 in reference works, and can include non-kanji symbols as
well.
Gaiji can be either user-defined characters or system-specific characters.
Both are a problem for information interchange, as the codepoint 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, and JIS X 0213-2000 used
the range of code-points previously allocated to gaiji, making them
completely unusable. Nevertheless, they persist today with NTT DoCoMo's "i-mode"
service, where they are used for pictorial characters.
Unicode allows for optional encoding of gaiji in private use areas.
Types of Kanji: by Category
Main article: Chinese character classification
A Chinese scholar Xu Shen (許慎), in the Shuōw�n Jiěz� (說文解字) ca. 100 CE,
classified Chinese characters into six categories (Japanese: 六書 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.
(For a table of all the kyōiku kanji (教育漢字) broken down by category see this
page, from which the above description has been extracted.)
Shōkei-moji (象形文字)
These characters are sketches of the object they represent. For example, 目
is an eye, 木 is a tree, etc. The current forms of the characters are very
different from the original, and it is now hard to see the origin in many of
these characters. It is somewhat easier to see in seal script. This kind of
character is often called a "pictograph" in English (Shōkei -- 象形 is also
the Japanese word for Egyptian hieroglyphs). These make up a small fraction
of modern characters.
Shiji-moji (指事文字)
Shiji-moji are called "logograms", "simple ideographs", "simple
indicatives", and sometimes just "symbols" in English. They are usually
graphically simple and represent an abstract concept such as a direction:
e.g. 上 representing "up" or "above" and 下 representing "down" or "below".
These make up a tiny fraction of modern characters.
Kaii-moji (会意文字)
Often called "compound indicatives", "associative compounds", "compound
ideographs", or just "ideographs". These are usually a combination of
pictographs that combine to present an overall meaning. An example is the
kokuji 峠 (mountain pass) made from 山 (mountain), 上 (up) and 下 (down).
Another is 休 (rest) from 人 (person) and 木 (tree). These make up a tiny
fraction of modern characters.
Keisei-moji (形声文字)
These are called "phono-semantic", "semantic-phonetic", "semasio-phonetic"
or "phonetic-ideographic" characters in English. They are by far the largest
category, making up about 90% of characters. Typically they are made up of
two components, one of which indicates the meaning or semantic context, and
the other the pronunciation. (The pronunciation really relates to the
original Chinese, and may now only be distantly detectable in the modern
Japanese on'yomi of the kanji. 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.)
As examples of this, consider the kanji with the 言 shape: 語, 記, 訳, 説, etc.
All are related to word/language/meaning. Similarly kanji with the 雨 (rain)
shape (雲, 電, 雷, 雪, 霜, etc.) are almost invariably related to weather. Kanji
with the 寺 (temple) shape on the right (詩, 持, 時, 侍, etc.) usually have an
on'yomi of "shi" or "ji". Sometimes one can guess the meaning and/or reading
simply from the components. However, exceptions do exist -- for example,
neither 需 nor 霊 have anything to do with weather (at least in their modern
usage), and 待 has an on'yomi of "tai". That is, a component may play a
semantic role in one compound, but a phonetic role in another.
Tenchū-moji (転注文字)
This group have variously been called "derivative characters", or "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 different on'yomi, gaku 'music' and raku
'pleasure'.
Kasha-moji (仮借文字)
These are called "phonetic loan characters." 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.
Related symbols
The ideographic iteration mark (々) is used to indicate that the preceding
kanji is to be repeated, functioning similarly to a ditto mark in English.
It is pronounced as though the kanji were written twice in a row, for
example 色々 (iroiro "various") and 時々 (tokidoki "sometimes"). This mark also
appears in personal and place names, as in the surname Sasaki (佐々木). This
symbol is a simplified version of the kanji 仝 (variant of 同 dō "same").
Another frequently used symbol is ヶ (a small katakana "ke"), pronounced "ka"
when used to indicate quantity (such as 六ヶ月, rokkagetsu "six months") or "ga"
in place names like Kasumigaseki (霞ヶ関). This symbol is a simplified version
of the kanji 箇.
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