Japan and the Japanese

656 APPENDIX.
instance, the i syllable meaning female, the Chinese symbol for female wai
employed to represent that sound.
To this syllabary appears to have succeeded another, in which the Chinese
characters em ployed are considerably contracted. In a third, that in ordi-
nary use, called Hira-kana, or Fira-kana, easy, or woman's writing, the
Chinese form of the symbols has quite disappeared. The fourth, called
Kaiti kana, is very easy, distinct, and compact. Fifteen of the symbols are
Chinese characters still in use, among the simplest
which the Chinese writ-
ing affords. The others are parts of characters arbitrarily taken. The Japanese,
who call this " man's writing," have an idea that it is the oldest of
their syllabary methods ; but had it been so, the other never would \rn\e come
into use ; it is evidently the most recent of the whole a kind of shorthand
and is principally used for notes and comments. Placed under above,
or side by side, the Chinese characters, with which all Japanese books abound,
these Kata-kana syllables indicate the corresponding Japanese word,
the inflections which, though numerous in Japanese, are wanting in
Chinese, or, in the case of proper names, their pronunciation. No Ixioks
are printed in it exclusively. Japanese books, for common use, present,
indeed, a strange intermixture of the cursive, scrambling Kata-kana, in
which each syllable has quite a number of representations, with Chinese
characters more or less numerous, winch may or may not be explained by an
added paraphrase in Kata-kana ; and which, when once so explained, are
often repeated without any explanation. Thus, the printing of a short Jap-
anese novel, accomplished at Vienna, under the editorial care of Dr. Pfiz-
maier the first book in the Japanese character ever printed in Europe
required a fount of four hundred and eighty-one types for the Japanese syllabary,
besides two hundred and twenty-seven more lor the Chinese charac-
ters introduced into it.
The higher the pretensions of a Japanese writer the more Chinese he inter
mingles. Hence, to read Japanese books, a knowledge of Chinese is abso
like Remu
lutely necessary ; and hence it happens that Chinese scholars,
sat, without knowing Japanese, or, like Klaproth, by knowing a little of it,
may be able to get at least some general idea of a Japanese book, especially
if it be a very learned one. This, however, is a precarious resource ; for
the Japanese not only sometimes use the Chinese characters in peculiar
senses, they have varied their forms, and have even introduced some new
ones of their own.
This mixed sort of writing seems to be easily enough mastered by the Jap
anese themselves, among whom book-printing from wooden plates, and the
art of reading, have been common from our earliest knowledge of them. But
it puts serious obstacles in the way of learners from abroad, and gave occa-
sion to the Jesuit missionaries to suspect that it had been invented by the
devil himself, on purpose to impede the spread of the gospel.
It is to its Chinese element that we are mainly indebted for such knowl-
edge as we have yet obtained of the literature of Japan. Thougfr BO lonf