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text in reverse, then the blocks were inked to transfer the text onto paper. While
movable type technology was invented in China at around the 11th century, xylographic
(woodblock) printing remained the preferred method until the latter half
of the 19th century. At that period, movable metal type came into favor, following
the established norm in the West; the character shapes for the new type were based
(with some modification) on those in Kangxi zidian, and evolved into what became
known in Japanese as Minchōtai ‘Ming printed form’.
7 Layout of Entries in This Book
Individual entries for the 2,136 characters vary greatly in length and other respects,
but a broad general format is followed, as explained below.
7.1 Order
The 2,136 character entries in this book are set out in the order they are listed in the
revised Jōyō kanji list of 2010. In the main part of this book, the sequential number
for a particular character is shown in the top left of the box for each entry. The first
1,006 characters are divided into six successive grades: the first grade sets out those
characters to be taught in the first year of primary schooling, the second grade those
to be taught in the second year, and so on. The remaining corpus of 1,130 characters,
for learning in secondary education, is not divided into grades. Within each of the
six grades, and the following undivided corpus, characters are arranged according
to the gojū onzu, a traditional framework that was a prominent part of
pre-modern Japanese language theory.
7.2 Character Shapes
At the head of each entry, the character shape is given large in the standard printed
shape for modern Japanese. The larger shape to the right of that represents a brushwritten
equivalent of aesthetic merit. When writing by hand in the modern period,
the writing brush has been superseded in the everyday usage of individuals by and
large by other more convenient writing instruments such as the fountain pen and
ballpoint pen. Use of the writing brush is, however, still maintained very actively
in the realm of calligraphy. Readers who need everyday model shapes drawn by
pen are referred to A Guide to Reading and Writing Japanese (see Bibliography).
Regarding the process of script reform which involved many changes and led to the
standard character shapes in modern Japanese, detailed information can be found
in Chapters 8 and 9 of A History of Writing in Japan.
Within the text of each entry, the traditional printed form (shape) of a character
is normally given where this is different from the standard printed form for mod-
20 Introduction