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smaller than the Chinese characters making up most of the text so as to help the reader understand it as Japanese. In broad terms, it was this sort of development that marked the very beginning of what was to evolve as the mixed kanji-kana writing used in Japan today. The Modern Period When Japan began actively to adopt various aspects of Western culture and modernize from the latter part of the nineteenth century onwards, some intellectuals expressed feelings of doubt over the very complicated way Japanese was written compared with the marvellous simplicity of the Roman alphabet which allowed any and every thought to be put in writing by means of no more than several dozen letters. Eventually, though, such doubts were set aside, and the Japanese persevered with a hugely intricate writing system which involved not only thousands of characters in their traditional, often very complicated, shapes, but also a very involved historical system of kana spellings. This changed after the end of the Pacific War in 1945, though, when Japanese society experienced many radical changes. Amongst them was script simplification. Starting in 1946, script reforms were carried out, promoting the use of a restricted character set of 1850 and a far simpler system of kana usage based on modern pronunciation. Broadly speaking, the script reforms put into effect from the late 1940s have been maintained down to the present, though with a degree of easing. For example, the number of general-use characters has been increased, first from 1850 to 1945 (in 1981) and then to 2136 (in 2010). Developments in computer technology from the 1970s onwards have tended to make it easier to write Japanese text using a larger character set, as passive confirmation of characters by the writer by selecting from a list of options on a computer screen is easier than active recall from memory when writing by hand. Computer technology has also greatly assisted the printing of Japanese text, both privately by individuals and commercially. As should be clear from the above, Chinese characters have been an integral part of Japanese culture for a period of about fifteen hundred years, and their importance is undiminished today. Many characters are used in senses different from in Chinese, and some have been simplified in shape in a way different from the simplified equivalents in PRC Chinese texts. For these reasons, while the Japanese word kanji () is commonly and validly translated as ‘Chinese characters’, in the context of Japanese it is equally valid to render it instead as ‘Japanese characters’, as in the title to this book. Note: readers wanting more details are referred to CS2000 (see Bibliography). The Japanese Writing System: A Brief Sketch 29
Hiragana and Katakana and Their Source Characters A from A from I from I from U from U from E from E from O from O from KA from KA from KI from KI from KU from KU from KE from KE from KO from KO from SA from SA from SHI from SHI from SU from SU from SE from SE from 30
- Page 2: THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO Japanese Kanj
- Page 5 and 6: Published by Tuttle Publishing, an
- Page 7 and 8: The 80 First-Grade Characters......
- Page 9 and 10: Acknowledgments Thanks are due to O
- Page 11 and 12: writing brush, and then incised. Wr
- Page 13 and 14: 1.5 Cursive Script Forms While the
- Page 15 and 16: 5) ‘semantic-phonetic compounds
- Page 17 and 18: alternative etymologies for the sam
- Page 19 and 20: 集 韻 Jiyun (Collected Rhymes; J.
- Page 21 and 22: text in reverse, then the blocks we
- Page 23 and 24: eflects the reality that in this bo
- Page 25 and 26: compound characters, in the form ),
- Page 27 and 28: Limitations of This Book This book
- Page 29: that the word kuruma ‘vehicle’
- Page 33 and 34: Hiragana Katakana HO from HO from
- Page 35 and 36: The 214 Determinatives (or ‘Radic
- Page 37 and 38: No. English Alternative forms/nickn
- Page 39 and 40: No. English Alternative forms/nickn
- Page 41 and 42: No. English Alternative forms/nickn
- Page 43 and 44: 4. However, in a few cases vertical
- Page 45 and 46: Editorial and Typographical Matters
- Page 48 and 49: THE KANJI
- Page 50 and 51: 6 L4 音 ON, IN, oto, ne sound 9
- Page 52 and 53: 14 休 KYŪ, yasumu rest(ing) L5 6
- Page 54 and 55: 23 L5 校 KŌ school, check 10 stro
- Page 56 and 57: 33 L5 車 SHA, kuruma vehicle 7
- Page 58 and 59: 43 L4 GAKUSEI student ISSH
- Page 60 and 61: 51 L5 52 L4 先 SEN, saki prior,
- Page 62 and 63: 59 L5 中 4 CHŪ, naka middle, insi
- Page 64 and 65: 68 年 NEN, toshi year L5 6 strokes
- Page 66 and 67: 76 L5 目 5 MOKU, me, ma eye, look,
- Page 68 and 69: 85 遠 EN, tōi distant L4 13 strok
- Page 70 and 71: 93 L5 会 KAI, E, au meet 6 stro
- Page 72 and 73: 101 L3 丸 3 GAN, maru, marui round
- Page 74 and 75: 110 L4 111 L4 京 KYŌ, KEI c
- Page 76 and 77: 118 L5 言 GEN, GON, koto, iu wo
- Page 78 and 79: 126 L3 公 KŌ, ōyake public, fair
Hiragana and Katakana and Their Source Characters<br />
A from A from<br />
I from I from<br />
U from U from<br />
E from E from<br />
O from O from<br />
KA <br />
from KA <br />
from<br />
KI from KI from<br />
KU <br />
from KU <br />
from<br />
KE <br />
from KE <br />
from<br />
KO <br />
from KO <br />
from<br />
SA <br />
from SA <br />
from<br />
SHI from<br />
SHI from<br />
SU <br />
from SU <br />
from<br />
SE from SE from<br />
30
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