Japanese script reform
Encyclopedia
The Japanese script reform is the attempt to correlate standard spoken Japanese with the written word, which began during the Meiji period
. This issue is known in Japan
as the . The reforms led to the development of the modern Japanese written language, and explain the arguments for official policies used to determine the usage and teaching of kanji
rarely used in Japan.
usage and issuance of a list containing only a limited number of accepted kanji originated from the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers
during the Occupation of Japan, though a plan had already been put into place prior to the occupation.
In the 1900 spelling reforms, hentaigana
(old variant forms of kana) were eliminated, though historical kana orthography (dating to the Heian period
, a millennium before) was retained. A separate character for ん was also prescribed; previously it had been written as む ('mu') and ん was a hentaigana for both these sounds. A proposal to eliminate certain kanji from use was implemented in a number of regions and overseas territories in the 1920s, near the end of the Taishō period
.
In November, 1922, the , the precursor to the Japanese Language Council
, now the Japanese Language subdivision of the Agency for Cultural Affairs
, selected and approved a list of 1962 kanji characters for daily use. This group of characters formed the basis for the tōyō kanji
list, which eventually developed into the modern jōyō kanji
list. In December, 1923, the committee approved a set of reforms for kana usage; the prototype for the modern kana system.
In April, 1946, Naoya Shiga published an article in the magazine Kaizō
titled , which suggested that the Japanese language should be eradicated in favour of French
, which he considered to be the most beautiful language in the world. On 12 November, the Yomiuri Shimbun
newspaper published an editorial concerning the abolition of kanji, and on 31 March, the first American Education Delegation arrived in Japan at the invitation of the SCAP
and issued its first report. The report pointed out the difficulties concerning kanji use, and advocated the use of rōmaji
, which they considered more convenient. As a result, the gradual abolition of kanji became official policy for the SCAP, and the tōyō kanji list and modern kana usage proposals were drawn up in accordance with this policy.
list, containing 1850 characters, was published by the cabinet on 16 November 1946 with the intention of completely abolishing the use of kanji in the future. The list reduced the number of kanji deemed appropriate for daily use, and categorized certain kanji for specific use in official publications and documents.
Prior to this reform, an attempt had been made to simplify several complex characters, but was not conducted with a systematic simplification of elements and radical
s the way China would develop its simplified writing system
a decade later. In Japan, changes were only made to complex characters that needed to be abbreviated.
Another separate attempt was made to limit the number of kanji readings, but the first list proved much too restrictive. For instance, the character had its readings limited to gyo and uo when the most common reading, sakana, was not officially recognized by the list. These shortcomings were acknowledged in the revised list of tōyō kanji, published on 28 June 1972.
On 5 July 1956, the Japanese Language Council announced a list of substitute characters for words that contained characters not on the official list in an effort to ease the implementation of tōyō kanji. This use of alternative, common kanji in place of rarer ones was called .
Different spellings for words were unified using characters from the tōyō kanji list. The list below shows some examples, with the non-tōyō kanji placed in brackets.
chūmon (order, request) iseki (historic ruins) kōsei (rebirth, originally read sosei, and may be written as 蘇生 to reflect the original reading) chie (wisdom) ryakudatsu (pillage, plunder) bōgai (jamming, interference) ikō (intention, idea) kōwa (reconciliation, peace) kakutō (fighting) shokan (letter, epistle)
Jargon and other specialized words that could be written in more than one way were generally written using characters from the list. kokkaku (skeletal structure) kikei (birth defect)
Other words that used kanji that were not included in the list were given phonetic substitutes. bōgyo (defence) sendō (abet, agitate) eichi (wisdom) konkō (mix together) gekikō (excited, enraged)
For kanji compounds with characters that could not be reasonably substituted, the recommendation was to write the "missing" kanji in kana instead, a practice known as . hifu (skin) tanpakushitsu (protein)
However, the recent prevalence of computers has made it easier for Japanese speakers to identify and use rarer characters, and the idea of having a list of approved characters has come under reconsideration. The Japanese media has increasingly used non-approved kanji with furigana
to aid the reader in place of mazegaki.
(education kanji).
In the same year, Article 50 of the family register
law made it illegal to name a child using characters not on the official list. When this law first came into effect, the Ministry of Justice
declared that all newborn babies must be registered in the koseki
(the Japanese family registry) with a name that used only hiragana
, katakana
or tōyō kanji. However, in 1951, an additional 92 characters were approved by the government as jinmeiyō kanji
; kanji acceptable for use in names. This list was modified in 1997 to increase to a total of 285 characters. At the time, eight characters from the original jinmeiyō kanji list were added to the jōyō kanji
(daily use) list, and were removed from the group of jinmeiyō kanji.
On 27 September 2004, another 488 kanji were approved for use in names, partly as a result of the ruling by the Sapporo High Court that it was unacceptable for so many common characters to be excluded from use in names simply because they were not part of the official list. 578 characters were initially added, though some characters unsuitable for names such as 怨 (grudge, resent), 痔 (haemorrhoids) and 屍 (corpse) were removed as a result of public feedback.
The following year, Japanese Language Council member Tomizō Yoshida argued that the council should base their reforms on standardising the current writing system using a mixture of kanji
and kana
, and in 1965, Morito Tatsuo, the then chairman of the council, announced that the complete abolition of kanji was now inconceivable and that Yoshida's suggestion would become official policy.
underwent official reform to reflect modern pronunciation as . In addition, two kana, ゐ/ヰ wi and ゑ/ヱ we, were officially declared obsolete, although by this time they had fallen out of regular use for centuries.
Some reformers wished to eliminate kanji altogether, and have a phonetic written language only using kana, but this was decided against, and further reforms were halted.
Modern kana usage still has one or two incongruities, as reform was halted at an intermediate stage. On 1 July 1985, the government confirmed that no further reforms would be made in the near future.
list, consisting of 1945 characters, was published by the Japanese government in 1981 to serve as a replacement for the tōyō kanji
list. This newer list was based on the older tōyō kanji list, though jōyō kanji was more of a guide to kanji usage while tōyō kanji was created to gradually eliminate kanji usage.
Around the same time, the Japanese Industrial Standards Committee
(JIS) also attempted to create a standardised kanji character set for use in computing
and word processing
, and to assign a unique character code to each kanji for data processing. This character set was, like the jōyō kanji, merely a subset of the thousands of documented kanji, and became known colloquially as the JIS kanji set. The character set has undergone several revisions since its inception. The first of these, officially known as JIS C 6226
, or more commonly as the old JIS kanji set, was published in 1978 and contained 6802 characters. After the creation of the jōyō kanji list in 1983, the old set was expanded to contain 6877 characters, including some non-kanji characters. This is known as the new JIS kanji set, and was designated as JIS X 0208
in 1987.
Approximately 200 characters were changed from their traditional form to their simplified form in the change from the old JIS to the new JIS set, meaning that word documents written on computers using the old character set would not display the same characters when displayed on a computer that used the new character set.
The JIS character set makes no distinction between the forms of characters, so it is not possible to distinguish between traditional and simplified forms. However, some characters, such as 剣, 劒, and 劍, are distinguished within the character set, despite being variations of the same character.
The preface to the Japanese Language Council internal report on the jōyō kanji states that the council's decision on the forms of characters not on the approved list is pending, and will await research from each field. The new JIS character set extends kanji simplification
to gaiji, creating a discrepancy between the standard forms of characters used in literature and materials produced on a computer or word processor. There is pressure for the Japanese publishing industry to adopt the new JIS character set abbreviations, and the resulting variation in gaiji led the Japanese Language Council, in their final report in December 2000, to produce a list of standard forms for many of these kanji to be used as a guideline. This list is called the in Japan.
This list was compiled by researching the various gaiji forms used in printed materials, and 1022 major characters were given standard forms to be used in print type face. 22 of these characters were simplified common forms, and the abbreviated forms of three radical
s were acknowledged as permissible alternatives for these characters. However, the general policy of the list was to use traditional forms for all gaiji.
Though newspaper publishers had been firm advocates for reducing the number of kanji, the release of the gaiji list forced them to reduce mazegaki in newspaper print. Subsequent issues of the tended to increase the number of permissible characters, so that former mazegaki words could be written as kanji (for example, the use of "拉致" in place of "ら致" or "危惧" in place of "危ぐ"). As newspapers began to use computerised typesetting, some newspapers reintroduced ruby character
s to indicate the reading of uncommon kanji. Though not a unified movement, there was a general trend towards increased kanji use. Other mass media organizations followed suit, and the also reduced the amount of mazegaki used.
There were substantial discrepancies between the gaiji list and JIS forms, but these discrepancies were corrected in 2004 with the release of JIS X 0213
, which brought the JIS in line with the Japanese Language Council. The changes in jinmeiyō kanji
made by the Ministry of Justice
during the same year also conformed to this standard printed form, with 芦 being an exception. Computers have also moved towards a standard form following the printed character forms. However, JIS X 0213 subsumes personal place names and other proper nouns that were excluded from the gaiji list, so confusion may still result for characters like 辻, where the character form differs between the printed standard and naming standard.
Jōyō kanji
and jinmeiyō kanji
(list as of 2000) were not included on the gaiji list, so the standards for those characters are the forms used in the jinmeiyō kanji list. Similarly, 曙 and 蓮, which were added to the jinmeiyō kanji list in 1990, remain the standards forms for the same reason, even though traditional forms exist for those characters (a dot in the middle of 者 for 曙, and a double-dotted radical for 蓮). These kanji remained unchanged in the alterations made to the list in 2004. On the other hand, the characters 堵 and 逢, which were added to the jinmeiyō kanji list in 2004, do have a standard printed form with a dot in the middle of 者 and two dots on the radical, and were amended accordingly in JIS X 0213.
. The use of kanji has been criticised for various reasons, the main criticisms being:
These criticisms led to arguments that reduction or eradication of kanji was a matter of national interest. The idea of abolishing kanji is often referenced to Maejima Hisoka
's report titled , which was submitted to the shogun
Tokugawa Yoshinobu
in 1866. The report argued that kanji should be abolished because the process of learning kanji was inefficient; however, in recent years the existence of this report has come into question, and further investigation was made into the subject in a graduation thesis for the department of literary history at Risshō University
in 1999. Other advocates of kanji reform include the following:
The romaji issue is still occasionally pushed by fringe writers, for example the 2011 book by Katsuhiko Tanaka (田中克彦). However, without exception all of the writers above, including the recent book by Tanaka, are written entirely in unreformed kanji.
). Other words commonly written as mazegaki include 改ざん, 破たん, 隠ぺい, 漏えい, 覚せい剤, and 団らん where the traditional forms are 改竄, 破綻, 隠蔽, 漏洩, 覚醒剤, and 団欒 respectively. Note that in some cases the unused kanji is very complicated (欒 has 23 strokes), while in other cases the character may be relatively simple but not on the official list (e.g. 洩 has only 9 strokes).
Mazegaki is not enforced and is rarely used in literature, where traditional forms are often used, although it is common in media outlets such as newspapers and television broadcasts, since non-Jōyō kanji are not supposed to be used in these contexts. In extreme cases, jōyō kanji
may be written in this way in television programmes or manga aimed at younger children or language learners – for example 友達 (tomodachi "friend") may be written as 友だち. Mazegaki may also be used in signs, possibly as katakana – for example, 皮膚科 (hifuka dermatologist) may be written as 皮フ科 to improve legibility from a distance.
At the time of the introduction of the tōyō kanji list, the use of ruby character
s, also known as furigana
, led to high printing costs for newspaper companies due to difficulties in typesetting, and mazegaki eliminated the need for furigana. The resulting reduction in printing costs gave the restriction or abolition of kanji serious economic advantages for newspaper companies, and they became heavily involved in decisions made by the Japanese Language Council.
or performing a grammatical function (inflection or particles).
As they are phonetic substitutions, one of the problems with using mazegaki and kakikae is that the original meaning of the word is not clear from the characters. Kanji have both sound and meaning, and most compounds are created by combining both (ateji
use only sound, however). For example, the 破 of 破たん hatan means 'rip', but the たん is kana tan and does not carry any meaning.
Although there are some examples where kakikae uses a simpler character with a similar or related meaning and is generally not criticized, for the most part the substitutions have been purely phonetic and the practices of mazegaki and kakikae have been criticised for legitimising sloppy Japanese and eroding part of Japanese culture.
announced that the fonts Meiryo
, MS Gothic, and MS Mincho in the Windows Vista operating system would comply with JIS X 0213:2004. Though this removed incompatibilities with the accepted gaiji forms in the Windows environment, it did raise concerns that the characters would be displayed differently depending on the version of Windows system used, re-creating the problems that occurred in the shift from the old to new JIS character set. Microsoft allayed these fears by announcing that the standard Japanese fonts on Vista would be OpenType
compatible, and old character forms could also be used by converting between variant forms. In actuality, the Adobe Systems
applications InDesign
, Illustrator
and the JustSystems
application Ichitaro
allow conversion of variant forms in software that have full support for OpenType. However, there are very few other applications released with Windows Vista that support OpenType, and even Microsoft's own Office 2007
does not support conversion of variant kanji forms.
Meiji period
The , also known as the Meiji era, is a Japanese era which extended from September 1868 through July 1912. This period represents the first half of the Empire of Japan.- Meiji Restoration and the emperor :...
. This issue is known in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
as the . The reforms led to the development of the modern Japanese written language, and explain the arguments for official policies used to determine the usage and teaching of kanji
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
rarely used in Japan.
Pre-War reforms
Japanese script has undergone reforms dating at least to 1900, and proposals to reform kanji usage were developed in the 1920s. There is however a general misconception that the attempt to abolish kanji through the modernization of kanaKana
Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...
usage and issuance of a list containing only a limited number of accepted kanji originated from the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers
Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers
Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers was the title held by General Douglas MacArthur during the Occupation of Japan following World War II...
during the Occupation of Japan, though a plan had already been put into place prior to the occupation.
In the 1900 spelling reforms, hentaigana
Hentaigana
are historical variants of modern standard hiragana. They are a legacy of man'yōgana, where many different kanji could be used to represent the same sound value. As the man'yōgana became simplified into cursive forms, multiple hiragana, including the hentaigana, was the result...
(old variant forms of kana) were eliminated, though historical kana orthography (dating to the Heian period
Heian period
The is the last division of classical Japanese history, running from 794 to 1185. The period is named after the capital city of Heian-kyō, or modern Kyōto. It is the period in Japanese history when Buddhism, Taoism and other Chinese influences were at their height...
, a millennium before) was retained. A separate character for ん was also prescribed; previously it had been written as む ('mu') and ん was a hentaigana for both these sounds. A proposal to eliminate certain kanji from use was implemented in a number of regions and overseas territories in the 1920s, near the end of the Taishō period
Taisho period
The , or Taishō era, is a period in the history of Japan dating from July 30, 1912 to December 25, 1926, coinciding with the reign of the Taishō Emperor. The health of the new emperor was weak, which prompted the shift in political power from the old oligarchic group of elder statesmen to the Diet...
.
In November, 1922, the , the precursor to the Japanese Language Council
Agency for Cultural Affairs
The is a special body of the Japanese Ministry of Education . It was set up in 1968 to promote Japanese arts and culture. As of April 2007, it is led by the Commissioner for Cultural Affairs, Tamotsu Aoki....
, now the Japanese Language subdivision of the Agency for Cultural Affairs
Agency for Cultural Affairs
The is a special body of the Japanese Ministry of Education . It was set up in 1968 to promote Japanese arts and culture. As of April 2007, it is led by the Commissioner for Cultural Affairs, Tamotsu Aoki....
, selected and approved a list of 1962 kanji characters for daily use. This group of characters formed the basis for the tōyō kanji
Toyo kanji
The tōyō kanji, also known as the Tōyō kanjihyō are the result of a reform of the Kanji characters of Chinese origin in the Japanese written language. They were the kanji declared "official" by the Japanese on November 16, 1946...
list, which eventually developed into the modern jōyō kanji
Joyo kanji
The is the guide to kanji characters announced officially by the Japanese Ministry of Education. Current jōyō kanji are those on a list of 2,136 characters issued in 2010...
list. In December, 1923, the committee approved a set of reforms for kana usage; the prototype for the modern kana system.
Reforms
The reforms made after the Second World War have had a particularly significant impact on accepted kanji usage in the modern Japanese language.In April, 1946, Naoya Shiga published an article in the magazine Kaizō
Kaizo (magazine)
Kaizō was a Japanese general-interest magazine that started publication during the Taishō period and printed many articles of socialist content...
titled , which suggested that the Japanese language should be eradicated in favour of French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
, which he considered to be the most beautiful language in the world. On 12 November, the Yomiuri Shimbun
Yomiuri Shimbun
The is a Japanese newspaper published in Tokyo, Osaka, Fukuoka, and other major Japanese cities. It is one of the five national newspapers in Japan; the other four are the Asahi Shimbun, the Mainichi Shimbun, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, and the Sankei Shimbun...
newspaper published an editorial concerning the abolition of kanji, and on 31 March, the first American Education Delegation arrived in Japan at the invitation of the SCAP
Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers
Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers was the title held by General Douglas MacArthur during the Occupation of Japan following World War II...
and issued its first report. The report pointed out the difficulties concerning kanji use, and advocated the use of rōmaji
Romanization of Japanese
The romanization of Japanese is the application of the Latin alphabet to write the Japanese language. This method of writing is known as , less strictly romaji, literally "Roman letters", sometimes incorrectly transliterated as romanji or rōmanji. There are several different romanization systems...
, which they considered more convenient. As a result, the gradual abolition of kanji became official policy for the SCAP, and the tōyō kanji list and modern kana usage proposals were drawn up in accordance with this policy.
Tōyō kanji
The tōyō kanjiToyo kanji
The tōyō kanji, also known as the Tōyō kanjihyō are the result of a reform of the Kanji characters of Chinese origin in the Japanese written language. They were the kanji declared "official" by the Japanese on November 16, 1946...
list, containing 1850 characters, was published by the cabinet on 16 November 1946 with the intention of completely abolishing the use of kanji in the future. The list reduced the number of kanji deemed appropriate for daily use, and categorized certain kanji for specific use in official publications and documents.
Prior to this reform, an attempt had been made to simplify several complex characters, but was not conducted with a systematic simplification of elements and radical
Radical (Chinese character)
A Chinese radical is a component of a Chinese character. The term may variously refer to the original semantic element of a character, or to any semantic element, or, loosely, to any element whatever its origin or purpose...
s the way China would develop its simplified writing system
Simplified Chinese character
Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters prescribed in the Xiandai Hanyu Tongyong Zibiao for use in Mainland China. Along with traditional Chinese characters, it is one of many standard character sets of the contemporary Chinese written language...
a decade later. In Japan, changes were only made to complex characters that needed to be abbreviated.
Another separate attempt was made to limit the number of kanji readings, but the first list proved much too restrictive. For instance, the character had its readings limited to gyo and uo when the most common reading, sakana, was not officially recognized by the list. These shortcomings were acknowledged in the revised list of tōyō kanji, published on 28 June 1972.
On 5 July 1956, the Japanese Language Council announced a list of substitute characters for words that contained characters not on the official list in an effort to ease the implementation of tōyō kanji. This use of alternative, common kanji in place of rarer ones was called .
Different spellings for words were unified using characters from the tōyō kanji list. The list below shows some examples, with the non-tōyō kanji placed in brackets.
chūmon (order, request) iseki (historic ruins) kōsei (rebirth, originally read sosei, and may be written as 蘇生 to reflect the original reading) chie (wisdom) ryakudatsu (pillage, plunder) bōgai (jamming, interference) ikō (intention, idea) kōwa (reconciliation, peace) kakutō (fighting) shokan (letter, epistle)
Jargon and other specialized words that could be written in more than one way were generally written using characters from the list. kokkaku (skeletal structure) kikei (birth defect)
Other words that used kanji that were not included in the list were given phonetic substitutes. bōgyo (defence) sendō (abet, agitate) eichi (wisdom) konkō (mix together) gekikō (excited, enraged)
For kanji compounds with characters that could not be reasonably substituted, the recommendation was to write the "missing" kanji in kana instead, a practice known as . hifu (skin) tanpakushitsu (protein)
However, the recent prevalence of computers has made it easier for Japanese speakers to identify and use rarer characters, and the idea of having a list of approved characters has come under reconsideration. The Japanese media has increasingly used non-approved kanji with furigana
Furigana
is a Japanese reading aid, consisting of smaller kana, or syllabic characters, printed next to a kanji or other character to indicate its pronunciation. In horizontal text, yokogaki, they are placed above the line of text, while in vertical text, tategaki, they are placed to the right of the line...
to aid the reader in place of mazegaki.
Kanji for names
On 16 February 1948, 881 of the tōyō kanji were designated to be taught during primary education, and became known as the kyōiku kanjiKyoiku kanji
, also known as is a list of 1,006 kanji and associated readings developed and maintained by the Japanese Ministry of Education that prescribes which kanji, and which readings of kanji, Japanese schoolchildren should learn for each year of primary school...
(education kanji).
In the same year, Article 50 of the family register
Family register
A family register is a registry used in many countries to track information of a genealogical or legal interest.Often, official recognition of certain events or status may only be granted when such event or status is registered in the...
law made it illegal to name a child using characters not on the official list. When this law first came into effect, the Ministry of Justice
Ministry of Justice (Japan)
The is one of Ministries of the Japanese government.-Meiji Constitution:The Ministry of Justice was established under the Constitution of the Empire of Japan in 1871 as the .-Constitution of Japan:...
declared that all newborn babies must be registered in the koseki
Koseki
A is a Japanese family registry. Japanese law requires all Japanese households to report births, acknowledgements of paternity, adoptions, disruptions of adoptions, deaths, marriages and divorces of Japanese citizens to their local authority, which compiles such records encompassing all Japanese...
(the Japanese family registry) with a name that used only hiragana
Hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
, katakana
Katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
or tōyō kanji. However, in 1951, an additional 92 characters were approved by the government as jinmeiyō kanji
Jinmeiyo kanji
The are a set of 861 Chinese characters known as the "name kanji" in English. They are a supplementary set of characters that can be legally used in registered personal names in Japan, despite not being in that country's set of "commonly used characters" . As a rule, registered personal names may...
; kanji acceptable for use in names. This list was modified in 1997 to increase to a total of 285 characters. At the time, eight characters from the original jinmeiyō kanji list were added to the jōyō kanji
Joyo kanji
The is the guide to kanji characters announced officially by the Japanese Ministry of Education. Current jōyō kanji are those on a list of 2,136 characters issued in 2010...
(daily use) list, and were removed from the group of jinmeiyō kanji.
On 27 September 2004, another 488 kanji were approved for use in names, partly as a result of the ruling by the Sapporo High Court that it was unacceptable for so many common characters to be excluded from use in names simply because they were not part of the official list. 578 characters were initially added, though some characters unsuitable for names such as 怨 (grudge, resent), 痔 (haemorrhoids) and 屍 (corpse) were removed as a result of public feedback.
Criticisms
The tōyō kanji list, which was created as a step towards the abolition of kanji, has undergone frequent criticism by scholars. In 1958, Tsuneari Fukuda wrote an article in the magazine Koe pointing out that it was impossible to restrict kanji use, and in 1961, several prominent anti-reformists walked out of the Japanese Language Council general meeting in protest of the dominance of the phoneticists, who were always re-elected to their positions on the council.The following year, Japanese Language Council member Tomizō Yoshida argued that the council should base their reforms on standardising the current writing system using a mixture of kanji
Kanji
Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...
and kana
Kana
Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...
, and in 1965, Morito Tatsuo, the then chairman of the council, announced that the complete abolition of kanji was now inconceivable and that Yoshida's suggestion would become official policy.
Modern kana usage
On 16 November 1946, historical kana usageHistorical kana usage
The , or , refers to the in general use until orthographic reforms after World War II; the current orthography was adopted by Cabinet order in 1946. By that point the historical orthography was no longer in accord with Japanese pronunciation...
underwent official reform to reflect modern pronunciation as . In addition, two kana, ゐ/ヰ wi and ゑ/ヱ we, were officially declared obsolete, although by this time they had fallen out of regular use for centuries.
Some reformers wished to eliminate kanji altogether, and have a phonetic written language only using kana, but this was decided against, and further reforms were halted.
Modern kana usage still has one or two incongruities, as reform was halted at an intermediate stage. On 1 July 1985, the government confirmed that no further reforms would be made in the near future.
- Three particlesJapanese particlesJapanese particles, or , are suffixes or short words in Japanese grammar that immediately follow the modified noun, verb, adjective, or sentence. Their grammatical range can indicate various meanings and functions, such as speaker affect and assertiveness....
maintain their historical kana form: the topic marker wa is written ha instead of , the direction marker e is written he instead of and the object marker o is written with the otherwise archaic kana wo instead of . - The sounds ji and zu are usually written with the kana and respectively, with two exceptions. In compound words of Japanese origin where the second element normally begins chi or tsu and is voiced in the compoundRendakuis a phenomenon in Japanese morphophonology that governs the voicing of the initial consonant of the non-initial portion of a compound or prefixed word...
, the kana and are used instead. For example, hanaji (nose bleed) consists of 鼻 hana (nose) and 血 chi (blood). As chi is written using the kana , hanaji is written はなぢ, adding a dakutenDakuten, colloquially ten-ten , is a diacritic sign most often used in the Japanese kana syllabaries to indicate that the consonant of a syllable should be pronounced voiced. Handakuten , colloquially maru , is a diacritic used with the kana for syllables starting with h to indicate that they should...
to the original kana to indicate that it is voicedVoice (phonetics)Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds, with sounds described as either voiceless or voiced. The term, however, is used to refer to two separate concepts. Voicing can refer to the articulatory process in which the vocal cords vibrate...
. This is a form of morpho-phonemic orthography, to indicate that it comes from voicing a つ rather than voicing a す or being an unrelated ず. - ぢ and づ are also used in words of Japanese origin if the preceding kana is the unvoiced form of the same character. For example, the words and are written in this manner, though the correct spelling of chijimi (the Japanese word for the Korean dish buchimgae) is チジミ, as opposed to チヂミ, as the word is not native to the language. and are never used for words of Chinese origin. The character 通 is usually read tsū, but in compounds it may be read as zū (for instance, yūzū (flexibility) is written ) with no regard to its usual pronunciation.
Jōyō kanji and the JIS
The jōyō kanjiJoyo kanji
The is the guide to kanji characters announced officially by the Japanese Ministry of Education. Current jōyō kanji are those on a list of 2,136 characters issued in 2010...
list, consisting of 1945 characters, was published by the Japanese government in 1981 to serve as a replacement for the tōyō kanji
Toyo kanji
The tōyō kanji, also known as the Tōyō kanjihyō are the result of a reform of the Kanji characters of Chinese origin in the Japanese written language. They were the kanji declared "official" by the Japanese on November 16, 1946...
list. This newer list was based on the older tōyō kanji list, though jōyō kanji was more of a guide to kanji usage while tōyō kanji was created to gradually eliminate kanji usage.
Around the same time, the Japanese Industrial Standards Committee
Japanese Industrial Standards Committee
The is a standards organization and is the International Organization for Standardization member body for Japan. It is also a member of the International Electrotechnical Commission.The JISC establishes and maintains the Japanese Industrial Standards....
(JIS) also attempted to create a standardised kanji character set for use in computing
Computing
Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and improving computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology...
and word processing
Word processor
A word processor is a computer application used for the production of any sort of printable material....
, and to assign a unique character code to each kanji for data processing. This character set was, like the jōyō kanji, merely a subset of the thousands of documented kanji, and became known colloquially as the JIS kanji set. The character set has undergone several revisions since its inception. The first of these, officially known as JIS C 6226
JIS X 0208
JIS X 0208 is a 2-byte character set specified as a Japanese Industrial Standard, containing 6879 graphic characters suitable for writing text, place names, personal names, and so forth in the Japanese language. The official title of the current standard is...
, or more commonly as the old JIS kanji set, was published in 1978 and contained 6802 characters. After the creation of the jōyō kanji list in 1983, the old set was expanded to contain 6877 characters, including some non-kanji characters. This is known as the new JIS kanji set, and was designated as JIS X 0208
JIS X 0208
JIS X 0208 is a 2-byte character set specified as a Japanese Industrial Standard, containing 6879 graphic characters suitable for writing text, place names, personal names, and so forth in the Japanese language. The official title of the current standard is...
in 1987.
Approximately 200 characters were changed from their traditional form to their simplified form in the change from the old JIS to the new JIS set, meaning that word documents written on computers using the old character set would not display the same characters when displayed on a computer that used the new character set.
The JIS character set makes no distinction between the forms of characters, so it is not possible to distinguish between traditional and simplified forms. However, some characters, such as 剣, 劒, and 劍, are distinguished within the character set, despite being variations of the same character.
Gaiji
Increased use of kana to kanji conversion on word processors and computers during the mid-1980s brought drastic changes to the amount of Japanese written by hand. As a result, the use of kanji outside the jōyō kanji increased, reversing the prior trend of using fewer kanji. These characters were called gaiji (lit. "outside characters")The preface to the Japanese Language Council internal report on the jōyō kanji states that the council's decision on the forms of characters not on the approved list is pending, and will await research from each field. The new JIS character set extends kanji simplification
Extended shinjitai
is the extension of the shinjitai simplification method to : kanji not included in the jōyō kanji list. They are unofficial characters: the official forms of hyōgaiji are kyūjitai .-Simplified forms:...
to gaiji, creating a discrepancy between the standard forms of characters used in literature and materials produced on a computer or word processor. There is pressure for the Japanese publishing industry to adopt the new JIS character set abbreviations, and the resulting variation in gaiji led the Japanese Language Council, in their final report in December 2000, to produce a list of standard forms for many of these kanji to be used as a guideline. This list is called the in Japan.
This list was compiled by researching the various gaiji forms used in printed materials, and 1022 major characters were given standard forms to be used in print type face. 22 of these characters were simplified common forms, and the abbreviated forms of three radical
Radical (Chinese character)
A Chinese radical is a component of a Chinese character. The term may variously refer to the original semantic element of a character, or to any semantic element, or, loosely, to any element whatever its origin or purpose...
s were acknowledged as permissible alternatives for these characters. However, the general policy of the list was to use traditional forms for all gaiji.
Though newspaper publishers had been firm advocates for reducing the number of kanji, the release of the gaiji list forced them to reduce mazegaki in newspaper print. Subsequent issues of the tended to increase the number of permissible characters, so that former mazegaki words could be written as kanji (for example, the use of "拉致" in place of "ら致" or "危惧" in place of "危ぐ"). As newspapers began to use computerised typesetting, some newspapers reintroduced ruby character
Ruby character
are small, annotative glosses that can be placed above or to the right of a Chinese character when writing languages with logographic characters such as Chinese or Japanese to show the pronunciation...
s to indicate the reading of uncommon kanji. Though not a unified movement, there was a general trend towards increased kanji use. Other mass media organizations followed suit, and the also reduced the amount of mazegaki used.
There were substantial discrepancies between the gaiji list and JIS forms, but these discrepancies were corrected in 2004 with the release of JIS X 0213
JIS X 0213
JIS X 0213 is a Japanese Industrial Standard defining coded character sets for encoding the characters used in Japan. This standard extends JIS X 0208. The first version was published in 2000 and revised in 2004 . As well as adding a number of special characters, characters with diacritic marks,...
, which brought the JIS in line with the Japanese Language Council. The changes in jinmeiyō kanji
Jinmeiyo kanji
The are a set of 861 Chinese characters known as the "name kanji" in English. They are a supplementary set of characters that can be legally used in registered personal names in Japan, despite not being in that country's set of "commonly used characters" . As a rule, registered personal names may...
made by the Ministry of Justice
Ministry of Justice (Japan)
The is one of Ministries of the Japanese government.-Meiji Constitution:The Ministry of Justice was established under the Constitution of the Empire of Japan in 1871 as the .-Constitution of Japan:...
during the same year also conformed to this standard printed form, with 芦 being an exception. Computers have also moved towards a standard form following the printed character forms. However, JIS X 0213 subsumes personal place names and other proper nouns that were excluded from the gaiji list, so confusion may still result for characters like 辻, where the character form differs between the printed standard and naming standard.
Jōyō kanji
Joyo kanji
The is the guide to kanji characters announced officially by the Japanese Ministry of Education. Current jōyō kanji are those on a list of 2,136 characters issued in 2010...
and jinmeiyō kanji
Jinmeiyo kanji
The are a set of 861 Chinese characters known as the "name kanji" in English. They are a supplementary set of characters that can be legally used in registered personal names in Japan, despite not being in that country's set of "commonly used characters" . As a rule, registered personal names may...
(list as of 2000) were not included on the gaiji list, so the standards for those characters are the forms used in the jinmeiyō kanji list. Similarly, 曙 and 蓮, which were added to the jinmeiyō kanji list in 1990, remain the standards forms for the same reason, even though traditional forms exist for those characters (a dot in the middle of 者 for 曙, and a double-dotted radical for 蓮). These kanji remained unchanged in the alterations made to the list in 2004. On the other hand, the characters 堵 and 逢, which were added to the jinmeiyō kanji list in 2004, do have a standard printed form with a dot in the middle of 者 and two dots on the radical, and were amended accordingly in JIS X 0213.
Historical advocates for reform
The use of kanji as part of Japanese orthography has been a matter of debate since at least the end of the Edo periodEdo period
The , or , is a division of Japanese history which was ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family, running from 1603 to 1868. The political entity of this period was the Tokugawa shogunate....
. The use of kanji has been criticised for various reasons, the main criticisms being:
- There are too many kanji, and it is difficult to remember how to read and write them.
- The Latin alphabetLatin alphabetThe Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
is used internationally, and using kanji separates Japan from the rest of the world. This argument was used from a technical point of view after the appearance of the typewriterTypewriterA typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical device with keys that, when pressed, cause characters to be printed on a medium, usually paper. Typically one character is printed per keypress, and the machine prints the characters by making ink impressions of type elements similar to the pieces...
and computer. - Processing kanji is more time consuming on word processors and computers
- Text that uses a mixture of kanji and kana requires kanji conversion, which is inefficient in comparison to text that only uses kana or rōmaji.
These criticisms led to arguments that reduction or eradication of kanji was a matter of national interest. The idea of abolishing kanji is often referenced to Maejima Hisoka
Maejima Hisoka
Baron was a Japanese statesman, politician, and businessman in Meiji period Japan, who founded the Japanese postal service.- Early life :Maejima was born as Ueno Fusagorō, in the village of Shimoikebe, Echigo Province . In 1866 he was adopted into the Maejima family. He was sent to Edo to study...
's report titled , which was submitted to the shogun
Shogun
A was one of the hereditary military dictators of Japan from 1192 to 1867. In this period, the shoguns, or their shikken regents , were the de facto rulers of Japan though they were nominally appointed by the emperor...
Tokugawa Yoshinobu
Tokugawa Yoshinobu
was the 15th and last shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan. He was part of a movement which aimed to reform the aging shogunate, but was ultimately unsuccessful...
in 1866. The report argued that kanji should be abolished because the process of learning kanji was inefficient; however, in recent years the existence of this report has come into question, and further investigation was made into the subject in a graduation thesis for the department of literary history at Risshō University
Rissho University
', one of the oldest universities in Japan, was founded in 1580, when a seminary was established as a learning center for young monks of the Nichiren shu....
in 1999. Other advocates of kanji reform include the following:
- Kamo no MabuchiKamo no Mabuchiwas a Japanese poet and philologist of the Edo period.Mabuchi conducted research into the spirit of ancient Japan through his studies of the Man'yōshū and other works of ancient literature...
,
- Critical of the number of kanji, and argued that kana was more convenient because they were phonetic characters like the alphabet. Notes that a FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
dictionary was written using only 50 characters, and that DutchDutch languageDutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
uses only 25 characters.- Motoori NorinagaMotoori Norinagawas a Japanese scholar of Kokugaku active during the Edo period. He is probably the best known and most prominent of all scholars in this tradition.-Life:...
, - Fukuzawa YukichiFukuzawa Yukichiwas a Japanese author, writer, teacher, translator, entrepreneur and political theorist who founded Keio University. His ideas about government and social institutions made a lasting impression on a rapidly changing Japan during the Meiji Era...
, (1873) - Maejima HisokaMaejima HisokaBaron was a Japanese statesman, politician, and businessman in Meiji period Japan, who founded the Japanese postal service.- Early life :Maejima was born as Ueno Fusagorō, in the village of Shimoikebe, Echigo Province . In 1866 he was adopted into the Maejima family. He was sent to Edo to study...
, (1866) - Nishi AmaneNishi Amanewas a philosopher in Meiji period Japan who helped introduce Western philosophy into mainstream Japanese education.-Early life:Nishi was born in Tsuwano Domain of Iwami Province as the son of a samurai physician who practiced Chinese medicine...
, (advocating the use of rōmaji) - Suematsu KenchōSuematsu KenchoViscount was a Japanese politician, intellectual and author, who lived in the Meiji and Taishō periods. Apart from his activity in the Japanese government, he also wrote several important works on Japan in English...
, (1886) - Ueda Kazutoshi
- Mori ArinoriMori ArinoriViscount was a Meiji period Japanese statesman, diplomat and founder of Japan's modern educational system.-Early life:Mori was born in the Satsuma domain from a samurai family, and educated in the Kaisenjo School for Western Learning run by the Satsuma domain...
, (Advocating the use of English) - Nanbu Yoshikazu (Advocated the use of rōmaji)
- Baba Tatsuo,
- Shiga NaoyaShiga Naoyawas a Japanese novelist and short story writer active during the Taishō and Showa periods of Japan.-Early life:Shiga was born in Ishinomaki city, Miyagi prefecture. His father, the son of a samurai, was a banker. The family moved to Tokyo when Shiga was three, to live with his grandparents, who...
, (Advocating the use of French) (Kaizō magazine, April, 1946)
- Motoori Norinaga
The romaji issue is still occasionally pushed by fringe writers, for example the 2011 book by Katsuhiko Tanaka (田中克彦). However, without exception all of the writers above, including the recent book by Tanaka, are written entirely in unreformed kanji.
Character-Related Issue
There is a vocal opinion to include a character 碍 under the Jōyō Kanji list in respect to promote the "more positive" word for handicapped person, 障碍者. It is because of the current word for the handicapped, 障害者, has a character 害, which has a secondary derogatory meaning of harm or evil influence.Mazegaki
The current issue of mazegaki, mixing kanji and kana to write a single word, originated with the modern reforms, particularly the introduction of the tōyō kanji list. Though the intention was to have words requiring characters that were not included on the list to be substituted with a suitable synonym, in reality, the rule was circumvented by writing these kanji in kana and making mazegaki commonplace. One of the most commonly seen examples is 宝くじ (takara-kuji lottery), which is traditionally written 宝籤. Foods commonly written either just in kanji or in mazegaki include 醤油／しょう油 (shōyu soya sauce) and 味噌 (misoMiso
is a traditional Japanese seasoning produced by fermenting rice, barley and/or soybeans, with salt and the fungus , the most typical miso being made with soy. The result is a thick paste used for sauces and spreads, pickling vegetables or meats, and mixing with dashi soup stock to serve as miso...
). Other words commonly written as mazegaki include 改ざん, 破たん, 隠ぺい, 漏えい, 覚せい剤, and 団らん where the traditional forms are 改竄, 破綻, 隠蔽, 漏洩, 覚醒剤, and 団欒 respectively. Note that in some cases the unused kanji is very complicated (欒 has 23 strokes), while in other cases the character may be relatively simple but not on the official list (e.g. 洩 has only 9 strokes).
Mazegaki is not enforced and is rarely used in literature, where traditional forms are often used, although it is common in media outlets such as newspapers and television broadcasts, since non-Jōyō kanji are not supposed to be used in these contexts. In extreme cases, jōyō kanji
Joyo kanji
The is the guide to kanji characters announced officially by the Japanese Ministry of Education. Current jōyō kanji are those on a list of 2,136 characters issued in 2010...
may be written in this way in television programmes or manga aimed at younger children or language learners – for example 友達 (tomodachi "friend") may be written as 友だち. Mazegaki may also be used in signs, possibly as katakana – for example, 皮膚科 (hifuka dermatologist) may be written as 皮フ科 to improve legibility from a distance.
At the time of the introduction of the tōyō kanji list, the use of ruby character
Ruby character
are small, annotative glosses that can be placed above or to the right of a Chinese character when writing languages with logographic characters such as Chinese or Japanese to show the pronunciation...
s, also known as furigana
Furigana
is a Japanese reading aid, consisting of smaller kana, or syllabic characters, printed next to a kanji or other character to indicate its pronunciation. In horizontal text, yokogaki, they are placed above the line of text, while in vertical text, tategaki, they are placed to the right of the line...
, led to high printing costs for newspaper companies due to difficulties in typesetting, and mazegaki eliminated the need for furigana. The resulting reduction in printing costs gave the restriction or abolition of kanji serious economic advantages for newspaper companies, and they became heavily involved in decisions made by the Japanese Language Council.
Kakikae
The use of common kanji in place of uncommon ones with the same reading is known as kakikae. A common example is 醤油 shōyu (soy sauce), which is often written as 正油, in addition to the mazegaki しょう油 mentioned above. A rarer example is the word 沈澱 chinden 'settlement (of sediment)', which is a combination of the characters 沈 'to sink' and 澱 'sediment', so the meaning is evident from the kanji. However, in modern writing the uncommon character 澱 has been substituted with 殿 'Mr, lord' (omitting the 3-stroke water radical on the left), a similar character with the same pronunciation but a different meaning, yielding the combination 沈殿, which could now be construed to mean 'sinking lord'.Controversy on mazegaki and kakikae
Advocates of the method explain that it makes content easier to read and will attract a wider audience, while critics argue that it is sloppy and erodes traditional culture. Further, mazegaki is criticized because in some respects it makes the text more difficult to read, as it is not clear that the hiragana are part of a content word, and not okuriganaOkurigana
are kana suffixes following kanji stems in Japanese written words. They serve two purposes: to inflect adjectives and verbs, and to disambiguate kanji with multiple readings...
or performing a grammatical function (inflection or particles).
As they are phonetic substitutions, one of the problems with using mazegaki and kakikae is that the original meaning of the word is not clear from the characters. Kanji have both sound and meaning, and most compounds are created by combining both (ateji
Ateji
In modern Japanese, primarily refers to kanji used phonetically to represent native or borrowed words, without regard to the meaning of the underlying characters. This is analogous to man'yōgana in pre-modern Japanese...
use only sound, however). For example, the 破 of 破たん hatan means 'rip', but the たん is kana tan and does not carry any meaning.
Although there are some examples where kakikae uses a simpler character with a similar or related meaning and is generally not criticized, for the most part the substitutions have been purely phonetic and the practices of mazegaki and kakikae have been criticised for legitimising sloppy Japanese and eroding part of Japanese culture.
Variant characters in Microsoft Windows
In 2005, MicrosoftMicrosoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
announced that the fonts Meiryo
Meiryo
is a Japanese sans-serif gothic typeface. Microsoft bundled Meiryo with Office Mac 2008 as part of the standard install, and it replaces MS Gothic as the default system font for Vista on Japanese systems....
, MS Gothic, and MS Mincho in the Windows Vista operating system would comply with JIS X 0213:2004. Though this removed incompatibilities with the accepted gaiji forms in the Windows environment, it did raise concerns that the characters would be displayed differently depending on the version of Windows system used, re-creating the problems that occurred in the shift from the old to new JIS character set. Microsoft allayed these fears by announcing that the standard Japanese fonts on Vista would be OpenType
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior...
compatible, and old character forms could also be used by converting between variant forms. In actuality, the Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
applications InDesign
Adobe InDesign
Adobe InDesign is a software application produced by Adobe Systems. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers and books. In conjunction with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite InDesign can publish content suitable for tablet devices...
, Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor developed and marketed by Adobe Systems. Illustrator is similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to its competitors, CorelDraw, Xara Designer Pro and Macromedia FreeHand....
and the JustSystems
JustSystems
is a major Japanese software development house. The company is also known as "JustSystem." Its main products are Ichitaro , a word processor, and Hanako, a graphics package that remains competitive in the Japanese market, despite strong and controversial competitive pressures from Microsoft in the...
application Ichitaro
Ichitaro
is a Japanese word processor produced by JustSystems, a Japanese software company. Ichitaro occupies the second share in Japanese word-processing software, behind Microsoft Word. It is one of the main products of the company. Its proprietary file extension is ".JTD"...
allow conversion of variant forms in software that have full support for OpenType. However, there are very few other applications released with Windows Vista that support OpenType, and even Microsoft's own Office 2007
Microsoft Office
Microsoft Office is a non-free commercial office suite of inter-related desktop applications, servers and services for the Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X operating systems, introduced by Microsoft in August 1, 1989. Initially a marketing term for a bundled set of applications, the first version of...
does not support conversion of variant kanji forms.
Related organisations
- Nippon-no-Rômazi-Sya (An organization promoting the use of rōmaji)
- The Society for the Romanization of the Japanese Alphabet
- Kanamojikai (An organization promoting the use of a kana-only script)