The Japanese Writing SystemModern Japanese uses a combination of:
Chinese books were first brought to Japan between the 3rd and 5th centuries A.D. Subsequently, the Japanese borrowed the Chinese writing system in its entirety by adopting Classical Chinese as the official written language. It was not long, however, before the Chinese script (with some adaptive modifications) was being used to write Japanese. The Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters) in A.D. 712 wrote Japanese words and endings with Chinese characters, mainly by using characters for their phonetic value. This early system was a rather clumsy workaround and eventually certain characters were simplified for specifically phonetic purposes, resulting in the kana syllabaries. The writing system underwent more than a few changes over the next thousand odd years, finally reaching something like its present form following a 19th century movement to 'unify speech and writing'. This system was subject to further simplification and reform after the Second World War. In the modern language, Chinese characters (kanji) are used to write the major content words -- words with semantic content such as verbs, nouns, and adjectives. Hiragana is used to write grammatical markers and endings. Foreign words are written in katakana. However, the system is rather more complex than this suggests. The best way to grasp the Japanese writing system is to see it as the outcome of a struggle to adapt Chinese characters to the writing of a completely different language, involving many makeshift strategies and compromises. The following is a sample of Japanese writing, a news story about an attempt to extort money out of a former national volleyball coach. Note the use of a mixture of Chinese characters, hiragana, and katakana. Numerals are international style (Arabic numerals).
An obvious and frequently-asked question is: Are the characters used in Japan the same as those used in China? The short answer is yes. Chinese characters used by the Japanese derive from the same tradition as the Chinese, namely, the characters of the Classical language. In the same way that almost any English word is fair game for adoption into Japanese, virtually the entire corpus of traditional Chinese characters can theoretically be used. However, anyone familiar with the two languages quickly realises that there are differences in the characters used. The main ones are:
READINGS: When the Japanese borrowed Chinese characters, the aspect that was to have the most far-reaching consequence was the fact that they were used for both:
The on reading is fairly easy to grasp: it's used for that large segment
of the Japanese vocabulary that was originally borrowed from Chinese.
The on reading thus approximates to the original Chinese pronunciation,
e.g., the character Because
the on readings
roughly follow the Chinese pronunciation, the form of many characters gives
a hint of the pronunciation, just as they do in Chinese. For instance, the
following characters that have
Multiple on readings: One feature of the on readings is that many characters have more
than one possible on reading. For instance, the character
The Kan readings were eventually adopted as the officially correct version and were supposed to supersede the Go readings, but it didn't quite happen that way. Many Go readings continued in use, especially in Buddhist contexts. Confusing as the existence of two readings may be, the day might yet have been saved if only the language had kept the two systems separate, i.e., by constructing individual words solely Go readings or solely with Kan readings. Again, it didn't happen that way: there are plenty of words in Japanese where one character is read in Go and the second character character is read in Kan. Needless to say, figuring out the correct reading can sometimes be a problem! As in Chinese, characters form 'compound words', e.g.,
What truly complicates the Japanese writing system is the use of Chinese characters
to write native Japanese words. This custom originally arose as a makeshift
way of reading and understanding Chinese texts. Each character was glossed
with the Japanese word closest in meaning. Eventually a system grew up whereby
Chinese characters were assigned specific Japanese readings, known as kun
readings. For instance, it became customary for the character The assignment of Japanese readings to Chinese characters gave rise to several problems. 1) Phonetic element is useless: Because the kun reading is native
Japanese, the phonetic element of the character is useless for guessing the
pronunciation. To take the earlier example using the phonetic element
2) Lack of fit between vocabularies: Since there is not a perfect fit between the Chinese and Japanese vocabularies, complications arose in assigning kun readings. In some cases a single Japanese word corresponded to several different Chinese words. For instance, the Japanese verb noboru meaning 'climb' or 'go up', corresponded to three Chinese words, as shown in this table:
The Japanese word noboru is now written with
three different characters. For the general meaning 'go up', it's written The reverse also occurred. Where a single Chinese word corresponded to more
than one Japanese word, the same character was used for several different Japanese
words. For instance, the Chinese word
In the case of verbs with multiple readings, hiragana sometimes provides
a clue to pronunciation, e.g., agaru is written
The divide in the Japanese vocabulary The division between on and kun readings represents an important divide in the Japanese vocabulary. Since words read with kun readings are native Japanese words, they tend to be related to everyday life. (Alternatively, they may be associated with older, more poetic Japanese words). On readings are generally used for more formal, official, or scientific vocabulary. The difference is similar to that found in English between everyday words such as 'fire', and words using Latin or Greek roots such as 'ignite' (Latin ignis = 'fire') or 'pyrotechnics' (Greek pur = 'fire'). Taking the character
The on reading ka is generally found in more technical, formal, academic, or official words like:
On readings usually form a part of compound words as only a relatively small number can stand as single words in Japanese. Once the principle of on readings and kun readings is understood, the system falls into place and it is much easier to decide which reading is required. However, there are still many complications that must be overcome in order to read Japanese. Despite the neat division between the two segments of the vocabulary, in practice it has been impossible to keep them completely apart. There has been some interesting crossover between on readings and kun readings. a) Words that have been converted from kun to on
b) Mixtures of on and kun
Other complicatons There are several practices in the writing system that complicate matters even further.
The result of the way that the Japanese have borrowed and applied Chinese characters to their own language has given rise to considerable complexity and a heavy burden for the learner of Japanese. After all this complexity, the saving grace of Japanese, at least in comparison with Chinese, is that it has a way of writing the pronunciation of words, the kana syllabaries. As luck would have it, the Japanese have decided to use not one, but two different syllabaries to write their language. The kana (hiragana and katakana) first developed because Chinese characters could not properly represent the grammatical elements and verb endings of Japanese. Originally certain Chinese characters were used to write these elements phonetically. These characters were simplified over time to yield the hiragana and katakana syllabaries. As the name 'syllabary' suggests, the syllabaries are used to represent combinations of consonants and vowels, not single sounds. Except for certain details such as the method of lengthening vowels, hiragana and katakana are completely parallel alphabets. At the outset, the kana and the pronunciation of the language were fairly much in sync, but they inevitably drifted apart over time. By the 19th century, kana usage had become
confused due to changes in pronunciation.
A concerted attempt was made to reconstruct, restore, and enforce the original
usage of ancient times, which was called the 'historical kana usage'.
While this may have been correct in historical terms it was divorced from the modern pronunciation and placed a burden
on modern-day learners, resulting in calls
for reform. After World War II, kana usage
was reformed to reflect the modern pronunciation. Two redundant letters,
Hiragana: The hiragana script (written
Children first learn to read and write in hiragana. Katakana: The katakana script (written
Furigana/rubi: With the heavy use of
characters in the past, it was common for printed texts to indicate the pronunciation
in small hiragana or katakana above the Chinese character, e.g.,
The full table of hiragana and katakana symbols can be found at Hiragana & Katakana. More hiragana and katakana tables can be found in the Links. Could Kanji be replaced with Kana? With such a complicated system of Chinese characters, the question naturally arises: Can't the two kana syllabaries, hiragana and katakana, be used in place of the characters? Theoretically the answer is yes, but in fact the syllabaries still play only a supplementary role in the Japanese script, much as they have from the start. Aside from the weight of tradition and custom, there are several good reasons why hiragana have failed to replace the characters.
The makeshift nature of the Japanese writing system means that the same word may be written in different ways. While this can be a source of great confusion, it can also offer writers a unique stylistic choice. The same word may be written in either Chinese characters, hiragana, katakana, or Roman letters depending on the situation, the type of text, and the writer's preference. A few examples of the variation that can be found:
An idea of the flexibility and variation that is possible with the Japanese writing system can be seen in this look at signs and advertising in Japanese. For more information on the Japanese writing system, see Links. See also the Chinese Writing System and the Vietnamese Writing System. |
).
There are currently 1,945 officially approved characters for use in the media,
etc, although quite a few more are actually in use.
zhao3
'look for' and 
ling4
'other' are relatively speaking fairly modern characters used to represent
post-Classical vocabulary. They are not normally used in Japanese. 
komu 'to be packed'
komeru
'to put into, be included', 'to load', 'concentrate on'
hataraku 'work'
roodoo
'labour'
in
Chinese and 
in Japanese
(the Chinese contains an extra stroke). 
ran
'soft, rot, fester, messy' with the approved character 
ran 'be confused, in chaos' results in some
loss of meaning. 'Rotten and festering' is more accurate than 'rotten
and confused'.
zou3
meant 'to run' in Classical Chinese. It still does in Japanese as 
hashiru, but the meaning has changed to 'to
go' in modern Mandarin. From the Chinese point of view, the Japanese usage
has a quaint Classical feel to it. 
'fire'
has the on reading ka, based on
the Chinese pronunciation of the time (the modern Mandarin pronunciation
is huo3).
The character 
'mountain' has the on reading san, zan
or sen, pronounced shan1
in modern Mandarin Chinese. Of course, the on readings are now rather
different from the modern Chinese pronunciation. This is due to various reasons
-- borrowing from different dialects, adaptation of the pronunciation to fit
the Japanese language, and changes on both sides over the past millennium.
But the similarities are quite obvious once allowances are made, and linguists
have even used the Japanese pronunciation as an aid in reconstructing the ancient
Chinese pronunciation. 
as
a phonetic all have similar on readings:
'sun,
day' (ri4 in
Chinese) has two on readings: nichi and jitsu.
It is read nichi in 
'spirit,
essence'
'beauty'
'campaign,
service, role'
'west'
'build'
'large'
'sutra, pass through' 
shang4
noboru
sheng1
noboru
deng1
noboru
is hiragana
indicating the verbal ending -ru). In the meaning
'rise (into the sky)', it's written 
shang4
('above, on top of, go up') corresponded in meaning to ue
meaning 'above' or 'on top of', kami meaning 'above'
'higher', agaru meaning to 'go up', ageru
meaning 'to give' (respectfully), and noboru 'to
go up'. As a result, 
ue
kami
agaru
agaru 
ageru
ageru 
hi-bachi 
hi-dane
hi-bana
karyoku
kasoo
senka
shukka
hi ga deru ('a fire breaks out'). In Chinese,
rippuku
is another word that is not found at all in Chinese. It was created from the
Japanese expression 
hara ga tatsu (literally, 'abdomen stands up')
'to get angry'.
henji, which was originally the Japanese word
kaerigoto, a word that no longer exists. The
compound 
juu-bako
te-hon
'town' in
place names can be read either choo (on reading)
or machi (kun reading), depending on
the locality. 
('water' + 'bird' = 'waterfowl') is normally read with the kun reading
mizu-dori but can also be read with the on
reading suichoo. In many cases it is simply
a matter of knowing the word, knowing how it's pronounced, and knowing how
it's written -- pretty much like learning English spelling. 
(purple + sun/yang
+ flower) is a Chinese word meaning 'hydrangea'. The hydrangea is known
as ajisai
in Japanese. To write ajisai,
Japanese takes over the compound 
ryuukoo,
meaning 'popular/widespread', can be used to write
the purely Japanese verb hayaru
'to be popular, widespread' -- not forgetting the hiragana verb ending:
).
'lack + extend' is
quite irregularly read as akubi 'to yawn'. Place
names and personal names are a particularly rich source of idiosyncratic
readings (for instance, see 
wi
and 
we
in their hiragana form, were abolished.
hi-ra-ga-na
in hiragana) is a cursive script still mostly used for: 
ga,
no,
and 
ha
(the latter being pronounced wa).
ta, 
masu, etc. Owing to the nature of the syllabary,
part of the root is often included in the ending. For instance, the verb 'to
write' is kaku, which changes form as kakimasu,
kakeba etc. The root is obviously kak-,
but the kana includes the final k- sound
in the ending, not the root: 
ka-ku, 
ka-kimasu, etc.
kono 'this'.
ringo 'apple' is normally written in hiragana
as 
. 
ka-ta-ka-na
in katakana) is a blocky-looking syllabary now mainly used for
writing: 
depaato 'department store', 
kurejitto kaado 'credit card', 
kontenaa '(freight) container', etc. In the past
few decades, Japanese has subjected itself to a massive influx of foreign
words, resulting in a profusion of katakana. 
zou 'elephant', 
tobi 'kite', even 
hito 'person' = 'homo sapiens'. All these words
are usually written in Chinese characters for non-scientific use. 
gata gata 'rattling/rickety sound'. (These words are similar to English
'thud', 'splash', and 'biff', but have a much wider range of application in
Japanese than English).
noboru.
This practice, known as furigana or rubi, is no longer so
common but is still found in comics, books written for children, and academic
or other texts using difficult characters.
in characters and 
in hiragana.
. In this
case, 
Tookyoo
provides a visual focus while the particle 
made represents the attached grammatical element.
This effect is lost if hiragana only are used: 
.
hooka has a number of meanings, which become
clear when written in characters: 
'arson', 
'be released
from class', 
'cannon
fire', etc. 
kuruma
'car' and 
jidoosha
'automobile' are completely unrelated words in hiragana, but when
written in characters as 
and 
respectively,
the character 
.
It then becomes immediately clear that:
is from 
is
from 
Yokohama. This features a switch from
the kun reading hama to the on reading hin.
aru 'to have, to exist' can be written 
or 
(both pronounced
aru, but meaning 'to have' and 'to exist' respectively).
The word 
kono. Hiragana is modern standard usage,
but with word processors, which make it easy to summon up difficult characters,
the character versions are making something of a comeback. Men are more
likely to use characters in such cases. Heavy use of hiragana traditionally
tends to be identified with women's writing. 
.
The noun mitsumori, meaning 'cost quotation',
may be written 
,
, or 
,
the latter being preferred for its brevity in the word 
mitsumori-sho '(written) cost quotation'. Correct
usage of hiragana after verbs has been subject to periodic changes
by the language and educational authorities. 
koohii, but where an old-fashioned, genteel
feeling is desired the old character rendition 
koohii is sometimes used. Of course, the English
spelling 'coffee' is also quite common in advertising and Japanese have
no hesitation in reading it as koohii (see 
or using English
spelling as 
. The
latter appears more business-like and international. 
(
) tsuke
'bill', 
(
)
boke 'idiot, stooge in stage act', 
(
) hage
'bald', and 
(
)
tsubo 'pressure point/acupuncture point'. This
frequently occurs with short two-syllable words, which appear 'punchier' written
in katakana.
,
ryuu or tatsu, meaning
'dragon' in the Oriental sense, and gives it the English reading 'dragon'
by merely adding the katakana for doragon
above the character: 
.
The beauty of this device is that familiar characters can be given completely
different readings, i.e., it's possible to write one thing and mean another.
It's also possible to use unfamiliar foreign words and explain their meaning
in Chinese characters. 