Kanji

Kanji (help·info) (漢字^?) are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana (ひらがな, 平仮名), katakana (カタカナ, 片仮名), Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet (known as the Romanization of Japanese, or "Rōmaji"). The Japanese term kanji (漢字) literally means "Han characters" or "Chinese characters" and is the same written term used in the Chinese language to refer to the character writing system.

This article contains Japanese text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of kanji and kana.

Kanji
Type Logographic
Spoken languages Old Japanese, Japanese
Parent systems
Sister systems Hanja, Zhuyin, Simplified Chinese, Chu Nom, Khitan script, Jurchen script
ISO 15924 Hani, Hans, Hant
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols.


Chinese characters

Scripts
Precursors · Oracle bone script
Bronze script · Seal script
Clerical script · Regular script
Semi-cursive script · Cursive script
Type styles
Imitation Song · Ming · Sans-serif


Properties

Strokes · Stroke order · Radicals
Classification · Section headers
Variants

Standards
Kangxi Dictionary (Kyūjitai)
Tōyō kanji · Jōyō kanji
Standard Form of National Characters
List of Forms of Frequently Used Characters
Xiàndài Hànyǔ Chángyòng Zìbiǎo
Reform
Japanese script reform
Simplified Chinese characters
Traditional Chinese characters
Simplified/traditional debate
Sinoxenic usage
Kanji · Hanja · Hán tự
Homographs
Literary and colloquial readings
Derivatives
Kokuji · Korean hanja · Chữ Nôm · Nü Shu
Kana (Man'yōgana) · Idu · Zetian characters
Sawndip · Khitan · Jurchen · Tangut

History

Chinese characters first came to Japan on articles imported from China. An early instance of such an import was a gold seal given by the emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty in 57 AD. It is not clear when Japanese people started to gain a command of Classical Chinese by themselves. The first Japanese documents were probably written by Chinese immigrants. For example, the diplomatic correspondence from King Bu of Wa to Emperor Shun of the Liu Song Dynasty in 478 has been praised for its skillful use of allusion. Later, groups of people called fuhito were organized under the monarch to read and write Classical Chinese. From the 6th century onwards, Chinese documents written in Japan tended to show linguistic interference from Japanese, suggesting the wide acceptance of Chinese characters in Japan.

The Japanese language itself had no written form at the time kanji was introduced. Originally texts were written in the Chinese language and would have been read as such. Over time, however, a system known as kanbun (漢文) emerged, which involved using Chinese text with diacritical marks to allow Japanese speakers to restructure and read Chinese sentences, by changing word order and adding particles and verb endings, in accordance with the rules of Japanese grammar.

Chinese characters also came to be used to write Japanese words, resulting in the modern kana syllabaries. A writing system called man'yōgana (used in the ancient poetry anthology Man'yōshū) evolved that used a number of Chinese characters for their sound, rather than for their meaning. Man'yōgana written in cursive style evolved into hiragana, a writing system that was accessible to women (who were denied higher education). Major works of Heian era literature by women were written in hiragana. Katakana emerged via a parallel path: monastery students simplified man'yōgana to a single constituent element. Thus the two other writing systems, hiragana and katakana, referred to collectively as kana, are actually descended from kanji.

In modern Japanese, kanji are used to write parts of the language such as nouns, adjective stems, and verb stems, while hiragana are used to write inflected verb and adjective endings (okurigana), particles, native Japanese words, words where the kanji is considered too difficult to read or remember, and words in which the kanji is not on the government-sanctioned list of characters. Katakana are used for representing onomatopoeia, non-Japanese loanwords, the names of plants and animals (with exceptions), and for emphasis on certain words.

Local developments and divergences from Chinese

While kanji are essentially Chinese hanzi used to write Japanese, there are now significant differences between kanji used in Japanese and Chinese characters used in Chinese. Such differences include (i) the use of characters created in Japan, (ii) characters that have been given different meanings in Japanese, and (iii) post-World War II simplifications of the kanji. Likewise, the process of character simplification in mainland China since the 1950s has the result that Japanese speakers who have not studied Chinese may not recognize some simplified characters.

Kokuji

For a list of words relating to kokuji, see the Japanese-coined CJKV characters category of words in Wiktionary, the free dictionary

Kokuji (国字, "national characters") are characters particular to Japan, generally devised in Japan. The term wasei kanji (和製漢字, "hanzi made in Japan") is also used to refer to kokuji. There are hundreds of kokuji in existence. Many are rarely used, but a number have become commonly used components of the written Japanese language. These include:

• 峠 (とうげ tōge "mountain pass")
• 榊 (さかき sakaki "tree, genus Cleyera")
• 畑 (はたけ hatake "field of crops")
• 辻 (つじ tsuji "crossroads, street")
• 働 (どう dō, はたら hatara(ku) "work")
• 腺 (せん sen, "gland"). This character has been introduced to China.

Kokkun

In addition to kokuji, there are kanji that have been given meanings in Japanese different from their original Chinese meanings. These are not considered kokuji but are instead called kokkun (国訓) and include characters such as:

• 藤 fuji (wisteria; Ch. téng rattan, cane, vine)
• 沖 oki (offing, offshore; Ch. chōng rinse, minor river(Cantonese))
• 椿 tsubaki (Camellia japonica; Ch. chūn Ailanthus)

Readings

Reading Characters in Japanese
Meaning Pronunciation
a) semantic on L1 L1
b) semantic kun L1 L2
c) phonetic on — L1
d) phonetic kun — L2
_{*With L1 representing the language borrowed from (Chinese) and L2 representing the borrowing language (Japanese).}

Because of the way they have been adopted into Japanese, a single kanji may be used to write one or more different words (or, in some cases, morphemes). From the point of view of the reader, kanji are said to have one or more different "readings". Deciding which reading is meant depends on context, intended meaning, use in compounds, and even location in the sentence. Some common kanji have ten or more possible readings. These readings are normally categorized as either on'yomi (literally, sound reading) or kun'yomi (literally, meaning reading).

On'yomi (Chinese reading)

The on'yomi (音読み), the Sino-Japanese reading, is the modern descendant of the Japanese approximation of the Chinese pronunciation of the character at the time it was introduced. Some kanji were introduced from different parts of China at different times, and so have multiple on'yomi, and often multiple meanings. Kanji invented in Japan would not normally be expected to have on'yomi, but there are exceptions, such as the character 働 "to work", which has the kun'yomi hataraku and the on'yomi dō, and 腺 "gland", which has only the on'yomi sen.

Generally, on'yomi are classified into four types:

• Go-on (呉音^?, "Wu sound") readings are from the pronunciation during the Southern and Northern Dynasties during the 5th and 6th centuries. There is a high probability of Go referring to the Wu region (in the vicinity of modern Shanghai), which still maintains linguistic similarities with modern Japanese.
• Kan-on (漢音^?, "Han sound") readings are from the pronunciation during the Tang Dynasty in the 7th to 9th centuries, primarily from the standard speech of the capital, Chang'an (長安 or 长安, modern Xi'an). Here, Kan is used in the sense of China.
• Tō-on (唐音^?, "Tang sound") readings are from the pronunciations of later dynasties, such as the Song (宋) and Ming (明). They cover all readings adopted from the Heian era (平安) to the Edo period (江戸). This is also known as Tōsō-on (唐宋音).

• Kan'yō-on (慣用音^?, "Idiomatic sound") readings, which are mistaken or changed readings of the kanji that have become accepted into the language. In some cases, they are the actual readings that accompanied the character's introduction to Japan, but do not match how the character “should” be read according to the rules of character construction and pronunciation.

Examples (rare readings in parentheses)