Japanese novel using 漢字仮名交じり文 (text with both kanji and kana), most general orthography for modern Japanese. Ruby characters are also used for kanji words. Published in 1908.
To a lesser extent, modern written Japanese also uses the Latin alphabet. Examples of such usage include abbreviations such as "CD" and "DVD".
It is also possible to represent spoken or written Japanese entirely in the Latin alphabet. Several common systems for the romanization of Japanese are used. Romanized Japanese, called rōmaji is frequently used by foreign students of Japanese, who have not yet mastered the three main scripts, and by native speakers for computer input.
Here is an example of a newspaper headline that uses all four scripts (a headline from the Asahi Shimbun on 19 April, 2004) (kanji red, hiragana blue, katakana green, Latin Alphabet and Arabic numerals black):
Here are some examples of words written in Japanese:
Kanji
Hiragana
Katakana
Rōmaji
English
私
わたし
ワタシ
watashi
I, me
金魚
きんぎょ
キンギョ
kingyo
goldfish
煙草 or 莨
たばこ
タバコ
tabako
tobacco, cigarette
東京
とうきょう
トウキョウ
tōkyō
Tokyo (the capital of Japan), literally eastern capital
Collation (word ordering) in Japanese is based on the kana, which express the pronunciation of the words, rather than the kanji. The kana may be ordered using two common orderings, the prevalent gojūon (fifty-sound) ordering, or the old-fashioned iroha ordering. Kanji dictionaries are also collated using the radical system.
Most simple Japanese sentences (like "the cat sat on the mat") will have both kanji and hiragana in them. Kanji is used for nouns (words like "cat" or "mat") and the stems of verbs (words like "sat"), hiragana for the endings of verbs and for grammatical particles (small, common words such as the Japanese equivalents to the English "on" and "to"). Non-Japanese words or new loan words (except those absorbed into the language long ago or those with original kanji expression) are spelled in katakana.
Japanese words that have no kanji, or where the kanji are difficult to read, or where the kanji is not known, or where the reader is unlikely to know them
Japanese names or other words intended for use outside of Japan (for example, Japanese names on business cards, in passports, etc.)
company names, brand names or product names, etc. used both inside and outside of Japan
foreign words and phrases that appear in an otherwise Japanese context, such as words that appear in advertising, on consumer goods intended for Japanese consumption, etc.
However, there are many exceptions to the above rules. For example, Japanese names may be written in kanji, hiragana or katakana. The name must be spelled as the bearer prefers, and it is usual in introductions to give at least a hint at how the name is spelled, and somebody can tell the other person that she is called "katakana no Maruko." For full details, see the respective articles.
Japanese mainly use hiragana or kanji, while the katakana is used to translate a foreign word to Japanese characters. The choice of which type of writing to use depends on a number of factors, including standard conventions, readability, and stylistic choices.
Some Japanese words are written with different kanji depending on the specific usage of the word — for instance, the word "naosu" (to fix, or to cure) is written 治す when it refers to curing a person, and 直す when it refers to fixing something. In some cases (such as the preceding one) the distinction is simple, whereas in some cases the distinction in nuance is difficult enough that an author will write the word in hiragana to avoid the possible error of choosing the wrong kanji.
Traditionally, Japanese is written in a format called tategaki. In this format, the characters are written in columns going from top to bottom, with columns ordered from right to left. After reaching the bottom of each column, the reader continues at the top of the column to the left of the current one. This copies the column order of Chinese.
Modern Japanese also uses another writing format, called yokogaki. This writing format is horizontal and read left to right.
Early writing system
The current Japanese writing system can be traced back to the 4th century AD, when the written Chinese language was introduced to Japan. No definitive evidence of any native Japanese writing system that predates the introduction of Chinese is known to exist.
Although several kinds of supposedly earlier writing called jindai moji (also kamiyo moji, 神代文字, lit. "writing of the gods' age") have been found in modern times, some vaguely pictographic, some runic in appearance, and some very close to KoreanHangul, these are now considered hoaxes promoting Japanese nationalism that were perpetrated in the 1930s. Examples can be found on the Internet.[1]
Initially, Chinese characters were not used for writing Japanese; to be literate meant the ability to read and write Classical Chinese. Eventually a system called kanbun (漢文) was developed, which used both Chinese characters (kanji) and something very similar to Chinese grammar, but often with diacritic marks placed alongside the Chinese text to give hints as to the Japanese equivalent. The earliest written history of Japan, the Kojiki (古事記), believed to have been compiled sometime before 712, was written in kanbun. Even today all Japanese high schools and some junior high schools teach kanbun as part of their Japanese language curriculum.
There was still no system for rendering Japanese in written form until the development of man'yōgana (万葉仮名), which used Chinese characters for their phonetic value (derived from their Chinese readings) rather than their semantic value. Man'yōgana was initially used to record poetry, as in the Man'yōshū (万葉集), which was compiled sometime before 759, and from which the writing system derives its name. Hiragana and katakana were both outgrowths from man'yōgana.
Due to the large number of words and concepts entering Japan from China which had no native equivalent, many words entered Japanese directly, with a pronunciation similar to the original Chinese. This Chinese-derived reading is known as on-yomi (音読み), and this vocabulary as a whole is referred to as Sino-Japanese in English and kango 漢語 in Japanese. At the same time, native Japanese already had words corresponding to many borrowed kanji. Authors increasingly used kanji to represent these words. This Japanese-derived reading is known as kun-yomi (訓読み). A kanji may have none, one, or several on-yomi and kun-yomi. Okurigana are written after the initial kanji for verbs and adjectives to give inflection and to help disambiguate a particular kanji's reading. The same character may be read several different ways depending on the word. For example, the character 行 is read i as the first syllable of iku (行く) 'to go', okona as the first three syllables of okonau (行う, "to carry out"), gyō in the compound word gyōretsu (行列, "line" or "procession"), kō in the word ginkō (銀行, "bank"), and an in the word andon (行灯, "lantern").
Linguists have sometimes compared Japan's borrowing and adaptation of Chinese words into Japanese as similar to the effect that the Norman conquest of England had on the English language. Like English, Japanese has many synonyms of differing origin, with words from both Chinese and native Japanese. In another similarity, words of Chinese origin are often used in more formal or intellectual contexts by Japanese speakers, just as English speakers often use latinate words to mark a higher register.
Written language reforms
Meiji period
The significant reforms of the 19th century Meiji era did not initially impact on the Japanese writing system, however the language itself was changing due to the increase in literacy resulting from education reforms, the massive influx of new words; both borrowed from other languages or newly coined, and the ultimate success of movements such as the influential 言文一致 (genbun'itchi) which resulted in Japanese being written in the colloquial form of the language instead of the wide range of historical and classical styles used previously. The difficulty of written Japanese was a topic of debate, with several proposals in the late 1800s that the number of kanji in use be limited. In addition, exposure to non-Japanese texts led to (unsuccessful) proposals that Japanese be written entirely in kana or romaji. This period saw Western-style punctuation marks introduced into Japanese writing (Twine, 1991).
In 1900, the Education Ministry introduced three reforms aimed at improving the education in Japanese writing:
standardization of the hiragana script, eliminating the range of hentaigana (変体仮名) then in use;
restriction of the number of kanji taught in elementary schools to about 1,200;
reform of the irregular kana representation of the Sino-Japanese readings of kanji to make them conform with the pronunciation.
The first two of these were generally accepted, but the third was hotly contested, particularly by conservatives, to the extent that it was withdrawn in 1908 (Seeley, 1990).
Pre-World War II
The partial failure of the 1900 reforms combined with the rise of nationalism in Japan effectively prevented further significant reform of the writing system. The period before World War II saw numerous proposals to restrict the number of kanji in use, and several newspapers voluntarily restricted their kanji usage and increased usage of furigana; however, there was no official endorsement of these, and indeed much opposition.
Post-World War II
The period immediately following World War II saw a rapid and significant reform of the writing system. This was in part due to influence of the Occupation authorities, but to a significant extent was due to the removal of conservatives from control of the educational system, which meant that previously stalled revisions could proceed. The major reforms were:
the alignment of all kana usage with modern pronunciation (現代仮名遣いgendaikanazukai), replacing the old historical kana usage (1946);
the promulgation of the tōyō kanji (当用漢字), which limited the number of kanji used in schools, textbooks, etc. to 1,850 (1946), and also simplified forms of kanji (see Shinjitai);
the promulgation of an approved set of forms of kanji to be used in schools (1949);
the promulgation of an additional jinmeiyō kanji (人名用漢字) which in combination with the tōyō kanji could be used in names (1951).
(At one stage there was a proposal from an advisor in the Occupation administration to change the writing system to rōmaji, however it was not supported by other specialists and did not proceed.) (Unger, 1996)
In addition, the practice of writing horizontally in a right-to-left direction was generally replaced by left-to-right writing. The right-to-left order was considered a special case of vertical writing, with columns one character high, rather than horizontal writing per se; it was used for single lines of text on signs, etc. (e.g. the station sign at Tokyo read 駅京東).
The post-war reforms have remained, although some of the restrictions have been relaxed. The replacement of the tōyō kanji in 1981 with the 1,945 jōyō kanji (常用漢字) was accompanied by a change from "restriction" to "recommendation", and in general the educational authorities have become less active in continued reform of the writing system (Gottlieb, 1996).
In 2004, a large increase was made in the number of kanji in the jinmeiyō kanji. This list is the responsibility of the Justice Ministry.
Kanji compounds can be given arbitrary readings for stylistic purposes. For example, in Natsume Sōseki's short story The Fifth Night, the author uses 接続って for tsunagatte, the gerundive-te form of the verb tsunagaru ('to connect'), which would usually be written 繋がって or つながって.
Signs sometimes drop the hiragana endings from the kanji for brevity.
The Japanese writing system allows for transmitting information that is usually communicated in other languages by using different words or by adding extra descriptive words. For example, writing a word in katakana may give it a modern or 'hip' flair. Some words are colloquially written in hiragana and writing them in kanji might give them a more formal tone.
There are a number of methods of rendering Japanese in Roman letters. The Hepburn method of romanization, designed for English speakers, is a de facto standard widely used inside and outside Japan (and used in the English Wikipedia). The Kunrei-shiki system has a better correspondence with kana, making it easier for the Japanese themselves to learn; it is officially sanctioned by the Ministry of Education, and often used by non-native speakers who are learning Japanese as a second language. Other systems of romanization include Nihon-shiki, JSL, and Wāpuro.
