Japanese Kanji Is Not That Easy

Japanese people speak their own language and have a distinct culture like any other country of the world. Their rich culture is also supported by their language. But there are certain kinds of Chinese characters that are also being used in the Japanese form of writing. These characters are called Japanese kanji. They are used in Japanese logographic writing system.

There is a long history of Chinese characters being used in Japanese language. In the early 57 AD, during the regime of Han Dynasty, Chinese characters came to Japan for the first time. It is not confirmed but believed that the first Japanese documents were written by Chinese immigrants. Since then the Chinese characters have been widely accepted in Japan.

There are about 5,000 to 10,000 Chinese characters that are used in written Japanese. All these Chinese characters are called Kanji. In the year 1981, the Japanese government introduced a list of Chinese characters that were meant for the general use of the people of Japan. This list was called joyo kanji hyo in the local language.

There were 1945 regular and 166 special characters were added in this list out of which the special characters were supposed to be used for the names of people only. It was also directed that all the government documents, textbooks, newspapers and other non-specialist publications were to use all these characters or Kanji. Other writers were free to use any kanji of their choice without any restrictions.

Kanji is taught in high school in Japan. But this is a very basic form of kanji that they learn. To read other specialist publications and ordinary literature, these kids will have to learn another 2000 to 3000 kanji characters. This is not a very easy thing to do. The use of so many characters or Kanji makes Japanese a very tough language to learn.

The commonly used word for Chinese characters in Japanese language is Kanji and this term has originated from Chinese word hanzi which means Han characters. Han is referred to the famous Han dynasty of China under whose regime, these characters were developed. This dynasty ruled China between 206 BC to 220 AD.

This crossover of language happened because of certain reasons. The main reason for this language crossover was that Japanese people did not have a written script of their own. So, they borrowed or rather adopted Chinese characters for writing. In this process not only Chinese characters were brought but it also brought Chinese words which were later called kanji.

So, this is the brief history and uses of Japanese Kanji. These are very important and integral part of Japanese language and are used extensively.