Introduction
Systems of writing have been cited as one of the earliest and greatest inventions of human beings. Kanji is a broad term used to refer to logographic characters widely used in the Japanese writing system. In Japanese, Kanji simply means “Han Characters.” Kanji is therefore inherently Chinese which was adopted by the Japanese due to their close interactions in trade in the early years dating back to around 57AD (Rodgers 25). As a result, therefore, some modifications and alterations have been done on the initial Japanese Kanji to fit it into the Japanese language.
Japanese Kanji has undergone tremendous changes and thus has been classified according to the function it plays in the society. The classification thus gives the characters a unique function which largely differs from its initial meaning and function in the Chinese language. In the modern Japanese, there is Kyoiku Kanji, which refers to the 1,006 characters that are taught to Japanese children in elementary school. Kyoiku Kanji is also first taught to people learning Japanese as an international language since it is easy to master and the pronunciations are not that complex (Hadamitzky and Spahn 56). There is also Joyo Kanji which consists of 2,136 characters taught in junior school, Jinmeiyo Kanji which is made up of 27,2004 characters found in people’s names, and Hyogai Kanji comprising of unlisted characters. Hyogai Kanji often finds multiple meanings since it comprises mostly of words which are either ambiguous or not inherently Japanese in nature. In total, there are about 50,000 kanji characters in modern Japanese of which an adult can identify about 3500. In some instances, though, multiple Kanji can be used to refer to a single word in the Japanese language.
History of Japanese Kanji
The Chinese are very religious people, and since time immemorial, they have always had special reservations for their gods. In the ancient era, the Chinese had no writing system and thus whenever they wanted to communicate to their gods, they hunted for turtles. The turtle’s shells would be then cracked, and the parts that broke off could be related to the real life things. They thus believed that their god spoke to them through the turtle shells. Since the Chinese knew very well that turtles faced the risk of extinction they began keeping records of certain breakages of turtle’s shells so as to avoid killing other turtles for a similar message. The patterns are apparently believed to be the origin of the Chinese language (Taylor and Taylor 18). Various characters were drawn and given different meanings, which eventually gave rise to the Chinese language.
The initial and first ever Chinese characters entered Japan as inscriptions on coins, mirrors, and other decorative items imported from China as well as on official seals and letters from the Chinese emperor. For example, the existing artifacts of King of Na Gold seal which were given to Yamato emissary in 57AD by Emperor Guangwu of Han are believed to be the earliest imports into Japan that contained Chinese characters. The Japanese did not have a native alphabet until the 5th century AD and thus remained illiterate all this time. It thus sounds quite funny that the Japanese had a language they spoke yet there existed no written form of the same language.
It is thus believed that Wani, a Chinese scholar, is the man who introduced the Chinese writing system to the Japanese. According to available historical information, Wani was dispatched to Japan by the Baekje Kingdom in China under Emperor Ojin. Wani brought with him Confucianism which is widely spread in Japan as well as the Chinese characters. Wani’s major assignment was to spread the teachings of the great Chinese philosopher, Confucius, in Japan. Teaching, therefore, meant that the new converts had to read out the written forms of the philosophy as well as be able to keep records of such teaching, hence the need to not only speak but also to read and write. Wani, therefore, had to introduce the Chinese characters to the Japanese to help them understand his teachings about Confucianism. The characters, which had all along been regarded as decorative inscriptions on various items imported from China, made sense to the Japanese for the first time after Wani’s teachings.
Initially, Kanji was used by bilingual Japanese who worked as court officials. The use of Kanji in courts was necessitated by the fact that all court officials had to keep written records of all proceedings, verdicts, as well as any other legal transactions that took place in courtrooms. Since the Japanese language did not have a writing system, all texts were written and read in Chinese. Hence, the native Japanese could only derive meanings from various written texts after they listened to a bilingual speak read such texts aloud. The Japanese then started using the Chinese characters for the Japanese language to read texts since they didn’t have an alphabet of their own.
In reality, the Chinese and Japanese are neither similar nor related since the Chinese language closely resembles the Korean language. Due to the incompatibility of the Chinese and Japanese grammar systems, a modified version of the Chinese characters called Kanbun emerged. In Kanbun, the Chinese characters were written with small Kana marks and sentences rearranged in line with the Japanese grammar so as to help the Japanese read and understand the writings (Miyake 67). In fact, Kanbun was slightly simplified and consisted more of Japanese that Chinese characters to make it easily understandable.
Kanbun did not last for long since it failed to fully accommodate the Japanese diction. For instance, despite the emergence of Kanbun, there were still several words in Japanese that could not find a perfect equivalent in Chinese. As a result, therefore, another system, Man’yogana, was brought into being; a system that only used the sounds of the Chinese characters but not their meaning. Later on, the cursive form of Man’yogana yielded Hiragana which was widely used among female Japanese who had been denied higher education due to customary believes that condemned women to the kitchen and raising children. One of the famous Japanese literatures, “The Tale of Genji” was written in this Kanji. In an attempt to make Man’yogana more simple and easy to understand, monastery students broke up the kanji into more simplified forms mostly to get names of some places, plants, and animals.
Hiragana and Katakana are therefore all descendants of Kanji. In modern Japanese, Kani is kanji is used to write names, adjectives, and verbs while Hiragana is used to write all inflected doing words that seem to have a phonetic complement ending. Katakana, on the other hand, is widely used to represent onomatopoeia as well as to emphasize certainly borrowed words. However, this is only possible on people with vast experience with the Chinese characters. Beginners as well as people learning Japanese as either an international language or a second language often use Kanji they are comfortable with regardless of the general rule surrounding the construction and usage of various Kanji (Miyake 75).
Japanese and Chinese Languages
Most international students pursuing the history of the Japanese Kanji develop a perception that a mastery of the Chinese language means a subsequent understanding of the Japanese Kanji. Similarly, some people also tend to think that since all Asian languages have certain similarities, Chinese and Japanese are no different, especially with the close facial resemblance of people from the two nationalities. From the history of the Japanese Kanji, one can easily think that Chinese and Japanese languages are related, while they are different from each other. In fact, one can easily think that the Japanese language came from Chinese, which is also not true. The only relationship between Chinese and Japanese is that they share a common alphabet (Miyake 86). In essence, Japanese Kanji has numerous words borrowed from Chinese that came with the Chinese writing system. Nevertheless, such borrowed words either have a different intonation are have been accorded a modified pronunciation to fit into the Japanese language.
In most cases, the borrowed words are those that did not find exact equivalents in Japanese, descriptive words used in place of Japanese words that either sounded vulgar or did not seem so good in the Chinese writing system. In some rare cases, borrowed words are also used for new terms that were not initially in the ancient Japanese language. In fact, the borrowed words seem more formal and official as compared to their equivalents in Japanese and hence often used in written Japanese. It, however, does not mean that every Japanese word that does not seem so good is written in the Chinese writing system; some writings opt for Hiragana in places where changing such words into the Chinese writing system will bring up a lot of Kanji.
When the Japanese adopted Kanji characters to form their writing system, they subsequently took along numerous Chinese words. In fact, it is estimated that about half of the current Japanese vocabulary was borrowed from Chinese. Safe for a few exceptions, the general rule is that when kanji appears on its own in either a sentence or as a word, it is given a Japanese reading (Kun yomi), and when two or multiple kanji appear together, either consecutively or spaced within a sentence, they then take a Chinese reading (On yomi). Bearing in mind that the two rules were initially Chinese which were adopted to suit the Japanese Kanji, they are bound to yield further differences than they were initially intended. For example, a complete sentence in Japanese that might consist of several consecutive Chinese readings is often read out in both Japanese and Chinese readings.
Listening to Japanese and Chinese eloquent speakers, it is difficult to infer any similarity in the two languages despite the common alphabet. The difference comes about from the fact that despite the similar alphabetical characters, the Japanese have a totally different pronunciation to such alphabetical characters from that of the Chinese (Taylor and Taylor 28). Hence, it will seem quite funny to see that the pronunciation of one character is quite different in the two languages. Hence Kanji that look the same has a different meaning in Chinese and Japanese. The differences are even bound to increase further with the continued adoption of the modern Chinese characters into Japanese Kanji.
Conclusion
There is a very strong relationship between language and culture; different cultural practices imply a different language. Although the Japanese adopted the Chinese Kanji and borrowed a huge percentage of Chinese characters into the Japanese writing system, the two nationalities have entirely different cultures. As a result, therefore, Japanese Kanji was neither lifted nor translated from Chinese but rather adopted. It thus further means that the borrowed Kanji had to be adjusted and reconstructed to suit the Japanese culture and in the process ended up totally different from the initially borrowed vocabulary. Chinese language and Japanese Kanji are therefore totally different despite the converging writing system.
Works cited
Hadamitzky, W; and Spahn, M. kanji and Kana, Boston:Tuttle. 2011, Print.
Miyake, Marc Hideo. Old Japanese: A Phonetic Reconstruction. New York, London: RoutledgeCurzon. 2012, Print.
Rodgers, Henry. Writing Systems: A Linguistic Approach. Oxford: Blackwell. 2015, Print.
Taylor, Insup, and Taylor, Martin. Writing and literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese. John Benjamins Publishing Company Amsterdam/Philadelphia.1995, Print.
