Japanese script reform

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Japanese script reform" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (March 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) This article possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (December 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Japanese writing
Components
Kanji Stroke order Radicals Kyōiku kanji Jōyō kanji Jinmeiyō kanji Hyōgai kanji List of kanji by stroke count
Kana Hiragana Katakana Hentaigana Man'yōgana Sōgana Gojūon
Typographic symbols Japanese punctuation Iteration mark
Uses
Syllabograms Furigana Okurigana Braille
Transliteration
Rōmaji Hepburn (colloquial) ISO ) ISO transliteration ) JSL (transliteration) Wāpuro (keyboard)
Cyrillization Polivanov system
v t e

The Japanese script reform is the attempt to correlate standard spoken Japanese with the written word, which began during the

rarely used in Japan.

Chinese characters
Chinese family of scripts Written Chinese Kanji Hanja Chữ Hán
Historical forms and styles Neolithic symbols in China Oracle bone Bronze Seal (Bird-worm Large Small) Clerical Cursive Semi-cursive Regular Flat brush Typefaces Fangsong Ming Sans-serif
Properties and classification Components Strokes (order) Radical
Collation and standards Character-form standards Jiu zixing Xin zixing Kangxi Dictionary forms (1716) General Standard Chinese Characters (mainland China, 2013) Graphemes of Commonly-used Chinese characters (Hong Kong, 2007) Standard Form of National Characters (Taiwan, 1982) Grapheme-usage standards General Standard Characters (PRC, 2013) Jōyō kanji (Japan, 2010) Other standards Standardized Forms of Words with Variant Forms (PRC, 2002) Nan Min Recommended Characters (Taiwan, 2009) Previous standards Commonly-used Characters (PRC, 1988) Tōyō kanji (Japan, 1946)
Reforms China Clerical reforms Traditional characters Simplified characters (first round second round) Debate Japan Kyūjitai Shinjitai Ryakuji Korea Yakja Singapore Table of Simplified Characters
Homographs and readings Literary and colloquial readings
Variants Graphemic variants Zetian characters
Derived systems Slavonic transcription Nüshu Kana ( Man'yōgana Hiragana Katakana ) Jurchen script Khitan ( Large Small ) Idu script Bopomofo Sawndip Chữ Nôm
Transliteration of Chinese
v t e

History

Pre-World War II reforms

A misconception is held that Japanese script reform originated from the

In November 1922, the rinji kokugo chōsakai (臨時國語調査會, Select Committee on the Study of the Japanese Language), the precursor to the Japanese Language Council, now the Japanese Language subdivision of the Agency for Cultural Affairs, selected and approved a list of 1,962 kanji characters for daily use. This group of characters formed the basis for the tōyō kanji list, which eventually developed into the modern jōyō kanji list. In December 1923, the committee approved a set of reforms for kana usage; the prototype for the modern kana system.^[2]

Reforms

The reforms made after the

On 12 November 1945, the

The tōyō kanji list, containing 1850 characters, was published by the cabinet on 16 November 1946 with the intention of completely abolishing the use of kanji in the future.^[3] The list reduced the number of kanji deemed appropriate for daily use, and categorized certain kanji for specific use in official publications and documents.

Prior to this reform, an attempt had already been made to standardise several kanji, known as kyūjitai, with other forms, known as shinjitai, but was not conducted systematically. For new character forms, changes were only made to several characters with minimal modifications.

Another separate attempt was made to limit the number of kanji readings, but the first list proved much too restrictive. For instance, the character for fish 魚 had its readings limited to gyo and uo when the most common reading, sakana, was not officially recognized by the list. These shortcomings were acknowledged in the revised list of tōyō kanji, published on 28 June 1972.

On 5 July 1956, the Japanese Language Council announced a list of substitute characters for words that contained characters not on the official list in an effort to ease the implementation of tōyō kanji. This use of alternative, common kanji in place of rarer ones was called kakikae (書き換え) (also written as kakikae (書き替え)).

Different characters for words were unified using characters from the tōyō kanji list. The list below shows some examples, with the non-tōyō kanji placed in brackets.

• 注文 (註文) chūmon (order, request)
• 遺跡 (遺蹟) iseki (historic ruins)
• 更生 (甦生) kōsei (rebirth, originally read sosei, and may be written as 蘇生 to reflect the original reading)
• 知恵 (智慧) chie (wisdom)
• 略奪 (掠奪) ryakudatsu (pillage, plunder)
• 妨害 (妨碍, 妨礙) bōgai (jamming, interference)
• 意向 (意嚮) ikō (intention, idea)
• 講和 (媾和) kōwa (reconciliation, peace)
• 格闘 (挌鬭) kakutō (fighting)
• 書簡 (書翰) shokan (letter, epistle)

Jargon and other specialized words that could be written in more than one way were generally written using characters from the list.

• 骨格 (骨骼) kokkaku (skeletal structure)
• 奇形 (畸形) kikei (birth defect)

Other words that used kanji that were not included in the list were given phonetic substitutes.

• 防御 (防禦) bōgyo (defence)
• 扇動 (煽動) sendō (abet, agitate)
• 英知 (叡智) eichi (wisdom)
• 混交 (混淆) konkō (mix)
• 激高 (激昂) gekikō (excited, enraged)

For kanji compounds with characters that could not be reasonably substituted, the recommendation was to write the "missing" kanji in kana instead, a practice known as mazegaki (交ぜ書き), which is very common in the name of chemical elements.

• 皮フ (皮膚) hifu (skin)
• イ族 (彝族) izoku (Yi people)
• フッ素 (弗素) fusso (fluorine)
• たん白質 (蛋白質) tanpakushitsu (protein)
• 憂うつ (憂鬱) yū-utsu (melancholy) and うつ病 (鬱病) utsubyō (depression)

However, the recent prevalence of

On 16 February 1948, 881 of the tōyō kanji were designated to be taught during primary education, and became known as the kyōiku kanji (education kanji).

In the same year, Article 50 of the

On 27 September 2004, another 488 kanji were approved for use in names, partly as a result of the ruling by the Sapporo High Court that it was unacceptable for so many common characters to be excluded from use in names simply because they were not part of the official list. 578 characters were initially added,^{[contradictory]} though some characters unsuitable for names such as 怨 (grudge, resent), 痔 (haemorrhoids) and 屍 (corpse) were removed as a result of public feedback.

Criticisms

The tōyō kanji list, which was created as a step towards the abolition of kanji, has undergone frequent criticism by scholars. In 1958, Tsuneari Fukuda wrote an article in the magazine Koe pointing out that it was impossible to restrict kanji use, and in 1961, several prominent anti-reformists walked out of the Japanese Language Council general meeting in protest of the dominance of the phoneticists, who were always re-elected to their positions on the council.

The following year, Japanese Language Council member Tomizō Yoshida argued that the council should base their reforms on standardising the current writing system using a mixture of kanji and kana, and in 1965, Morito Tatsuo, the then chairman of the council, announced that the complete abolition of kanji was now inconceivable and that Yoshida's suggestion would become official policy.^{[citation needed]}

Modern kana usage

On 16 November 1946,

Some reformers wished to eliminate kanji altogether, and have a phonetic written language only using kana, but this was decided against, and further reforms were halted.

Modern kana usage still has one or two incongruities, as reform was halted at an intermediate stage. On 1 July 1985, the government confirmed that no further reforms would be made in the near future.^{[citation needed]}

• Three particles maintain their historical kana form: the topic marker wa is written は ha instead of わ, the direction marker e is written へ he instead of え and the object marker o is written with the otherwise archaic kana を wo instead of お.
• The sounds ji and zu are usually written with the kana じ and ず respectively, with two exceptions. In compound words of Japanese origin where the second element normally begins chi or tsu and is
  morpho-phonemic orthography
  , to indicate that it comes from voicing a ち rather than voicing a し or being an unrelated じ.
• ぢ and づ are also used in words of Japanese origin if the preceding kana is the unvoiced form of the same character. For example, the words つづく (続く) and ちぢむ (縮む) are written in this manner, though the correct kana usage for chijimi (the Japanese word for the Korean dish buchimgae) is チジミ, as opposed to チヂミ, as the word is not native to the language.^[4]
• ぢ and づ are never used for words of Chinese origin. The character 通 is usually read tsū, but in compounds it may be read as zū (for instance, 融通 yūzū (flexibility) is written ゆうずう) with no regard to its usual pronunciation.

Reintroduction of older kanji in mass media

When reporting the lawsuits regarding cases of Minamata disease in 1970, the non-tōyō kanji 怨 on, "grudge", was used to refer to the feelings of the bereaved families. As a result of this widespread coverage, this kanji was reintroduced into popular usage, which opened the door for many more kanji to be rehabilitated.^[5]

Jōyō kanji and the Japanese Industrial Standards

The jōyō kanji list, consisting at that time of 1,945 characters, was published by the Japanese government in 1981 to serve as a replacement for the tōyō kanji list. This newer list was based on the older tōyō kanji list, though jōyō kanji was more of a guide to kanji usage while tōyō kanji was created to gradually eliminate kanji usage.^{[citation needed]}

Around the same time, the

Approximately 200 characters were changed from their traditional form to their simplified form in the change from the old JIS to the new JIS set, meaning that word documents written on computers using the old character set would not display the same characters when displayed on a computer that used the new character set.^[citation needed]

The JIS character set makes no distinction between the forms of characters, so it is not possible to distinguish between traditional and simplified forms. However, some characters, such as 剣, 劒, and 劍, are distinguished within the character set, despite being variations of the same character.

Gaiji

Increased use of

Though newspaper publishers had been firm advocates for reducing the number of kanji, the release of the gaiji list forced them to reduce mazegaki in newspaper print. Subsequent issues of the Kisha handobukku shinbun yōji yōgo shū (記者ハンドブック 新聞用字用語集, lit. 'Journalist handbook of newspaper character usage') tended to increase the number of permissible characters, so that former mazegaki words could be written as kanji (for example, the use of 拉致 in place of ら致 or 危惧 in place of 危ぐ).^{[citation needed]} As newspapers began to use computerised typesetting, some newspapers reintroduced ruby characters to indicate the reading of uncommon kanji. Though not a unified movement, there was a general trend towards increased kanji use. Other mass media organizations followed suit, and the NHK shin yōji yōgo jiten (NHK 新用字用語辞典, lit. NHK's dictionary of new character usage) also reduced the amount of mazegaki used.

There were substantial discrepancies between the gaiji list and JIS forms, but these discrepancies were corrected in 2004 with the release of JIS X 0213, which brought the JIS in line with the Japanese Language Council. The changes in jinmeiyō kanji made by the Ministry of Justice during the same year also conformed to this standard printed form, with 芦 being an exception. Computers have also moved towards a standard form following the printed character forms. However, JIS X 0213 subsumes personal place names and other proper nouns that were excluded from the gaiji list, so confusion may still result for characters like 辻, where the character form differs between the printed standard and naming standard.

Jōyō kanji and jinmeiyō kanji (list as of 2000) were not included on the gaiji list, so the standards for those characters are the forms used in the jinmeiyō kanji list. Similarly, 曙 and 蓮, which were added to the jinmeiyō kanji list in 1990, remain the standards forms for the same reason, even though traditional forms exist for those characters (a dot in the middle of 者 for 曙, and a double-dotted radical for 蓮). These kanji remained unchanged in the alterations made to the list in 2004. On the other hand, the characters 堵 and 逢, which were added to the jinmeiyō kanji list in 2004, do have a standard printed form with a dot in the middle of 者 and two dots on the radical, and were amended accordingly in JIS X 0213.^{[citation needed]}

Historical advocates for reform

The use of kanji as part of Japanese orthography has been a matter of debate since at least the end of the Edo period. The use of kanji has been criticised for various reasons, the main criticisms being:

• There are too many kanji, and it is difficult to remember how to read and write them.
• The Latin alphabet is used internationally, and using kanji separates Japan from the rest of the world. This argument was used from a technical point of view after the appearance of the typewriter and computer.
• Processing kanji is more time-consuming on word processors and computers.
• Text that uses a mixture of kanji and kana requires
  kanji conversion
  , which is inefficient in comparison to text that only uses kana or rōmaji.

These criticisms led to arguments that reduction or eradication of kanji was a matter of national interest. The idea of abolishing kanji is often referenced to

• Kamo no Mabuchi, Kokuikō (国意考)

Critical of the number of kanji, and argued that kana were more convenient because they were phonetic characters like the alphabet. Notes that a French dictionary was written using only 50 characters, and that Dutch uses only 25 characters.

• Motoori Norinaga, Tamakatsuma (玉勝間)
• Fukuzawa Yukichi, Moji no Oshie (文字之教, lit. 'The teaching of characters') (1873)
• Maejima Hisoka, Kanji Onhaishi no Gi (漢字御廃止之儀, lit. 'The argument for the abolition of kanji') (1866)
• Nishi Amane, Yōji o motte kokugo o shosuru no ron (洋字ヲ以テ国語ヲ書スルノ論, lit. "Argument for writing Japanese in western script") (advocating the use of rōmaji)
• Suematsu Kenchō, Nihon Bunshōron (日本文章論, lit. 'Japanese syntax') (1886)
• Ueda Kazutoshi
• Mori Arinori, Nihon no Kyōiku (日本の教育, lit. 'Japanese education') (Advocating the use of English)
• Nanbu Yoshikazu (Advocated the use of rōmaji)
• Baba Tatsui, Nihongo Bunten (日本語文典, lit. 'Japanese grammar')
• Shiga Naoya
  , Kokugo Mondai (国語問題, lit. 'The language problem') (Advocating the use of French) (Kaizō magazine, April, 1946)

The romaji issue is still occasionally pushed by fringe writers, for example the 2011 book "Kanji is the ruin of Japanese" (漢字が日本語をほろぼす, Kanji ga Nihongo wo horobosu) by Katsuhiko Tanaka (田中克彦).

Current issues

Character-related issues

Current opinion favors the inclusion of the character 碍 under the Jōyō Kanji list in order to promote the more positive word for handicapped person, 障碍者, because the current word for handicapped, 障害者, uses the character 害, which means “damage” or “harm” (invoking pity) and has a secondary derogatory meaning of "harm or evil influence".^[8]

Mazegaki

The current issue of

Mazegaki is not enforced and is rarely used in literature, where traditional forms are often used, although it is common in media outlets such as newspapers and television broadcasts, since non-Jōyō kanji are not supposed to be used in these contexts. In extreme cases, jōyō kanji may be written in this way in television programmes or manga aimed at younger children or language learners – for example 哺乳類 (honyūrui "mammal") as ほ乳類. Mazegaki may also be used in signs, possibly as katakana – for example, 皮膚科 (hifuka dermatologist) may be written as 皮フ科 to improve legibility from a distance.

At the time of the introduction of the tōyō kanji list, the use of ruby characters, also known as furigana, led to high printing costs for newspaper companies due to difficulties in typesetting, and mazegaki eliminated the need for furigana.^{[citation needed]} The resulting reduction in printing costs caused the restriction or abolition of kanji to give serious economic advantages to newspaper companies, and they became heavily involved in decisions made by the Japanese Language Council.

Kakikae

The use of common kanji in place of uncommon ones with the same reading is known as kakikae ("changed writing"). One of the most common examples is the use of 才 instead of 歳, both pronounced sai, when writing ages, as in 10才 rather than 10歳. Another common example is 抽籤 chūsen (lottery), which is often written as 抽選, in addition to the mazegaki 抽せん mentioned above. A rarer example is the word 沈澱 chinden 'settlement (of sediment)', which is a combination of the characters 沈 'to sink' and 澱 'sediment', so the meaning is evident from the kanji. However, in modern writing the uncommon character 澱 has been substituted with 殿 'Mr, lord' (omitting the 3-stroke water radical on the left), a similar character with the same pronunciation but a different meaning, yielding the combination 沈殿, which could now be construed to mean 'sinking lord'.

Various hybrid simplifications also exist, using simpler non-standard characters. This is generally used in handwriting instead of print, and these characters are known as ryakuji ("abbreviated characters"). For example, replacing 闘 with 斗, both pronounced to, is kakikae, as these are both standard characters, but replacing 闘 with the non-standard character 閗 (⿵門斗: 斗 contained in 門) is a ryakuji.

Controversy

Advocates of the method explain that it makes content easier to read and will attract a wider audience, while critics argue that it is sloppy and erodes traditional culture. Further, mazegaki is criticized because in some respects it makes the text more difficult to read, as it is not clear whether the