Japanese Kanji Symbols

By Johnny Chung


If you have heard of Japanese script called Kanji you have to understand that it has its roots in China. The characters from Chinese symbol are throughout evident in the Japanese script as we see it now in their logographic style of writing. In fact once you translate the Kanji script you will find characters from Chinese Hans symbols.

It is important to understand how the kanji script originally developed in China ultimately came to be regarded as Japanese script. The articles which were imported by Japan from China in ancient times had the Hans characters on them from which kanji were developed.

The history bears evidence to this fact from many examples such as the Han dynasty ruler had presented a gold seal with Hans' inscription to the Japanese. What we still wonder is that how and when the Hans characters were started to be used in Japan and developed.

It could be quite likely that the Chinese themselves had started using the Chinese Kanji script in Japan when some of them migrated to China. There was no way that Japanese could have had an occasion to comprehend and then learn the language by themselves.

As time passed the China and Japan developed friendly relations in trade and otherwise which required written documents going from one country to the other. In such circumstances it was a requirement that the Chinese language should be understood by Japanese and a council of people called Fuhito was taught to handle the paper work from China. This could be the most plausible reason how Chinese Kanji script landed up in Japan and later evolved.

Chinese Kanji script carried the idea of proper writing script in Japan which did not have one at that time. They began to use Chinese script for writing initially and slowly shaped their own writing system with things taken from the Chinese script and then reshaping them to fit the Japanese grammar.

Yet another improvement made was that the Japanese were now using the Chinese characters to write Japanese words. This is what gave rise to modern kana syllables. The difference was that whereas the Chinese used their characters as symbols that lacked any phonetic value, the Japanese introduced a phonetic value to the Chinese script.

The use of Kanji symbols is still far greater in China as compared to in Japan. Contrary to popular belief the kanji script used in both the countries are not exactly the same. Although they may look quite similar the Chinese kanji symbols are quite different with regards to their structure.

There is another difference in Chinese and Japanese Kanji script when we apply it to the reading part. As discussed the Chinese treat the Kanji characters as symbols without any phonetic connotation but in Japanese script every syllable has phonetic value.




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