こんにちは、皆さん。(Konnichiwa, mina-san. [Hello, everyone.])
Today I will be discussing the evolution of the Japanese written language, beginning with China's hanzi.
I believe that an overlooked aspect of learning a language is learning the history behind the language. What I mean by this is that culture ends up being embedded within a language, and so by learning the history of the language, you end up learning and understanding a deeper part of culture.
For example, if you’re learning a romance language, you would end up examining how the Latin language disseminated throughout different parts of modern-day Europe and became languages like Portuguese, French, and Spanish. And by understanding and learning this, you can see the effect that the Roman Empire had on these romance languages and the cultures that still persist to this day.
In the case of the Japanese language, it is evident that the kanji used in the Japanese system are of Chinese origin. It’s made even more obvious considering that the word kanji is made up of the two characters 漢 and 字. 漢 refers to China, whereas 字 means “character.” Therefore, the combination of them both is “Chinese characters.” So when did these Chinese characters come to Japan? And how did the language develop as a result?
We begin looking for these answers in China, where the earliest known example of character writing is dated back to the Shang dynasty, approximately 1600 – 1046 B.C. According to Beyond Calligraphy, a website detailing the history of characters and calligraphy for both Chinese and Japanese, these characters were found on so-called oracle bones created by Zhen Ren or diviner-historians. Characters were written on bones with dents, and then the bones were heated up. They would crack from the heat, and the way that the bones cracked alongside or within the oracle bone script would result in a divine message. These messages would then be copied by rubbing pigments or ink to preserve both the cracks and the characters for historical records. It is thought that this form of pyromancy was linked to the ancient Chinese reverence for the dead, as well as their reverence spirits and nature. It is also important to note at this time that these early Chinese characters in the oracle bone script were still logographs - they recorded sounds; they were not yet ideographs (representing certain words or ideas).
So if these characters originated in China between 1600 and 1046 B.C., how and when did they come to Japan? Well, by looking at ancient Chinese records, scholars can determine when China and Japan came into contact with each other. It would appear that according to the Han Shu (The history of Han) that the ancient Chinese knew of the Japanese island chain in approximately 82 A.D. However, it was ambiguous as to whether or not they had contact with the people living on the islands. Scholars have validated a later record known as the Wei Zhi (Records of Wei [China]) that established that China and one of Japan’s kingdoms (Yamatai, suspected to be located in either Kyūshū or Kinki) had been in contact with one another; the records discuss the practices of the Japanese people as well as their “sorceress” ruler Himiko. At this point in time, Japan was not unified, and so it was composed of a multitude of different kingdoms. The Wei Zhi was written approximately in 297 A.D., thus defining an exact point when the two cultures had met each other. This does not mean that they met in 297, but rather by 297 the regions’ people had met each other. Furthermore, during the Han period, Chinese characters began utilizing both logographs and ideographs in their characters; additional characters known as determinatives were added to a character to demonstrate its meaning. For example, in Chinese, the hanzi for horse and ant have the same pronunciation (and therefore the same character because of the logographic [sound] based nature of the language). However, by adding the character for insect as a determinative, the meaning becomes clear.
Later, according to the Hou Han Shu (The history of the Later Han) which was written in about 445 A.D., the Chinese emperor Guwangwu presented a seal and a ribbon to one of the Japanese rulers; an authentic-looking seal and ribbon has been found in Fukuoka prefecture in Kyūshū, establishing even more of a connection and link between the two nations. Therefore, it can be inferred that during this time period of 297 and 445 A.D. that at this point, Japan was introduced to Chinese characters. So when did Japan start using these characters?
The earliest known piece of character writing in Japan comes from the Inariyama (Tumulus) Sword found from a kofun (古墳), or key-shaped tomb, in the Saitama Prefecture. On the front and back of the blade are 115 Chinese characters, but the scholars Murayama Shichirō and Roy Andrew Miller discovered that while the inscription is written in Chinese, it uses Chinese characters as a way to represent Japanese sounds. This style of writing is called man'yōgana (万葉仮名).
 |
| The Inariyama Tumulus Sword |
The sword itself either dates back to 471 or 531 A.D., establishing that “Japanese” written language had been established in either the late 5th century or in the early 6th century. This language still wasn’t truly Japanese, however; texts were written entirely in Chinese characters, rather than the amalgamation of kana and kanji that are in Japanese today. Instead, these texts were written entirely in what would be considered Old Japanese (Classical Chinese), or kanbun (漢文) - “Chinese literature.” This form of writing was similar to Chinese determinatives; Buddhist monks would annotate certain characters for either (Japanese) sound or meaning purposes.
While the Inariyama Tumulus sword is the earliest known evidence of Chinese characters in Japan, Chinese characters were extremely prevalent and plentiful in the form of mokkan (木簡) - wooden tablets, that were used in the mid 7th to 9th century.
 |
| Mokkan |
Similar to the Inariyama Sword, these tablets had writing on both the front and back. It is speculated that the use of mokkan was adopted from China, though the mokkan in China differed in their use; they were strung together to form longer texts. In Japan, however, mokkan were for brief and/or informal communication, such as “punching in” for work or a record of what goods were being transferred from province to province. For example, mokkan records show that Prince Nagaya received seaweed from the Shima district in Shima province, rice from Kudara in Settsu, dried meat from Ōhara in Izumo, and cloth from the Ōki islands. These pieces of writing end up revealing a lot about the economic and legal developments of the time, spurring further historical research.
Around this point, Chinese characters in Japan began to have meanings in and of themselves, rather than just representing sounds. One of the commonly transported goods, the sweetfish (ayu), is a good demonstration of the way that Chinese characters were used to represent ideas or concepts in this fashion.
 |
| The Sweetfish |
The lifespan of a sweetfish is one year, and so rather than writing characters that would match the sounds a-yu, a combination of the characters for year 年 and fish 魚 are used together to form 年魚 or “year fish” if translated literally. These characters used together then gained the pronunciation of ayu. So with certain characters gaining meaning beyond pronunciation purposes, Old Japanese began transitioning into “Middle Japanese.”
What is the difference between Old Japanese and Middle Japanese? Well, while Old Japanese was entirely composed of Chinese characters, Middle Japanese is a combination of Chinese characters and kana.
 |
| Middle Japanese |
But that raises the question - how did kana emerge and come to be part of the language? While some Chinese characters were gaining semantic (word) meanings, some of these Chinese characters were still used for syllabic (sound) purposes. So there was some confusion, as sometimes the character sounds and their meanings were not identical. Within Japanese, there are also a lot of homonyms, and so while using Chinese characters with specific meaning did alleviate the problem, there were still some issues with reading the character as well as understanding the meaning within some cases. Sometimes the meaning of a character even depended on the reading. A modern example would be the characters 青 (ao - blue) and 山 (yama - mountain) which can be read as あおやま (aoyama) - a "lush mountain" or せいざん (seizan) - a metaphor for "where one dies."
And so, therefore, the written form of man’yōgana evolved, and kana was developed in two different forms: katakana was used as an abbreviation of Chinese characters that were used as sounds (ex. タ from 多), while hiragana was used for simplification for cursive-esque writing of vernacular Japanese (ex. あ from 安). This process likely began as early as 750 A.D at which point Japan was under samurai rule. Thus, katakana emerged as a way to stop using Chinese characters for sounds (letting them retain their ideogram purpose) while still maintaining a written form of syllables. However, kana was not developed by these warriors; it was developed by Buddhist monks who did not want to deal with the cumbersome process of writing Chinese characters and annotating what was and what wasn’t an idea or syllable; this was the process behind writing in the kanbun style. Therefore, katakana was used for glosses, notes, and commentaries to Buddhist scriptures, Chinese classics, and government documentation. Hiragana was instead used for everyday communication and vocabulary in contrast. Because of the different uses for these kana scripts, katakana was almost exclusively used by men, whereas women almost exclusively used hiragana (because of katakana’s affiliation with court documents and power). That is why an archaic word for hiragana is 女手 (onnade) or “woman hand(writing).”
Middle Japanese lasted up until the 1600s, at which point the country was reunified under the Tokugawa; the peace during the Edo (Tokugawa) period led to the development of “New Japanese.” New Japanese is actually very Early Modern Japanese, introducing the notable trait of only having 5 vowel syllables. Old Japanese style (written completely in syllabic form using Chinese characters) had 8 vowel syllables. However, from about 1900 onwards, Japanese intellectuals discussed and debated script reform, focusing on the amount of characters for general use and the shape of these characters. This demand for reform paralleled China's introduction of Simplified Chinese alongside Traditional Chinese. However, the change in Japanese writing occurred after World War II, in which one of the early focuses postwar was to reduce the number of characters in daily use. A list of 1,850 kanji was drawn up, becoming known as the Tōyō kanji (Interim Use Characters, abbreviated as TK List). If a kanji not from the list was used in say, a primary school textbook, the word would instead be written in kana. However, the TK list was not above criticism, and so in 1981 the Jōyō kanji (General Use Chinese Characters) List (JK list) was introduced. It contained the 1,850 Tōyō kanji as well as an additional 95 based on usefulness and prominence in everyday life. That's 1,945 kanji altogether. The Jōyō kanji list is what Japanese schoolchildren and Japanese language learners like myself learn today, forming the kanji basis for Modern Japanese.
In learning about the history of Japanese kanji, I feel that I have a better idea of the evolution of the language and of the nation as a whole. Japanese people from long ago used Chinese characters in a Japanese way, and so they sought it to make it their own - even developing kana as an abbreviated and cursive version of these specific characters. Furthermore, by learning about the Chinese language, I have a better understanding of why kanji such as 車 (kuruma) have a different pronunciation (sha) in certain circumstances, stemming from the period of time when Japan transitioned from Chinese to true Japanese. I think learning about this topic also gave me a better idea of the ancient historical relationship between China and Japan, at least to some extent.
In any case, hopefully one day I'll know those 1,945 Jōyō kanji by heart.
頑張りましょう！Ganbarimashou! (I'll do my best!)
[interim silence]
If you would like to learn more about the Japanese language and its development, I recommend the resources down below. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you have a fantastic day.
[outro music]
----
References
History and Present of the Japanese Language by Ryan Shultz from Ohio State University The Structure and History of Japanese by Lone Takeuchi (1999) The Inariyama Tumulus Sword Inscription by Murayama Shichirō and Roy Andrew Miller (1979) Mokkan. Wooden Documents from the Nara Period by Joan R. Piggott (1990) Beyond Calligraphy - Oracle Bone Script Art, Ancestors, and the Origin of Writing in China by David N. Keightley (1996) Chinese is NOT picture writing! - History of Writing Systems #5 (Determinatives) by NativLang
The 20th Century Japanese Writing System: Reform and Change by Christopher Seeley (1995)
----
Music Used
Journey in the New World by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Source
Artist
Brittle Rille - Reunited by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license.
Source
Artist
Japanese Folk Song Suite by ENG Jole is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Source
Artist
Pokémon GO Walking (Map) Theme on shakuhachi (Japanese flute) - like it was a Buddhist honkyoku by kjell159 is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License.
Artist
