As we all know, There are a large number of Kanji in Japan, and the largest Japanese kanji dictionary, the "Tobashi Dahanwa Dictionary", records almost 50,000 Kanji. After World War II, Japan carried out a series of simplifications and mergers of mottled and complex Chinese characters. So now, there are only 2136 Chinese characters commonly used by Japanese people in life. However, this does not affect the social status of Kanji in Japan, after all, on the Japanese passport, there are 5 Kanji that are dangling.
On February 20, 1878, Japan issued its first passport, entitled "Imperial Japanese Overseas Travel Voucher". Of course, this is only the official title, and in normal times, Japanese people like to call it "Japan National Travel Voucher". Generally speaking, the passport colors of countries in the world are different, there are blue, green, red, brown, black and other colors, and each country only takes one or two of them. However, japanese passports are not only one color, but also four.
Originally, the color of the Japanese passport was dark green, and it was printed with the words "Empire of Japan Overseas Travel Voucher" and a chrysanthemum pattern. It is worth noting that these words are not written in Japanese, but in Chinese small seals. However, although the current Japan has reduced the words "Great Japanese Empire Overseas Travel Voucher" to "Japan National Travel Voucher", they still did not replace the small seal with Japanese, but retained and used this "tradition". The reason why Japan is so "nostalgic" is actually inseparable from the original history, especially with Qin Shi Huang.
During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the masses were divided, the writing of various countries was not uniform, and there was often ambiguity in communication, while the Qin State at that time used the script of the Great Seal. The Great Seal, also known as the zhòu script, is a script inscribed on stone grates and drums, evolving from the oracle bone script. The Book of Han and Yiwen Zhi records: "Fifteen articles of the Shi Li, the King of Zhou Xuan, Tai Shi Li, made the Great Seal. "The Great Seal of the Western Zhou Dynasty developed into the Warring States period, let alone hundreds of years of history, in view of the situation of the division of the world, the Great Seal will derive a variety of written forms, which is also expected."
In 221 BC, Qin Shi Huang unified the six kingdoms, and in order to better issue decrees and carry out rule, he put forward the policy of "books with the same text, the same track as the car, and unified weights and measures". Therefore, he entrusted the task of unifying the script and the writing style to the minister Li Si, and ordered him to simplify the text again on the basis of the original Great Seal. Finally, Li Si started from the contour, stroke, and structure stereotype, changed the curved line of the big seal, and created a new font with uniform strokes and easy to write, which is the small seal.
Since then, Qin Shi Huang has vigorously promoted the small seal, abolishing the original "speech different voice, different character shape" book style, which greatly promoted economic development and cultural exchanges, and affected the surrounding countries and regions, including Japan. In that year, Qin Shi Huang sent Xu Fu to lead three thousand boys and girls to the east to find the elixir of immortality, and that period, which was the early Yayoi era in Japan, had no agricultural civilization, no written spread, and no medicine.
Therefore, the arrival of Xu Fu just solved this problem for Japan and guided them to break through the bottleneck and move towards a civilized society. The "Chronicle of Hengshan in Huainan" records that (Qin Shi Huang) sent 3,000 men and women to work in all kinds of grains. It can be seen that the reason why Japan insists on keeping the small seal characters on the passport is precisely to commemorate Xu Fu, without him, without the original order of Qin Shi Huang, there would be no Japan today.