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Text: Peng Yibin
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introduction
In 2010, Japan published a list of 2,136 Chinese characters.
In the Japanese culture that we come into contact with, we can always find that the Japanese language also contains kanji. Even many sentences, we Chinese can speculate directly through Chinese characters.
So why do kanji appear in Japanese? We know that ancient China had close ties with Japan, and kanji are now the phonetic script in Japanese. When did Japanese characters start to be used, and what is the purpose of them?
1. How did kanji get into Japan?
Japan, the pre-Qin period refers to the Wa Kingdom, and the gold seal of the Han Dynasty has been unearthed in Japan, which shows that Japan at that time had frequent exchanges with China. How Chinese characters appeared in Japan can even be traced back to the 1st century B.C., when archaeologists found artifacts from the Western Han Dynasty and Wang Mang's New Deal period in Japan.
These cultural relics have been engraved with Chinese characters, and it can be said that at least the Japanese have seen Chinese characters at that time. However, it is not clear exactly when it was introduced. In the "Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms", it is recorded that the Japanese people mentioned the queen of the Yamatai Kingdom and thanked Emperor Wei Ming in a letter.
(Wa Guo Records)
Therefore, if we want to talk about how kanji came into Japan, it must be due to these translations. During the Southern Dynasties, the Song State received a table text from the Wa Kingdom, which was ornately written, and it should also be the handwriting of the translator. In Japan, the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki are also written in kanji.
In the 5th century, the Baekje Kingdom from the Korean Peninsula sent scholars to Japan to serve as the prince's master, which shows that both the upper class of Japan and the upper class of Baekje began to pay attention to the Xi of learning Chinese characters.
At the same time, in the 5th century, with the eastward migration of Buddhist monks, some Chinese scriptures began to enter Japan, so Japan gradually developed a "Chinese" writing system.
(Kojiki, Japan)
In this case, Hanwen refers to the insertion of a unique Japanese particle into the kanji to help the Japanese understand their text. Eh, in fact, it is a bit similar to the katakana and hiragana in Japanese today, and the Japanese language is constantly developing and evolving.
The structure of the ancient Japanese language was similar to that of Chinese, but in the 5th century AD, the structure of Japanese kanji and articles had begun to take on its own style. And it was after understanding the kanji, understanding the culture of the Central Plains, and developing its own script that Japan really began its own development.
(Kanji)
Politically, ideologically, and morally, they have been further improved, and through the Confucian classics, they have established their own order of monarchy and courtiers, and laid an ideological foundation. In terms of succession, they also followed the distinction between the eldest and the youngest, which was obviously influenced by Chinese feudal society.
Later, Japan developed a set of "Manyoshu", which is often referred to as Manyokana. It refers to the use of specific kanji to express Japanese poetry with the help of their pronunciation, and the use of cursive writing, which has evolved into today's "hiragana", a set of Manyokana that can be used by any class from top to bottom in Japanese society.
(Manyoshu)
And the katakana is also because some students in the temple split a certain part of the kanji, marked the pronunciation of the kanji, and added the Japanese particle. In this way, Japan has changed again and again, forming the Japanese kanji we see today.
2. What is the use of kanji in Japanese?
In the current Japanese system, kanji are usually nouns, adjectives, verbs, or katakana. At the same time, kanji can also be used to represent pure Japanese words, or a kind of phonetic kanji, epigraphic kanji, some difficult words are expressed in kanji.
(Kanji in Japanese)
Hiragana can also mark the pronunciation of kanji, which can be used by people who do not have a good command of Japanese. This is also a significant role in the use of kanji in Japanese, that is, as an ideographic function. As we mentioned before, we Chinese can probably guess some of the Japanese sentences at a glance.
In everyday use of the Japanese language, kanji, hiragana, and romaji are often used together, which makes many people directly understand what it means. For example, in "紳士用のT シャツ1000円uniform", we can see that the word "gentleman" is an obvious Chinese character, combined with the "1000" at the back, and the "T", is it easy to guess the meaning?
(Japanese T-shirt)
Yes, the meaning of this sentence is that men's T-shirts are 1,000 yen each. Therefore, in the daily use of Japanese people, they are inseparable from kanji, after all, Japanese does not use sentences that are all hiragana, such as "すもももももももうはながちってしまった." ”
Even if a purebred Japanese come, they can't understand the meaning, and without the help of kanji, it will be very difficult for the Japanese to understand. Therefore, when we talk about the use of kanji in Japanese, it is actually to help everyone understand the meaning, and it is better to bring kanji to the Asian region under the influence of East Asian culture.
(Japanese image)
Inserting a digression, just like today's South Korea, it is the same that Chinese characters are inseparable on many important occasions. Because the ancient Chinese culture had a profound impact on them, when they were still a wild land, China had established a political system, a unified dynasty, and an absolutely unified centralized system.
Therefore, Chinese characters are an indelible piece of history in East Asia. The use of kanji in Japanese makes it easier for Japanese people to read and understand Japanese, and it is easier to use. This has become the basic structure of the Japanese language, and today there are a large number of kanji in Japanese, and we also commonly call them "borrowed words." ”
(Official Japanese Kanji)
3. What is the modern usage in Japan?
The importance of kanji in Japanese is self-evident, so is it commonly used today? In fact, from the examples mentioned above, it can be seen that the Japanese are inseparable from kanji, and the number of kanji in Japanese has reached an astonishing 43.59%, which even exceeds the proportion of fixed vocabulary in the Japanese language.
After the Japanese government carried out reforms in 1946, it stipulated 1,850 kanji to be used, and it was originally intended to restrict kanji. However, because the impact of Chinese characters on society was too great, on October 1, 1981, the Japanese government had no choice but to add dozens of Chinese characters, making it 1,945 Chinese characters, and then did not stipulate the scope of use of these Chinese characters.
(Commonly used kanji in Japanese)
By 2010, the latest commonly used Chinese characters published in Japan were 2,136. In elementary school education in Japan, it is also necessary to learn Xi "educational kanji", and from the first grade to the sixth grade of elementary school, there are different amounts of kanji, and a total of more than 1,000 kanji must Xi be learned.
Therefore, in modern Japan, it is impossible to peel off kanji, and even every student must learn Xi, which shows the wide range of use. Nowadays, Japanese people are inseparable from kanji, which is also a reflection of the irreplaceability of kanji.
Resources
When were Chinese characters introduced to Japan?.Hometown.com,2007-06-01
The Spread and Influence of Chinese Characters in Japan.China Social Sciences Journal,2021-07-26