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103-474: In ancient times, the kanji combination for the current day Sumiyoshi, 住吉, was pronounced Suminoe , and appeared in Man'yōshū (8th-century Japanese poetry). At present, Sumiyoshi, Suminoe, and Sumie represent different area names. Suminoe no Tsu (Suminoe Port), which in ancient times was located south of Sumiyoshi Grand Shrine, was home to Japan's first international port, and until Naniwa no Tsu (Naniwa Port)

206-413: A kun -reading) ; kun -only are common for Japanese-coined kanji ( kokuji ). Some common kanji have ten or more possible readings; the most complex common example is 生 , which is read as sei , shō , nama , ki , o-u , i-kiru , i-kasu , i-keru , u-mu , u-mareru , ha-eru , and ha-yasu , totaling eight basic readings (the first two are on , while

309-544: A ⟨g⟩ element to encode any non-standard character or glyph, including gaiji. The g stands for gaiji . There is no definitive count of kanji characters, just as there is none of Chinese characters generally. The Dai Kan-Wa Jiten , which is considered to be comprehensive in Japan, contains about 50,000 characters. The Zhonghua Zihai , published in 1994 in China, contains about 85,000 characters, but

412-703: A Chinese pronunciation of the character at the time it was adopted into Japanese, and kun'yomi , which are pronunciations of native Japanese words that correspond to the meaning of the kanji character. However, some kanji terms have pronunciations that correspond to neither the on'yomi nor the kun'yomi readings of the individual kanji within the term, such as 明日 ( ashita , "tomorrow") and 大人 ( otona , "adult"). Unusual or nonstandard kanji readings may be glossed using furigana . Kanji compounds are sometimes given arbitrary readings for stylistic purposes. For example, in Natsume Sōseki 's short story The Fifth Night ,

515-426: A combination of logographic kanji , which are adopted Chinese characters , and syllabic kana . Kana itself consists of a pair of syllabaries : hiragana , used primarily for native or naturalized Japanese words and grammatical elements; and katakana , used primarily for foreign words and names, loanwords , onomatopoeia , scientific names, and sometimes for emphasis. Almost all written Japanese sentences contain

618-737: A label for its sound), kanji are also called mana ( 真名 , literally "true name", in reference to the character being used as a label for its meaning). In modern Japanese, kanji are used to write certain words or parts of words (usually content words such as nouns , adjective stems , and verb stems ), while hiragana are used to write inflected verb and adjective endings, phonetic complements to disambiguate readings ( okurigana ), particles , and miscellaneous words which have no kanji or whose kanji are considered obscure or too difficult to read or remember. Katakana are mostly used for representing onomatopoeia , non-Japanese loanwords (except those borrowed from ancient Chinese ),

721-488: A lesser extent, modern written Japanese also uses initialisms from the Latin alphabet , for example in terms such as "BC/AD", "a.m./p.m.", "FBI", and "CD". Romanized Japanese is most frequently used by foreign students of Japanese who have not yet mastered kana, and by native speakers for computer input . Kanji ( 漢字 ) are logographic characters ( Japanese-simplified since 1946) taken from Chinese script and used in

824-454: A long gairaigo word may be the reading (this is classed as kun'yomi —see single character gairaigo , below)—the character 糎 has the seven kana reading センチメートル senchimētoru "centimeter", though it is generally written as "cm" (with two half-width characters, so occupying one space); another common example is '%' (the percent sign), which has the five kana reading パーセント pāsento . There are many kanji compounds that use

927-614: A mixture of on'yomi and kun'yomi , known as jūbako ( 重箱 , multi-layered food box) or yutō ( 湯桶 , hot liquid pail) words (depending on the order), which are themselves examples of this kind of compound (they are autological words ): the first character of jūbako is read using on'yomi , the second kun'yomi ( on-kun , Japanese : 重箱読み ). It is the other way around with yu-tō ( kun-on , Japanese : 湯桶読み ). Formally, these are referred to as jūbako-yomi ( 重箱読み , jūbako reading) and yutō-yomi ( 湯桶読み , yutō reading) . In both these words,

1030-693: A mixture of kanji and kana. Because of this mixture of scripts, in addition to a large inventory of kanji characters, the Japanese writing system is considered to be one of the most complicated currently in use. Several thousand kanji characters are in regular use, which mostly originate from traditional Chinese characters. Others made in Japan are referred to as "Japanese kanji" ( 和製漢字 , wasei kanji ), also known as "[our] country's kanji" ( 国字 , kokuji ). Each character has an intrinsic meaning (or range of meanings), and most have more than one pronunciation,

1133-401: A more formal tone, while hiragana may impart a softer or more emotional feeling. For example, the Japanese word kawaii , the Japanese equivalent of "cute", can be written entirely in hiragana as in かわいい , or with kanji as 可愛い . Some lexical items that are normally written using kanji have become grammaticalized in certain contexts, where they are instead written in hiragana. For example,

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1236-524: A new county system was introduced which resulted in Sumiyoshi-gun being absorbed into Higashinari-gun. Sumiyoshi-ku was formed in 1925 with the second expansion of Osaka city into an area that was formerly part of the original Sumiyoshi-gun. In 1943, two sections were separated from Sumiyoshi-ku to form Abeno-ku and Higashisumiyoshi-ku . Also, in 1943, part of Nishinari-ku and all of Kohamachi-ku were absorbed into Sumiyoshi-ku. In 1974 Sumiyoshi-ku

1339-430: A new kanji spelling is produced. Most often the word is a noun, which may be a simple noun (not a compound or derived from a verb), or may be a verb form or a fusional pronunciation. For example, the word 相撲 ( sumō , “ sumo ”) is originally from the verb 争う ( sumau , “to vie, to compete”), while 今日 ( kyō , “today”) is fusional (from older ke , “this” + fu , “day”). In rare cases, jukujikun

1442-520: A number of Chinese characters for their sound, rather than for their meaning. Man'yōgana written in cursive style evolved into hiragana (literally "fluttering kana " in reference to the motion of the brush during cursive writing), or onna-de , that is, "ladies' hand", a writing system that was accessible to women (who were denied higher education ). Major works of Heian-era literature by women were written in hiragana . Katakana (literally "partial kana ", in reference to

1545-534: A problem for information interchange, as the code point used to represent an external character will not be consistent from one computer or operating system to another. Gaiji were nominally prohibited in JIS X 0208-1997 where the available number of code-points was reduced to only 940. JIS X 0213-2000 used the entire range of code-points previously allocated to gaiji , making them completely unusable. Most desktop and mobile systems have moved to Unicode negating

1648-461: A profound influence in shaping Japanese culture, language, literature, history, and records. Inkstone artifacts at archaeological sites dating back to the earlier Yayoi period were also found to contain Chinese characters. Although some characters, as used in Japanese and Chinese, have similar meanings and pronunciations, others have meanings or pronunciations that are unique to one language or

1751-457: A similar pronunciation to the original Chinese . This Chinese-derived reading is known as on'yomi ( 音読み ) , and this vocabulary as a whole is referred to as Sino-Japanese in English and kango ( 漢語 ) in Japanese. At the same time, native Japanese already had words corresponding to many borrowed kanji. Authors increasingly used kanji to represent these words. This Japanese-derived reading

1854-401: A single word will have many such kanji spellings. An extreme example is hototogisu ( lesser cuckoo ) , which may be spelt in many ways, including 杜鵑 , 時鳥 , 子規 , 不如帰 , 霍公鳥 , 蜀魂 , 沓手鳥 , 杜宇 , 田鵑 , 沓直鳥 , and 郭公 —many of these variant spellings are particular to haiku poems. Japanese writing system The modern Japanese writing system uses

1957-450: A surname). This phenomenon is observed in animal names that are shortened and used as suffixes for zoological compound names, for example when 黄金虫 , normally read as koganemushi , is shortened to kogane in 黒黄金虫 kurokogane , although zoological names are commonly spelled with katakana rather than with kanji. Outside zoology, this type of shortening only occurs on a handful of words, for example 大元帥 daigen(sui) , or

2060-402: A syllabary derived from Chinese characters to simplify their reading, using portions of the characters as a kind of shorthand. The origin of the alphabet is attributed to the monk Kūkai . Katakana is used to write the following: Katakana can also be used to impart the idea that words are spoken in a foreign or otherwise unusual accent; for example, the speech of a robot. The first contact of

2163-640: A total of 2,528 characters, showing the standard for kanji used by ministries and agencies and in general society. In 1946, after World War II and under the Allied Occupation of Japan , the Japanese government, guided by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers , instituted a series of orthographic reforms, to help children learn and to simplify kanji use in literature and periodicals. The number of characters in circulation

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2266-565: A verb-forming suffix)) , is variously transliterated as aisuru or ai suru . Words in potentially unfamiliar foreign compounds, normally transliterated in katakana, may be separated by a punctuation mark called a 中黒 ( nakaguro , "middle dot") to aid Japanese readers. For example, ビル・ゲイツ ( Biru Geitsu , Bill Gates) . This punctuation is also occasionally used to separate native Japanese words, especially in concatenations of kanji characters where there might otherwise be confusion or ambiguity about interpretation, and especially for

2369-427: Is jukujikun for tonakai , from Ainu, but the on'yomi reading of junroku is also used. In some cases, Japanese coinages have subsequently been borrowed back into Chinese , such as 鮟鱇 ( ankō , “ monkfish ”). The underlying word for jukujikun is a native Japanese word or foreign borrowing, which either does not have an existing kanji spelling (either kun'yomi or ateji ) or for which

2472-453: Is 消しゴム (rōmaji: keshigomu ) which means "eraser", and uses a kanji, a hiragana, and two katakana characters, in that order. A statistical analysis of a corpus of the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun from the year 1993 (around 56.6 million tokens) revealed: Collation (word ordering) in Japanese is based on the kana, which express the pronunciation of the words, rather than the kanji. The kana may be ordered using two common orderings,

2575-455: Is a reading based on the pronunciation of a native Japanese word, or yamato kotoba , that closely approximated the meaning of the Chinese character when it was introduced. As with on'yomi , there can be multiple kun'yomi for the same kanji, and some kanji have no kun'yomi at all. Ateji ( 当て字 ) are characters used only for their sounds. In this case, pronunciation

2678-534: Is also applied to inflectional words (verbs and adjectives), in which case there is frequently a corresponding Chinese word. The most common example of an inflectional jukujikun is the adjective 可愛い ( kawai-i , “cute”), originally kawafayu-i ; the word ( 可愛 ) is used in Chinese , but the corresponding on'yomi is not used in Japanese. By contrast, "appropriate" can be either 相応しい ( fusawa-shii , as jukujikun ) or 相応 ( sōō , as on'yomi ). Which reading to use can be discerned by

2781-567: Is determined by contextual cues (such as whether the character represents part of a compound word versus an independent word), the exact intended meaning of the word, and its position within the sentence. For example, 今日 is mostly read kyō , meaning "today", but in formal writing it is instead read konnichi , meaning "nowadays", which is understood from context. Furigana is used to specify ambiguous readings, such as rare, literary, or otherwise non-standard readings. This ambiguity may arise due to more than one reading becoming activated in

2884-425: Is known as kun'yomi ( 訓読み ) . A kanji may have none, one, or several on'yomi and kun'yomi. Okurigana are written after the initial kanji for verbs and adjectives to give inflection and to help disambiguate a particular kanji's reading. The same character may be read several different ways depending on the word. For example, the character 行 is read i as the first syllable of iku ( 行く , "to go") , okona as

2987-826: Is normally written without spaces between words, and text is allowed to wrap from one line to the next without regard for word boundaries. This convention was originally modelled on Chinese writing, where spacing is superfluous because each character is essentially a word in itself (albeit compounds are common). However, in kana and mixed kana/kanji text, readers of Japanese must work out where word divisions lie based on an understanding of what makes sense. For example, あなたはお母さんにそっくりね。 must be mentally divided as あなた 　は　 お母さん 　に　 そっくり 　ね。 ( Anata wa okāsan ni sokkuri ne , "You're just like your mother") . In rōmaji, it may sometimes be ambiguous whether an item should be transliterated as two words or one. For example, 愛する ("to love") , composed of 愛 ( ai , "love") and する ( suru , (here

3090-416: Is often considered more formal or literary, just as latinate words in English often mark a higher register . The significant reforms of the 19th century Meiji era did not initially impact the Japanese writing system. However, the language itself was changing due to the increase in literacy resulting from education reforms, the massive influx of words (both borrowed from other languages or newly coined), and

3193-953: Is still based on a standard reading, or used only for meaning (broadly a form of ateji , narrowly jukujikun ). Therefore, only the full compound—not the individual character—has a reading. There are also special cases where the reading is completely different, often based on a historical or traditional reading. The analogous phenomenon occurs to a much lesser degree in Chinese varieties , where there are literary and colloquial readings of Chinese characters —borrowed readings and native readings. In Chinese these borrowed readings and native readings are etymologically related, since they are between Chinese varieties (which are related), not from Chinese to Japanese (which are not related). They thus form doublets and are generally similar, analogous to different on'yomi , reflecting different stages of Chinese borrowings into Japanese. Longer readings exist for non- Jōyō characters and non-kanji symbols, where

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3296-415: Is written in Japanese by using the same characters as in traditional Chinese , and both refer to the character writing system known in Chinese as hanzi ( traditional Chinese : 漢字 ; simplified Chinese : 汉字 ; pinyin : hànzì ; lit. ' Han characters'). The significant use of Chinese characters in Japan first began to take hold around the 5th century AD and has since had

3399-526: The Nihon Shoki and Kojiki , a semi-legendary scholar called Wani was dispatched to Japan by the (Korean) Kingdom of Baekje during the reign of Emperor Ōjin in the early fifth century, bringing with him knowledge of Confucianism and Chinese characters. The earliest Japanese documents were probably written by bilingual Chinese or Korean officials employed at the Yamato court. For example,

3502-406: The kyōiku kanji, plus 1,110 additional kanji taught in junior high and high school. In publishing, characters outside this category are often given furigana . The jōyō kanji were introduced in 1981, replacing an older list of 1,850 characters known as the tōyō kanji ( 当用漢字 , general-use kanji) , introduced in 1946. Originally numbering 1,945 characters, the jōyō kanji list

3605-474: The on'yomi has a long vowel; long vowels in Japanese generally are derived from sound changes common to loans from Chinese, hence distinctive of on'yomi . These are the Japanese form of hybrid words . Other examples include basho ( 場所 , "place", kun-on , 湯桶読み ) , kin'iro ( 金色 , "golden", on-kun , 重箱読み ) and aikidō ( 合気道 , the martial art Aikido ", kun-on-on , 湯桶読み ) . Ateji often use mixed readings. For instance,

3708-716: The Heian period (794–1185). The main creators of the current hiragana were ladies of the Japanese imperial court , who used the script in the writing of personal communications and literature. Hiragana is used to write the following: There is also some flexibility for words with common kanji renditions to be instead written in hiragana, depending on the individual author's preference (all Japanese words can be spelled out entirely in hiragana or katakana, even when they are normally written using kanji). Some words are colloquially written in hiragana and writing them in kanji might give them

3811-695: The King of Na gold seal , said to have been given by Emperor Guangwu of Han in AD 57 to a Japanese emissary. However, it is unlikely that the Japanese became literate in Chinese writing any earlier than the 4th century AD. Initially Chinese characters were not used for writing Japanese, as literacy meant fluency in Classical Chinese , not the vernacular. Eventually a system called kanbun ( 漢文 ) developed, which, along with kanji and something very similar to Chinese grammar, employed diacritics to hint at

3914-604: The Latin alphabet , Cyrillic script , Greek alphabet , Arabic numerals , etc. for use in information processing. They have had numerous revisions. The current standards are: Gaiji ( 外字 , literally "external characters") are kanji that are not represented in existing Japanese encoding systems . These include variant forms of common kanji that need to be represented alongside the more conventional glyph in reference works and can include non-kanji symbols as well. Gaiji can be either user-defined characters, system-specific characters or third-party add-on products. Both are

4017-643: The Meiji Restoration , Japan made its own efforts to simplify the characters, now known as shinjitai , by a process similar to China 's simplification efforts , with the intention to increase literacy among the common folk. Since the 1920s, the Japanese government has published character lists periodically to help direct the education of its citizenry through the myriad Chinese characters that exist. There are nearly 3,000 kanji used in Japanese names and in common communication . The term kanji in Japanese literally means " Han characters". It

4120-478: The Osaka Museum of Natural History . [REDACTED] Media related to Sumiyoshi-ku, Osaka at Wikimedia Commons 34°36′13.23″N 135°30′2.26″E  /  34.6036750°N 135.5006278°E  / 34.6036750; 135.5006278 Kanji Kanji ( 漢字 , Japanese pronunciation: [kaɲdʑi] ) are the logographic Chinese characters adapted from the Chinese script used in

4223-613: The Portuguese inherited them during the Arab occupation of the Iberian peninsula . See also Japanese numerals . Hentaigana ( 変体仮名 ) , a set of archaic kana made obsolete by the Meiji reformation , are sometimes used to impart an archaic flavor, like in items of food (esp. soba ). Jukujikun refers to instances in which words are written using kanji that reflect the meaning of

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4326-461: The Settsu province . In ancient times the area prospered independently of the central Osaka area. In 1878, an act was passed for the organization of areas into a county system of gun (district), ku (ward), machi (town) and mura (village/neighbourhood). From this Sumiyoshi-gun (district) was created. The district town hall was built in the only town of the district, Anryuu-machi. In April 1896,

4429-580: The 1,026 first kanji characters that Japanese children learn in elementary school, from first grade to sixth grade. The grade-level breakdown is known as the gakunen-betsu kanji haitōhyō ( 学年別漢字配当表 ) , or the gakushū kanji ( 学習漢字 ) . This list of kanji is maintained by the Japanese Ministry of Education and prescribes which kanji characters and which kanji readings students should learn for each grade. The jōyō kanji ( 常用漢字 , regular-use kanji) are 2,136 characters consisting of all

4532-434: The 7th century, a record of trading for cloth and salt. The Japanese language had no written form at the time Chinese characters were introduced, and texts were written and read only in Chinese. Later, during the Heian period (794–1185), a system known as kanbun emerged, which involved using Chinese text with diacritical marks to allow Japanese speakers to read Chinese sentences and restructure them into Japanese on

4635-560: The Chinese pronunciation but was not the Chinese pronunciation or reading itself, similar to the English pronunciation of Latin loanwords. There also exist kanji created by the Japanese and given an on'yomi reading despite not being a Chinese-derived or a Chinese-originating character. Some kanji were introduced from different parts of China at different times, and so have multiple on'yomi , and often multiple meanings. Kanji invented in Japan ( kokuji ) would not normally be expected to have on'yomi , but there are exceptions, such as

4738-486: The Education Ministry introduced three reforms aimed at improving the process of education in Japanese writing: The first two of these were generally accepted, but the third was hotly contested, particularly by conservatives , to the extent that it was withdrawn in 1908. The partial failure of the 1900 reforms combined with the rise of nationalism in Japan effectively prevented further significant reform of

4841-419: The Japanese court. In ancient times, paper was so rare that people wrote kanji onto thin, rectangular strips of wood, called mokkan ( 木簡 ). These wooden boards were used for communication between government offices, tags for goods transported between various countries, and the practice of writing. The oldest written kanji in Japan discovered so far were written in ink on wood as a wooden strip dated to

4944-729: The Japanese language (that is, each different syllable, strictly each mora ) corresponds to one character in each syllabary. Unlike kanji, these characters intrinsically represent sounds only; they convey meaning only as part of words. Hiragana and katakana characters also originally derive from Chinese characters, but they have been simplified and modified to such an extent that their origins are no longer visually obvious. Texts without kanji are rare; most are either children's books—since children tend to know few kanji at an early age—or early electronics such as computers, phones, and video games, which could not display complex graphemes like kanji due to both graphical and computational limitations. To

5047-535: The Japanese translation. The earliest written history of Japan, the Kojiki ( 古事記 ) , compiled sometime before 712, was written in kanbun. Even today Japanese high schools and some junior high schools teach kanbun as part of the curriculum. No full-fledged script for written Japanese existed until the development of man'yōgana ( 万葉仮名 ) , which appropriated kanji for their phonetic value (derived from their Chinese readings) rather than their semantic value. Man'yōgana

5150-511: The Japanese with the Latin alphabet occurred in the 16th century, during the Muromachi period , when they had contact with Portuguese navigators, the first European people to visit the Japanese islands. The earliest Japanese romanization system was based on  Portuguese orthography . It was developed around 1548 by a Japanese Catholic named  Anjirō . The Latin alphabet is used to write

5253-416: The Latin alphabet ( rōmaji ), although this will generally only be done for the convenience of foreign language speakers: Translated into English, this reads: All words in modern Japanese can be written using hiragana, katakana, and rōmaji, while only some have kanji. Words that have no dedicated kanji may still be written with kanji by employing either ateji (as in man'yogana, から = 可良) or jukujikun, as in

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5356-481: The Occupation administration proposed a wholesale conversion to rōmaji, but it was not endorsed by other specialists and did not proceed. In addition, the practice of writing horizontally in a right-to-left direction was generally replaced by left-to-right writing. The right-to-left order was considered a special case of vertical writing, with columns one character high, rather than horizontal writing per se; it

5459-404: The author uses 接続って for tsunagatte , the gerundive -te form of the verb tsunagaru ("to connect"), which would usually be written as 繋がって or つながって . The word 接続 , meaning "connection", is normally pronounced setsuzoku . Hiragana ( 平仮名 ) emerged as a manual simplification via cursive script of the most phonetically widespread kanji among those who could read and write during

5562-418: The bottom of each column, the reader continues at the top of the column to the left of the current one. Modern Japanese also uses another writing format, called yokogaki ( 横書き ) . This writing format is horizontal and reads from left to right, as in English. A book printed in tategaki opens with the spine of the book to the right, while a book printed in yokogaki opens with the spine to the left. Japanese

5665-417: The brain. Kanji readings are categorized as either on'yomi ( 音読み , literally "sound reading" ) , from Chinese, or kun'yomi ( 訓読み , literally "meaning reading" ) , native Japanese, and most characters have at least two readings—at least one of each. However, some characters have only a single reading, such as kiku ( 菊 , "chrysanthemum", an on -reading) or iwashi ( 鰯 , "sardine",

5768-687: The broader sense "nowadays" or "current", such as 今日的 ("present-day"), although in the phrase konnichi wa ("good day"), konnichi is typically spelled wholly with hiragana rather than with the kanji 今日 . Jukujikun are primarily used for some native Japanese words, such as Yamato ( 大和 or 倭 , the name of the dominant ethnic group of Japan, a former Japanese province as well as ancient name for Japan), and for some old borrowings, such as 柳葉魚 ( shishamo , literally "willow leaf fish") from Ainu, 煙草 ( tabako , literally “smoke grass”) from Portuguese, or 麦酒 ( bīru , literally “wheat alcohol”) from Dutch, especially if

5871-400: The character 働 "to work", which has the kun'yomi " hatara(ku) " and the on'yomi " dō ", and 腺 "gland", which has only the on'yomi " sen "—in both cases these come from the on'yomi of the phonetic component, respectively 動 " dō " and 泉 " sen ". The kun'yomi ( 訓読み , [kɯɰ̃jomi] , lit. "meaning reading") , the native reading,

5974-431: The characters' individual on'yomi or kun'yomi . From the point of view of the character, rather than the word, this is known as a nankun ( 難訓 , "difficult reading") , and these are listed in kanji dictionaries under the entry for the character. Gikun are other readings assigned to a character instead of its standard readings. An example is reading 寒 (meaning "cold") as fuyu ("winter") rather than

6077-514: The characters, and only infrequently as konchō , the on'yomi of the characters. The most common reading is kesa , a native bisyllabic Japanese word that may be seen as a single morpheme , or as a compound of ke (“this”, as in kefu , the older reading for 今日 , “today”), and asa , “morning”. Likewise, 今日 ("today") is also jukujikun , usually read with the native reading kyō ; its on'yomi , konnichi , does occur in certain words and expressions, especially in

6180-478: The chief priest of Sumiyoshi Grand Shrine for ten years. It was known as Sumiyoshi-angou (住吉行宮) and was the base of the Southern Court. There was also a town built around Sumiyoshi Grand Shrine, and until the Meiji period and ensuing land reclamation projects, the sea shore was quite close to the shrine. Sumiyoshi Moyou , a famous picture map showing a Japanese place of scenic beauty (風光明媚な風景) depicts

6283-495: The choice of which depends on context. Japanese primary and secondary school students are required to learn 2,136 jōyō kanji as of 2010. The total number of kanji is well over 50,000, though this includes tens of thousands of characters only present in historical writings and never used in modern Japanese. In modern Japanese, the hiragana and katakana syllabaries each contain 46 basic characters, or 71 including diacritics . With one or two minor exceptions, each different sound in

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6386-454: The city of Sapporo ( サッポロ ), whose name derives from the Ainu language and has no meaning in Japanese, is written with the on-kun compound [札幌] Error: {{Lang}}: invalid parameter: |4= ( help ) (which includes sokuon as if it were a purely on compound). Gikun ( 義訓 ) and jukujikun ( 熟字訓 ) are readings of kanji combinations that have no direct correspondence to

6489-488: The diplomatic correspondence from King Bu of Wa to Emperor Shun of Liu Song in 478 AD has been praised for its skillful use of allusion . Later, groups of people called fuhito were organized under the monarch to read and write Classical Chinese . During the reign of Empress Suiko (593–628), the Yamato court began sending full-scale diplomatic missions to China, which resulted in a large increase in Chinese literacy at

6592-574: The entire word—rather than each part of the word being centered over its corresponding character, as is often done for the usual phono-semantic readings. Broadly speaking, jukujikun can be considered a form of ateji , though in narrow usage, " ateji " refers specifically to using characters for sound and not meaning (sound-spelling), whereas " jukujikun " refers to using characters for their meaning and not sound (meaning-spelling). Many jukujikun (established meaning-spellings) began as gikun (improvised meaning-spellings). Occasionally,

6695-592: The first three syllables of okonau ( 行う , "to carry out") , gyō in the compound word gyōretsu ( 行列 , "line" or "procession") , kō in the word ginkō ( 銀行 , "bank") , and an in the word andon ( 行灯 , "lantern") . Some linguists have compared the Japanese borrowing of Chinese-derived vocabulary as akin to the influx of Romance vocabulary into English during the Norman conquest of England . Like English, Japanese has many synonyms of differing origin, with words from both Chinese and native Japanese. Sino-Japanese

6798-462: The fly, by changing word order and adding particles and verb endings, in accordance with the rules of Japanese grammar . This was essentially a kind of codified sight translation . Chinese characters also came to be used to write texts in the vernacular Japanese language , resulting in the modern kana syllabaries. Around 650 AD, a writing system called man'yōgana (used in the ancient poetry anthology Man'yōshū ) evolved that used

6901-548: The following: Arabic numerals (as opposed to traditional kanji numerals) are often used to write numbers in horizontal text , especially when numbering things rather than indicating a quantity, such as telephone numbers, serial numbers and addresses. Arabic numerals were introduced in Japan probably at the same time as the Latin alphabet, in the 16th century during the Muromachi period , the first contact being via Portuguese navigators. These numerals did not originate in Europe, as

7004-448: The following: Some Japanese words are written with different kanji depending on the specific usage of the word—for instance, the word naosu (to fix, or to cure) is written 治す when it refers to curing a person, and 直す when it refers to fixing an object. Most kanji have more than one possible pronunciation (or "reading"), and some common kanji have many. These are broadly divided into on'yomi , which are readings that approximate to

7107-400: The full names of people. The Japanese full stop ( 。 ) and comma ( 、 ) are used for similar purposes to their English equivalents, though comma usage can be more fluid than is the case in English. The question mark ( ？ ) is not used in traditional or formal Japanese, but it may be used in informal writing, or in transcriptions of dialogue where it might not otherwise be clear that a statement

7210-433: The historical male name suffix 右衛門 -emon , which was shortened from the word uemon . The kanji compound for jukujikun is often idiosyncratic and created for the word, and there is no corresponding Chinese word with that spelling. In other cases, a kanji compound for an existing Chinese word is reused, where the Chinese word and on'yomi may or may not be used in Japanese. For example, 馴鹿 (“reindeer”)

7313-480: The landscape in the area of the shrine at the time. In ancient times, the estates of a number of powerful family clans were located in the Tezukayama area. Included among these was the house of the famous Ootomo No Kanamura, who supported Emperor Keitai. Tezukayama Tumulus is the burial site of either Ootomo No Kanamura or one of his children. Sumiyoshi-ku (ward) was originally called Sumiyoshi-gun (district) of

7416-412: The limitation of kanji. After the Meiji Restoration and as Japan entered an era of active exchange with foreign countries, the need for script reform in Japan began to be called for. Some scholars argued for the abolition of kanji and the writing of Japanese using only kana or Latin characters. However, these views were not so widespread. However, the need to limit the number of kanji characters

7519-705: The majority of them are not in common use in any country, and many are obscure variants or archaic forms. A list of 2,136 jōyō kanji is regarded as necessary for functional literacy in Japanese. Approximately a thousand more characters are commonly used and readily understood by the majority in Japan and a few thousand more find occasional use, particularly in specialized fields of study but those may be obscure to most out of context. A total of 13,108 characters can be encoded in various Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji . Individual kanji may be used to write one or more different words or morphemes , leading to different pronunciations or "readings." The correct reading

7622-485: The names of plants and animals (with exceptions), and for emphasis on certain words. Since ancient times, there has been a strong opinion in Japan that kanji is the orthodox form of writing, but there were also people who argued against it. Kamo no Mabuchi , a scholar of the Edo period , criticized the large number of characters in kanji. He also appreciated the small number of characters in kana characters and argued for

7725-407: The need for gaiji for most users. Nevertheless, they persist today in Japan's three major mobile phone information portals, where they are used for emoji (pictorial characters). Unicode allows for optional encoding of gaiji in private use areas , while Adobe's SING (Smart INdependent Glyphlets) technology allows the creation of customized gaiji. The Text Encoding Initiative uses

7828-604: The original list published in 1952, but new additions have been made frequently. Sometimes the term jinmeiyō kanji refers to all 2,999 kanji from both the jōyō and jinmeiyō lists combined. Hyōgai kanji ( 表外漢字 , "unlisted characters") are any kanji not contained in the jōyō kanji and jinmeiyō kanji lists. These are generally written using traditional characters, but extended shinjitai forms exist. The Japanese Industrial Standards for kanji and kana define character code-points for each kanji and kana , as well as other forms of writing such as

7931-481: The other previously used hiragana as hentaigana and discarding them in daily use. The period immediately following World War II saw a rapid and significant reform of the writing system. This was in part due to influence of the Occupation authorities, but to a significant extent was due to the removal of traditionalists from control of the educational system, which meant that previously stalled revisions could proceed. The major reforms were: At one stage, an advisor in

8034-485: The other. For example, 誠 means 'honest' in both languages but is pronounced makoto or sei in Japanese, and chéng in Standard Mandarin Chinese . Individual kanji characters and multi-kanji words invented in Japan from Chinese morphemes have been borrowed into Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese in recent times. These are known as Wasei-kango , or Japanese-made Chinese words. For example,

8137-407: The practice of using a part of a kanji character) emerged via a parallel path: monastery students simplified man'yōgana to a single constituent element. Thus the two other writing systems, hiragana and katakana , referred to collectively as kana , are descended from kanji. In contrast with kana ( 仮名 , literally "borrowed name", in reference to the character being "borrowed" as

8240-594: The presence or absence of the -shii ending ( okurigana ). A common example of a verb with jukujikun is 流行る ( haya-ru , “to spread, to be in vogue”), corresponding to on'yomi 流行 ( ryūkō ). A sample jukujikun deverbal (noun derived from a verb form) is 強請 ( yusuri , “extortion”), from 強請る ( yusu-ru , “to extort”), spelling from 強請 ( kyōsei , “extortion”). Note that there are also compound verbs and, less commonly, compound adjectives, and while these may have multiple kanji without intervening characters, they are read using

8343-478: The prevalent gojūon (fifty-sound) ordering, or the old-fashioned iroha ordering. Kanji dictionaries are usually collated using the radical system, though other systems, such as SKIP , also exist. Traditionally, Japanese is written in a format called tategaki ( 縦書き ) , which was inherited from traditional Chinese practice. In this format, the characters are written in columns going from top to bottom, with columns ordered from right to left. After reaching

8446-402: The readings contradict the kanji), or clarification if the referent may not be obvious. Jukujikun are when the standard kanji for a word are related to the meaning, but not the sound. The word is pronounced as a whole, not corresponding to sounds of individual kanji. For example, 今朝 ("this morning") is jukujikun . This word is not read as *ima'asa , the expected kun'yomi of

8549-482: The rest are kun ), or 12 if related verbs are counted as distinct. The on'yomi ( 音読み , [oɰ̃jomi] , lit. "sound(-based) reading") , the Sino-Japanese reading, is the modern descendant of the Japanese approximation of the base Chinese pronunciation of the character at the time it was introduced. It was often previously referred to as translation reading , as it was recreated readings of

8652-439: The root of the verb 見る ( miru , "see") is normally written with the kanji 見 for the mi portion. However, when used as a supplementary verb as in 試してみる ( tameshite miru ) meaning "to try out", the whole verb is typically written in hiragana as みる , as we see also in 食べてみる ( tabete miru , "try to eat [it] and see"). Katakana ( 片仮名 ) emerged around the 9th century, in the Heian period , when Buddhist monks created

8755-575: The standard readings samu or kan , and instead of the usual spelling for fuyu of 冬 . Another example is using 煙草 (lit. "smoke grass") with the reading tabako ("tobacco") rather than the otherwise-expected readings of *kemuri-gusa or *ensō . Some of these, such as for tabako , have become lexicalized , but in many cases this kind of use is typically non-standard and employed in specific contexts by individual writers. Aided with furigana , gikun could be used to convey complex literary or poetic effect (especially if

8858-432: The title of とある科学の超電磁砲 (超電磁砲 being used to represent レールガン). Although rare, there are some words that use all three scripts in the same word. An example of this is the term くノ一 ( rōmaji : kunoichi ), which uses a hiragana, a katakana, and a kanji character, in that order. It is said that if all three characters are put in the same kanji "square", they all combine to create the kanji 女 (woman/female). Another example

8961-615: The ultimate success of movements such as the influential genbun itchi ( 言文一致 ) which resulted in Japanese being written in the colloquial form of the language instead of the wide range of historical and classical styles used previously. The difficulty of written Japanese was a topic of debate, with several proposals in the late 19th century that the number of kanji in use be limited. In addition, exposure to non-Japanese texts led to unsuccessful proposals that Japanese be written entirely in kana or rōmaji. This period saw Western-style punctuation marks introduced into Japanese writing. In 1900,

9064-411: The usual kun'yomi . Examples include 面白い ( omo-shiro-i , “interesting”, literally “face + white”) and 狡賢い ( zuru-gashiko-i , “sly”, lit. “cunning, crafty + clever, smart”). Typographically, the furigana for jukujikun are often written so they are centered across the entire word, or for inflectional words over the entire root—corresponding to the reading being related to

9167-623: The word for telephone , 電話 denwa in Japanese, was derived from the Chinese words for "electric" and "conversation." It was then calqued as diànhuà in Mandarin Chinese, điện thoại in Vietnamese and 전화 jeonhwa in Korean. Chinese characters first came to Japan on official seals, letters, swords, coins, mirrors, and other decorative items imported from China . The earliest known instance of such an import

9270-623: The word though the pronunciation of the word is entirely unrelated to the usual pronunciations of the constituent kanji . Conversely, ateji refers to the employment of kanji that appear solely to represent the sound of the compound word but are, conceptually, utterly unrelated to the signification of the word. Sentences are commonly written using a combination of all three Japanese scripts: kanji ( in red ), hiragana ( in purple ), and katakana ( in orange ), and in limited instances also include Latin alphabet characters ( in green ) and Arabic numerals (in black): The same text can be transliterated to

9373-674: The word was borrowed before the Meiji period . Words whose kanji are jukujikun are often usually written as hiragana (if native), or katakana (if borrowed); some old borrowed words are also written as hiragana , especially Portuguese loanwords such as かるた ( karuta ) from Portuguese " carta " (English “card”) or てんぷら ( tempura ) from Portuguese " tempora " (English “times, season”), as well as たばこ ( tabako ). Sometimes, jukujikun can even have more kanji than there are syllables, examples being kera ( 啄木鳥 , “woodpecker”), gumi ( 胡頽子 , “silver berry, oleaster”), and Hozumi ( 八月朔日 ,

9476-613: The writing of Japanese . It is known from archaeological evidence that the first contacts that the Japanese had with Chinese writing took place in the 1st century AD, during the late Yayoi period . However, the Japanese people of that era probably had little to no comprehension of the script, and they would remain relatively illiterate until the 5th century AD in the Kofun period , when writing in Japan became more widespread. Kanji characters are used to write most content words of native Japanese or (historically) Chinese origin, which include

9579-460: The writing of Japanese . They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used, along with the subsequently-derived syllabic scripts of hiragana and katakana . The characters have Japanese pronunciations ; most have two, with one based on the Chinese sound. A few characters were invented in Japan by constructing character components derived from other Chinese characters. After

9682-509: The writing system. The period before World War II saw numerous proposals to restrict the number of kanji in use, and several newspapers voluntarily restricted their kanji usage and increased usage of furigana ; however, there was no official endorsement of these, and indeed much opposition. However, one successful reform was the standardization of hiragana, which involved reducing the possibilities of writing down Japanese morae down to only one hiragana character per morae, which led to labeling all

9785-567: Was constructed, it was the country's international point of contact. The Japanese envoy to the Sui and T'ang dynasties of China departed there, and it was also Japan's portal to the Silk Road . Importantly, Buddhism was also introduced to Japan (via China and Korea) through this port. In the Middle Ages, the throne of Emperor Go-Murakami of the Southern Court was placed in the house of

9888-475: Was expanded to 2,136 in 2010. Some of the new characters were previously jinmeiyō kanji; some are used to write prefecture names: 阪 , 熊 , 奈 , 岡 , 鹿 , 梨 , 阜 , 埼 , 茨 , 栃 and 媛 . As of September 25, 2017, the jinmeiyō kanji ( 人名用漢字 , kanji for use in personal names) consists of 863 characters. Kanji on this list are mostly used in people's names and some are traditional variants of jōyō kanji. There were only 92 kanji in

9991-608: Was further subdivided, resulting in Sumiyoshi Park , Anryuu, and Hamaguchi becoming part of the newly formed Suminoe-ku . Aside from Sumiyoshi Taisha, there is also a large number of restaurants along Abiko-Suji and in the Nagai area (the intersection of Nagai Koen-Dori and Abiko-Suji), as well as numerous small shops and businesses on Abeno-Suji. Nagai also abuts Nagai Park in neighboring Higashisumiyoshi Ward which includes Nagai Stadium , Nagai Botanical Garden , as well as

10094-579: Was initially used to record poetry, as in the Man'yōshū ( 万葉集 ) , compiled sometime before 759, whence the writing system derives its name. Some scholars claim that man'yōgana originated from Baekje , but this hypothesis is denied by mainstream Japanese scholars. The modern kana , namely hiragana and katakana , are simplifications and systemizations of man'yōgana. Due to the large number of words and concepts entering Japan from China which had no native equivalent, many words entered Japanese directly, with

10197-401: Was intoned as a question. The exclamation mark ( ！ ) is restricted to informal writing. Colons and semicolons are available but are not common in ordinary text. Quotation marks are written as 「 ... 」 , and nested quotation marks as 『 ... 』 . Several bracket styles and dashes are available. Japan 's first encounters with Chinese characters may have come as early as the 1st century AD with

10300-526: Was reduced, and formal lists of characters to be learned during each grade of school were established. Some characters were given simplified glyphs , called shinjitai ( 新字体 ) . Many variant forms of characters and obscure alternatives for common characters were officially discouraged. These are simply guidelines, so many characters outside these standards are still widely known and commonly used; these are known as hyōgaiji ( 表外字 ) . The kyōiku kanji ( 教育漢字 , lit. "education kanji") are

10403-500: Was the King of Na gold seal given by Emperor Guangwu of Han to a Wa emissary in 57 AD. Chinese coins as well as inkstones from the first century AD have also been found in Yayoi period archaeological sites. However, the Japanese people of that era probably had little to no comprehension of the script, and they would remain relatively illiterate until the fifth century AD, when writing in Japan became more widespread. According to

10506-639: Was understood, and in May 1923, the Japanese government announced 1,962 kanji characters for regular use. In 1940, the Japanese Army decided on the "Table of Restricted Kanji for Weapons Names" ( 兵器名称用制限漢字表 , heiki meishō yō seigen kanji hyō ) which limited the number of kanji that could be used for weapons names to 1,235. In 1942, the National Language Council announced the "Standard Kanji Table" ( 標準漢字表 , hyōjun kanji-hyō ) with

10609-433: Was used for single lines of text on signs, etc. (e.g., the station sign at Tokyo reads 駅京東 , which is 東京駅 from right-to-left). The post-war reforms have mostly survived, although some of the restrictions have been relaxed. The replacement of the tōyō kanji in 1981 with the 1,945 jōyō kanji ( 常用漢字 ) —a modification of the tōyō kanji —was accompanied by a change from "restriction" to "recommendation", and in general

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