Kanji

Kanji (; , hiragana: かんじ, Katakana: カンジ, , ) are logographic Chinese characters, historically adapted from Chinese writing scripts, used in the writing of Japanese. They comprised a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese and are still used today, along with the subsequently derived syllabic (phonographic) scripts of and . Most Kanji characters have two pronunciations: ''kun'yomi, based on the sounds of vernacular Japanese, where the Kanji is often phonetically transcribed with furigana; and on'yomi, based on the imitation of the original Middle Chinese sound

is an ancient writing system that uses Chinese characters to represent the Japanese language. It was the first known kana system to be developed as a means to represent the Japanese language phonetically. The date of the earliest usage of this type of kana is not clear, but it was in use since at least the mid-7th century. The name "man'yōgana" derives from the ''Man'yōshū, a Japanese poetry anthology from the Nara period written with man'yōgana.''

set of common kanji taught in schools and allowed in government documents

traditional component of Chinese ideographs, used for indexing them in dictionaries

are the simplified forms of kanji used in Japan since the promulgation of the tōyō kanji list in 1946. Some of the new forms found in shinjitai are also found in simplified Chinese characters, but shinjitai is generally not as extensive in the scope of its modification.

traditional Chinese radical man (U+2F08)

or is a way of homophonically reading kanji (Chinese characters) in Japanese. The here are the approximated , using Japanese consonants and vowels, of historical Chinese words. In contrast, the "readings" acquired from the of those same Chinese words into Japanese are known as ''kun'yomi''.

basic common (jōyō) kanji character taught (gakushū) in grade schools in Japan

thumb| form of as , using the form of (, "trash"), which literally translates as "protect beauty" In modern Japanese, principally refers to kanji used to phonetically represent native or borrowed words with less regard to the underlying meaning of the characters. This is similar to in Old Japanese. Conversely, also refers to kanji used semantically without regard to the readings.

traditional Chinese radical legs (U+2F09)

Kyūjitai () are the traditional forms of kanji (Chinese written characters used in Japanese writing). Their simplified counterparts are shinjitai (). Some of the simplified characters arose centuries ago and were in everyday use in both China and Japan, but they were considered inelegant, even uncouth. After World War II, simplified character forms were made official separately in Japan and mainland China, with Japan adopting fewer and less drastic changes. For example, () remains unchanged, whereas it was simplified to () on the mainland.

or is the way of reading kanji characters using the native Japanese word that matches the meaning of the Chinese character when it was introduced. This pronunciation is contrasted with ''on'yomi'', which is the reading based on the original Chinese pronunciation of the character.

traditional Chinese radical again (U+2F1C)

set of kanji allowed in people's names in addition to jōyō kanji

traditional Chinese radical hemp (U+2FC7)

Chinese character radical

basic calligraphic component needed to draw CJKV characters used in East Asia

traditional Chinese radical stop (U+2F4C)

thumb|The kanji for Tasuki (sash)|tasuki, a kokuji, with [[furigana above.]] In Japanese, or are kanji created in Japan rather than borrowed from China. Like most Chinese characters, they are primarily formed by combining existing characters—though using combinations that are not used in Chinese.

traditional Chinese radical nose (U+2FD0)

traditional Chinese radical bean (U+2F96)

traditional Chinese radical arrow (U+2F6E)

Chinese character radical

Chinese character radical

Chinese character radical

traditional Chinese radical stand (U+2F74)

traditional Chinese radical see (U+2F01)

character denoting the repetition of the previous syllable or more within a word, possibly with a implicit or explicit phonologic modification

list of 1850 kanji standardized after World War II in Japan

Wikimedia list article

Chinese character radical

traditional Chinese radical wheat (U+2FC6)

traditional Chinese radical bamboo (U+2F75)

traditional Chinese radical run (U+2F9B)

traditional Chinese radical profound (U+2F5E), dark, gloomy, mysterious

The was a gold currency unit in the shakkanhō system in pre-Meiji Japan. It was eventually replaced with a system based on the yen.

Chinese character radical

Japanese kanji aptitude test

Japanese event

the traditional etymological classification of hanzi into 6 categories: pictographs (象形), ideograms (指事), semantic–semantic compounds (會意), phono-semantic compounds (形聲), phonetic loans (假借), “derivative cognates” (轉注)

thumb|upright|Sign reading "umbrella stand" (, kasa-oki, standard form , showing ryakuji form of : ( + ), with inner omitted. Compare simplified Chinese . thumb|240px|Price tag reading ¥400, (bargain item), showing ryakuji form of , with bottom squares connected

are the often non-standard kanji character readings (pronunciations) found almost exclusively in Japanese names.

REDIRECT Kanji#Special readings

are words in the Japanese language composed of Chinese morphemes but invented in Japan rather than borrowed from China. Such terms are generally written using kanji and read according to the ''on'yomi pronunciations of the characters. While many words belong to the shared Sino-Japanese vocabulary (also known as kango), some kango do not exist in Chinese while others have a substantially different meaning from Chinese. Some kango'' have been borrowed back into Chinese.

are Japanese kanji readings borrowed from Chinese during the Tang dynasty, from the 7th to the 9th centuries; a period which corresponds to the Japanese Nara period. They were introduced by, among others, envoys from Japanese missions to Tang China. Kan-on should not be confused with , which were later phonetic loans.

Japanese inventor (1882-1972)

is a form of Japanese Internet slang which first appeared around 2009.

CJK unified ideograph (U+3106C): “taito” or “otodo” (kokuji)

are Japanese kanji readings based on the classical pronunciations of Chinese characters of the historically prestigious eastern Jiankang (now Nanjing) dialect.

archaic kana orthography system used to write Japanese during the Nara period

attempt to correlate standard spoken Japanese with the written word

Wikimedia list article

uncommon kanji character, used outside of the jōyō and jinmeiyō lists

thumb|The lyrics of a song in the book, (Gekkin Gakufu; 1877) annotated in tō-on pronunciation

forms of kanji particular to the Asahi Shimbun newspaper