History
The Chinese writing system that we know of as kanji in Japanese, hanja in Korean, and hanzi in Mandarin, was the first written language form in Japan ("1.2.7."). Throughout the fifth to ninth century, Chinese influence and literature impacted Japanese culture in waves ("1.2.7."). Chinese was the official language of the country, used as the official government and legal writing system in Japan (). As hiragana and katakana became more organized and widely used, Japan went through several written language reforms. Many reforms considered dropping kanji altogether, although this has been consistently met with great resistance given that kanji is extremely useful in reading Japanese (“Asian Topics”). In the 1946 writing reform, the number of kanji used in popular media and education was decreased from roughly four thousand to less than half that number ("1.2.7."). Currently, the number of kanji required in fluent Japanese is increasing again to somewhere around two thousand.
Function
There is a very clear difference between hanzi and kanji. In Mandarin, each hanzi has only one possible pronunciation in a one-to-one correlation (Grigg). In Japanese each kanji has several different pronunciations. These pronunciations are categorized between kunyomi (the Japanese reading/pronunciation) and onyomi (the Chinese reading/pronunciation). There can be several pronunciations within these categories for a single kanji! However, there is a reason: the different pronunciations lead to different meanings. Unfortunately, a lot of kanji also happen to share a lot of pronunciations as well (Japanese is a language full of homophones). For instance, the word “kai” is the pronunciation for all these kanji, but the meaning of those kanji are completely different, as you can see below:
The Chinese writing system that we know of as kanji in Japanese, hanja in Korean, and hanzi in Mandarin, was the first written language form in Japan ("1.2.7."). Throughout the fifth to ninth century, Chinese influence and literature impacted Japanese culture in waves ("1.2.7."). Chinese was the official language of the country, used as the official government and legal writing system in Japan (). As hiragana and katakana became more organized and widely used, Japan went through several written language reforms. Many reforms considered dropping kanji altogether, although this has been consistently met with great resistance given that kanji is extremely useful in reading Japanese (“Asian Topics”). In the 1946 writing reform, the number of kanji used in popular media and education was decreased from roughly four thousand to less than half that number ("1.2.7."). Currently, the number of kanji required in fluent Japanese is increasing again to somewhere around two thousand.
Function
There is a very clear difference between hanzi and kanji. In Mandarin, each hanzi has only one possible pronunciation in a one-to-one correlation (Grigg). In Japanese each kanji has several different pronunciations. These pronunciations are categorized between kunyomi (the Japanese reading/pronunciation) and onyomi (the Chinese reading/pronunciation). There can be several pronunciations within these categories for a single kanji! However, there is a reason: the different pronunciations lead to different meanings. Unfortunately, a lot of kanji also happen to share a lot of pronunciations as well (Japanese is a language full of homophones). For instance, the word “kai” is the pronunciation for all these kanji, but the meaning of those kanji are completely different, as you can see below:
"kai" or "かい"can be any of these 会 回 貝 解 海 階 快 開 櫂 戒 怪 買 魁 界
A simple way to think of kanji is as a written shortcut. When you have five billion different meanings for the word/sound “kai” you need to have context to understand what “kai” is referring to in the sentence. The parts of kanji can break down the meaning of the whole character and calls back to the original use of that kanji in Chinese. This makes it that much quicker to understand the pronunciation and subject of the sentence. Similarly, it takes up a lot less space to convey a lot more meaning if you’re comparing using kanji with the other Japanese writing systems to using just hiragana alone. Let’s see an example:
"I am a hamburger."
"わたしは、ハンバーガーです。" (watashi wa, hanbaagaa desu)
”私は、ハンバーガーです。" (watashi wa, hanbaagaa desu)
See? The same amount of information given with less effort, time, and space.
Kanji is used to replace hiragana most often for nouns, adjectives, verbs, and place names. No one writes out Tokyo in hiragana, it is always spelled as 東京. However, this is probably specific to older, historical cities. Let's see another example of how kanji is useful:
Kanji is used to replace hiragana most often for nouns, adjectives, verbs, and place names. No one writes out Tokyo in hiragana, it is always spelled as 東京. However, this is probably specific to older, historical cities. Let's see another example of how kanji is useful: