When did Japanese writing originate, and what exactly is its relationship to kanji?

In ancient times, Japan had a language but no writing. Although modern comparative linguists consider Japanese to be part of the Ural-Altai language system in terms of its phonology, syntax, and vocabulary, in other words, it was originally treated in the same system as Mongolian, Tungusic, Turkish, and Korean. In fact, however, the language problem in Japan has not yet been completely solved. The Japanese scholar Shindo Toshizo once said, "Linguistically speaking, the Japanese language is a solitary orphan that has nothing to do with the languages of its front, back, and left sides". As a matter of fact, since the beginning of history, the Japanese people have adopted many Chinese characters and sounds in order to increase the richness of their language. In addition, Korean and Western European languages such as Dutch, Portuguese, and English have also made some contributions to the Japanese language. The idea that there was no writing in Japan before the introduction of Chinese characters was advocated by some Japanese scholars in the ninth century AD. Although there are some people who advocate the "theory of the existence of inherent writing" - the so-called "theory of writing in the Shinto era", such as Hirata Atsunobuin (1776-1843), a national scholar in the late Tokugawa period, who wrote a book entitled "Shinto Characters and Japanese Literature" from the standpoint of nationalism, and argued that writing existed as early as the Shinto era in Japan. However, in fact, this is left in the Tsushima Abiru family, for the Korean proverbs alteration, so the so-called inherent text that is not credible, and the Japanese ancient, and now has been recognized by the general scholars. However, most Japanese scholars claim that the writing of Japan was written after the Han Chinese crossed over to Japan. As to when the Chinese characters were introduced to Japan, it was before the introduction of the Chinese characters to Japan as recorded in the official history. The official introduction of Chinese characters into Japan was recorded in the historical records as the time of Emperor Ying Shen (around the end of the third century A.D., i.e., 248 years ago, Wang Ren crossed over to Japan from Baekje and presented ten volumes of the Analects of Confucius and one volume of the Thousand Character Essay, which was the beginning of the introduction of Chinese characters into Japan), and after Chinese characters were imported into Japan, it took many years until the middle of the eighth century, when Japanese people started to use the radicals of the regular Chinese characters to create the katakana, and to create the hiragana with the radicals of the cursive Chinese characters, in order to note the phonetic characters. Hiragana was used to indicate the sounds of kanji and Japanese phonetics. At that time, kanji were called male characters and kana were called female characters. Some Japanese scholars say that Yoshibe Zenbee made Katakana and Hiratakana was made by Kōkai, the master of Kōbō, but this is not credible, and at best, it was a combination of both of them. After Kanji was introduced to Japan, it became the only official script in Japan, not only for public records, but also for scholars to write books. However, there are two ways of reading kanji in Japan, the first is the original language of Japan, and the second is the original language of Japan, and the second is the original language of Japan. The former is the original language of Japan, while the latter is the sound imported from China. However, depending on the time and place of importation, the phonetic readings were divided into Han, Tang, and Wu. The introduction of Chinese characters into Japan not only contributed to the advancement of ancient Japanese culture, but also led to the emergence of the so-called katakana and hiragana Japanese characters. Although most of the books were written in Japanese characters (kana) since the early ninth century A.D. due to the establishment of the so-called "national culture" in Japan, Chinese characters have been used as the official script for public records since the early Meiji period. Since the opening of Japan to traffic with Europe and the United States, many foreign languages (called "imported languages" by the Japanese) have been mixed into the Japanese language. As early as 1866, Maishima Mitsuru (the founder of the Japanese postal system) published the so-called "Opinion on the abolition of kanji," advocating the use of kana rather than kanji, and then Fukuzawa Yukichi, a master of the liberal civil rights thesis, published his article "Teaching of the Characters" in 1873, which advocated that Later, Fukuzawa Yukichi, a master of liberal civil rights, published "The Teaching of Characters" in 1873, in which he advocated limiting the use of commonly used kanji to 2,000 or 3,000 characters without the use of obscure kanji. After the Second World War, there were even those who advocated the abolition of Chinese characters and the use of Roman characters, such as the educational mission hired by the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Forces (CHQ), which suggested that the Japanese government should limit the use of Chinese characters in order to allow more time to study other fields and to improve the educational effect. The Japanese government accepted this recommendation. The Japanese government accepted this suggestion and set the number of kanji used in education during compulsory education at 850 characters. Even Mitsunori Yasumoto, in early 1967, proposed the theory of "elimination of kanji after 230 years", which was the result of the foreign mentality. It has been nearly 130 years since Maejima Mizuho advocated the abolition of kanji in 1866, and kanji have not been abolished in Japanese for more than a hundred years. Later on, in view of the fact that the educational kanji of 850 characters could not be used to express daily writings, the Japanese government issued a list of "common kanji," stipulating that the common kanji were 1,850 characters, but later on, the National Language Council of Japan suggested to change it to 1,945 common kanji, which shows that kanji still have a deep-rooted power in Japan. This shows that kanji still has a deep-rooted power in Japan.

This is a reprint from the Tianya community

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