The Kanji script is today related more so with the country of Japan rather than China although the script was originally developed in China. The modern Japanese logographic writing system was derived by the help of Chinese characters which they adopted into their system. The term kanji translates as Han characters which are Chinese in origin.
How come the Kanji script today belongs to Japan if it had its origin in China? The entire thing was the result of the trade followed by the two countries where Japan would import Chinese items with Hans script labeled on them.
An example of such an article includes the gold seal that was handed over by the then emperor of the Han dynasty to the Japanese. How and when the Japanese began to gain command over the application of the Chinese characters remains a mystery.
It could be quite possible that the Chinese themselves had started using the Chinese Kanji script in Japan when some of them migrated to China. There was no way that Japanese could have had an opportunity to comprehend and then learn the language by themselves.
With the passage of time the bonding between the two countries became stronger. There was a constant need of written documentation that was to be transferred between both the countries. Hence a formal body of people known as the fuhito was set up which was trained to handle the documents written in the Chinese script. This paved the way for the acceptance of the Chinese Kanji script in Japan.
When Chinese Kanji script came to Japan there was nothing like formal writing system existing in the country. Initially the Japanese started writing with the Chinese script itself but steadily they started developing a script of their own with the aid of the Kanji script which would be compatible with Japanese grammar.
The Japanese adopted the Chinese symbol characters in their script and wrote the Japanese language with Chinese symbol naming it as Kana syllable. It was a distinct achievement as far as Japanese script was concerned. To further the easy acceptance of their script the Japanese introduced phonetics in their script where as in China Chinese symbols had no phonetics whatsoever.
Where the Kanji script is concerned it is used more extensively in China than in Japan. But one fact that should be kept in mind is the style of both the scripts are quite different. On the surface they may look similar but they are structurally quite dissimilar.
The reading practices of the Kanji script in both China and Japan are also different. In China this script is treated exclusively as symbols and as such has no phonetic value where as in Japan it is read according to their phonetics as we have already discussed.
How come the Kanji script today belongs to Japan if it had its origin in China? The entire thing was the result of the trade followed by the two countries where Japan would import Chinese items with Hans script labeled on them.
An example of such an article includes the gold seal that was handed over by the then emperor of the Han dynasty to the Japanese. How and when the Japanese began to gain command over the application of the Chinese characters remains a mystery.
It could be quite possible that the Chinese themselves had started using the Chinese Kanji script in Japan when some of them migrated to China. There was no way that Japanese could have had an opportunity to comprehend and then learn the language by themselves.
With the passage of time the bonding between the two countries became stronger. There was a constant need of written documentation that was to be transferred between both the countries. Hence a formal body of people known as the fuhito was set up which was trained to handle the documents written in the Chinese script. This paved the way for the acceptance of the Chinese Kanji script in Japan.
When Chinese Kanji script came to Japan there was nothing like formal writing system existing in the country. Initially the Japanese started writing with the Chinese script itself but steadily they started developing a script of their own with the aid of the Kanji script which would be compatible with Japanese grammar.
The Japanese adopted the Chinese symbol characters in their script and wrote the Japanese language with Chinese symbol naming it as Kana syllable. It was a distinct achievement as far as Japanese script was concerned. To further the easy acceptance of their script the Japanese introduced phonetics in their script where as in China Chinese symbols had no phonetics whatsoever.
Where the Kanji script is concerned it is used more extensively in China than in Japan. But one fact that should be kept in mind is the style of both the scripts are quite different. On the surface they may look similar but they are structurally quite dissimilar.
The reading practices of the Kanji script in both China and Japan are also different. In China this script is treated exclusively as symbols and as such has no phonetic value where as in Japan it is read according to their phonetics as we have already discussed.
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Chinese kanji symbols are beautiful and used in a many different ways. If you would like to learn more about ancient Chinese symbols please follow the links.
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