Topic Request: The Origin of Kanji

Comprehensible Japanese Topic Requests
1

Hi,

After watching Yoshito-sensei’s video on the differences between Chinese and Japanese characters, I thought it would be interesting to learn about the origin of kanji.

I remember learning in my history class that Japan did not actually have a writing system in the past and therefore decided to borrow Chinese characters in order to create their own writing system.

There are two main types of writing systems in the Chinese language: simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese. Most countries use simplified Chinese, but Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau use traditional. (As indicated by the names, people who use traditional Chinese can easily read simplified Chinese, but it’s much harder the other way around.)

I have Chinese-Malaysian friends from Malaysia where the majority of Chinese speakers use simplified and they always comment that learning kanji is difficult for them because kanji typically is based on traditional. (This would make sense because simplified is quite new; the writing system was only introduced in 1956 according to google.)

However, I also have friends from Taiwan and Hong Kong who say that while kanji is mostly based on traditional, there are some elements of simplified Chinese in some characters. Of course, languages do evolve over time, but it makes me wonder why there are some kanji characters based on simplified Chinese.

Sorry for the long post and thank you for taking the time to read this!

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2

Hello, Aki.
I am from mainland China and have used simplified Chinese characters since childhood. I would like to share the following information:

  1. People who use simplified Chinese characters can also read traditional Chinese characters with relative ease. (This is based on my personal experience.)

  2. Some kanji in Japanese look similar to simplified Chinese characters mainly because Japan carried out its own kanji simplification reform in 1946, known as Shinjitai. The goal was to reduce learning difficulty and improve educational efficiency, which is similar to the motivation behind the later simplification in mainland China. However, the two reforms were conducted independently; Japan did not directly adopt China’s simplified characters. The reason many forms look the same is that these simplified shapes had long existed as common handwritten variants across East Asia and were independently selected by both sides. That said, Japan’s simplification was generally more conservative and preserved more of the original structure, while China’s simplification was more extensive, which is why many kanji still differ between the two systems. (This information comes from ChatGPT.)