Why are there so many kanji in Japanese?

Why does the Japanese have kanji.

Summary. The history of Japanese writing is much shorter than that of kanji. According to the "Seal of the King of Hanweinu" excavated by Japanese archaeologists in Fukuoka Prefecture, Kyushu, kanji first had an impact on the Japanese language around the first century AD. The large-scale introduction of kanji into Japan was in the Common Era.

It was introduced in the fourth and fifth centuries when some Buddhist monks brought Chinese scriptures to Japan. The Chinese language introduced to Japan during this period not only built the skeleton of Japanese characters, but also enriched the phonetic system of the Japanese language, because the pronunciation of those Chinese characters in Japan was imitated by the Japanese at that time to imitate the pronunciation of monks. Of course, the original influence of kanji on the Japanese language was only by the cultured people in Japan.

Why are there so many kanji in Japanese?

The history of Japanese writing is much shorter than that of kanji. According to the "Seal of the King of Hanweinu" excavated by Japanese archaeologists in Fukuoka Prefecture, Kyushu, kanji first had an impact on the Japanese language around the first century AD. The large-scale introduction of kanji into Japan was in the Common Era.

It was introduced in the fourth and fifth centuries when some Buddhist monks brought Chinese scriptures to Japan. The Chinese language introduced to Japan during this period not only built the skeleton of Japanese characters, but also enriched the phonetic system of the Japanese language, because the pronunciation of those Chinese characters in Japan was imitated by the Japanese at that time to imitate the pronunciation of monks. Of course, the original influence of kanji on the Japanese language was only by the cultured people in Japan.

The history of Japanese writing is much shorter than that of kanji. According to the "Seal of the King of Hanweinu" excavated by Japanese archaeologists in Fukuoka Prefecture, Kyushu, kanji first had an impact on the Japanese language around the first century AD. The large-scale introduction of kanji into Japan was in the Common Era.

It was introduced in the fourth and fifth centuries when some Buddhist monks brought Chinese scriptures to Japan. The Chinese language introduced to Japan during this period not only built the skeleton of Japanese characters, but also enriched the phonetic system of the Japanese language, because the pronunciation of those Chinese characters in Japan was imitated by the Japanese at that time to imitate the pronunciation of monks. Of course, the original influence of kanji on the Japanese language was only by the cultured people in Japan.

In the early days, Japan did not have its own written language, and only language was used to communicate. The earliest known Japanese documents were written in kanji, but the text usage of the documents differed from that of the Chinese contemporaries. This shows that Japan has been communicating with China since the early days.

The strongest evidence of this is that in the middle of the Yayoi period, the slave kings of the Japanese kingdoms paid tribute to the Han Dynasty and were given a gold seal by Emperor Guangwu of the Han Dynasty. In the Chronicles of the Three Kingdoms, there are also records of names of people and places in Japan. In the Sui and Tang dynasties, Japan sent a large number of students to China, both political, economic and cultural, and reformed the Japanese script according to Chinese, and had hiragana and katakana.

However, Chinese characters have been integrated into Japanese culture, and many characters have no way to be improved, so they have to be retained. At this point, the complete Japanese writing system was finally formed. However, until the Meiji Restoration, kanji remained dominant in the Japanese writing system.

After the Meiji Restoration, Japan began to introduce Western studies, and at this time they found that many Western terms could not be translated in kanji. So flat fakes and film fakes come in handy. With the deepening of Westernization, the dominance of Chinese characters in the Japanese language was gradually lost.

Today, the dominance of kanji in Japanese writing is long gone. In the beginning, Japanese kanji was also written in traditional Chinese, but although Japanese is written in kanji, its pronunciation is not Chinese. It's just borrowing the sounds and shapes of Chinese characters.

The Chinese was gradually transformed into Japanese. That's why a large number of kanji have been preserved in the Japanese language. Some of the kanji in Japanese today can be quickly understood by us with a little speculation, and some may be completely different from the meaning of the kanji we are familiar with.

For example, "expiration date" means "expiration date", and there is not much difference between the two. Another example is the meaning of "bathhouse", which is very different from our understanding of Chinese. In fact, many of the kanji in Japanese today have different meanings than we understand in Chinese.

Niang means "daughter", "Yinghua" means "movie", "master" means "husband", "cucumber" means "cucumber", "hand paper" means "letter", and so on. Therefore, the kanji in Japanese can reflect the great influence of Chinese culture on Japanese history.

Why are there so many kanji in Japanese, now do you know? Isn't it easy for us to learn Japanese this way?

There are a lot of kanji in the Japanese language because Japanese characters were originally transmitted from China. Japan's earliest historical book, the Nihon Shoki, also records that in the fourth and fifth years of Emperor Taikang of the Jin Dynasty, the King of Baekje sent Azhiki and Wang Ren, who knew the Chinese classics, to Japan with the Analects and the Urgent Chapters respectively to worship the Japanese Emperor Ojin at that time, and became the teacher of the crown prince Tomichi Zhilangzi to teach Confucianism, and Chinese characters began to be introduced to Japan.

The development of kanji in the Japanese languageDuring the Sui and Tang dynasties, Sino-Japanese exchanges became more and more slimy, and Japan sent Sui envoys and a large number of Tang envoys to China to learn Chinese culture, and Chinese characters developed rapidly in Japan during this period. After the Taika reform, the Japanese bureaucracy began to improve, and with officials, it was necessary to use writing to record the affairs of the imperial court, so the Japanese began to write articles in kanji, and the written articles were not only kanji.