A Brief History of Kanji

     You would be speaking the truth if you said that the Japanese "borrowed" Kanji from the Chinese, but you would be incorrect if you said that Japanese Kanji are the same as Chinese Kanji. Over time, Japanese Kanji have deviated from Chinese both in meaning, and how it appears.

     Kanji ultimately orginated in the Yellow River region of China around 2000 - 1500 B.C. Early Kanji started as simple pictographs, but they evolved into more abstract, complex characters. By 200 A.D., all of the Kanji had been catorgorized into 6 groups (by this time, more than 50,000 had been created).

     Kanji eventually found it's way into Japan by migrating Chinese and Koreans during the third or fourth century A.D. The Japanese language was only spoken at this point, so people borrowed the characters to express themselves in writing. Because Japanese and Chinese are obviously different languages, the Japanese changed the pronunciation to fit their language. However, they kept the Chinese reading to use in compounds.

     Because of this, Kanji students today must learn not only the Japanese reading (known as the kun-yomi), but the Chinese reading (known as the on-yomi) as well. In Japanese, many words are created from the on-yomi of two Kanji. For example; The on-yomi of the word mother is Bo, while the kun-yomi is haha. But if you wanted to write the word motherhood, you would use the on-yomi bo+sei (literally, Mother Life).

     After to end of World War II, the Japanese Ministry of Education created the Toyo Kanji, which included 1850 of the most commonly used and most important Kanji. Out of the Toyo Kanji, 881 were chosen to become Kyoiku Kanji. These Kanji were then broken up to be taught in the 6-year elementary school.