Japanese script reform

From the start of the Meiji period, attempts were made to correlate standard spoken Japanese with the written word; this issue was known in Japan as 国語国字問題 kokugo kokuji mondai 'national language national script problem'.

These reforms led to the modern Japanese written language, and explain the arguments for official policies used to determine the usage and teaching of rarely used kanji in Japan.

History

Before the Second World War

There is general a misconception that the abolition of kanji through the modernising of kana usage and the issuing a list of a limited number of officially accepted characters was originated with the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers. However, a prototype strategy had already drawn up by advocates of kanji eradication before this. At the end of Taishō period the the proposal was put in place in a number of regions and overseas territories.

In November 1922 the Temporary National Language Investigation Committee, the precursor to the Japanese Language Council, selected and approved a list of 1963 daily use characters. This tōyō kanji list formed the basis of the modern jōyō kanji list.

In December 1923 The Temporary National Language Investigation Committee approved a set of reforms for kana usage, the prototype for modern kana usage.

Japanese language reforms

The reforms in the Japanese language after the Second World War have had a particularly big influence on accepted kanji usage in today's Japanese.

In April 1946 Naoya Shiga declared the 'language problem' in the magazine Kaizō 'Reform'. He suggested that Japanese be done away with and that French, 'the most beautiful language in the world', should be adopted. On 12 November of the same year the Yomiuri Shinbun daily newspaper published an editorial entitled 'Abolish Kanji'.

On the 31 March of the same year, the first American Education Delegation, invited by the SCAP, issued the First Report of the American Education Delegation, which pointed out the problems of using kanji and advocated the conveniences of rōmaji. As a result, the abolition of kanji became a policy of the SCAP, and the tōyō kanji list and modern kana usage proposals were drawn up with this aim in mind.

Tōyō kanji list

The tōyō kanji were a list of 1850 Chinese characters, published by the cabinet on 16 November 1946 in a collection of related bulletins entitled Towards the Abolition of Kanji, to limit the number of characters available. This list defined kanji that should not be in daily use and limited the kanji the could be used in official publications and by the general public.

Previous to this, an attempt had been made to simplify a number of common and complex characters. However, his was not a systematic simplification of elements and radicals in the way China would develop its simplified Chinese characters. In Japan the changes were based on commonly used abbreviations for individual characters.

An attempt was made to limit the number of kanji readings but the first list was too restrictive. For example, the character 魚 fish had its readings limited to gyo and uo; the more common reading sakana was not officially recognised. These shortcoming were eventually acknowledged and on 28 June 1972 a revised list of tōyō kanji was published.

The problem of mazekaki, mixing kanji and kana a word of Chinese origin, often seen in modern Japanese, originated with this list. The intention was that words requiring characters that were not included in the list should be substituted with a suitable synonym, although in reality the rule was circumvented by writing these kanji in kana and making mazekaki commonplace. The words 改ざん kaizan 'falsify', 破たん hatan 'bankruptcy', 隠ぺい inpei 'concealed', 漏えい rōsetsu 'leakage', 覚せい剤 kakuseizai 'stimulant' are all usually written as mazekaki. The alternative, kanji forms are 改竄, 破綻, 隠蔽, 漏洩 or 漏泄, and 覚醒剤 respectively. The use of maseki is not not enforced and is rarely used in literature, although it is commonly used by some newspapers, broadcasters and other media outlets. The argument for using mazekaki is that it makes content easier to read and is a stratagem for attracting a wider audience. Even jōyō kanji may be written in this way in television programmes aimed at younger children. At the time of the introduction of the tōyō kanji, the use of ruby characters to indicate the reading in kana of difficult kanji had enormous printing costs associated with it due to the typesetting required. The resulting reduction in printing costs gave the restriction and abolition of kanji serious economic advantages, and the newspapers and other media corporations were heavily involved in decisions made by the Japanese Language Council. The newspapers stopped using furigana in their publications with the introduction of the tōyō kanji as reduction in the number of kanji and their readings made furigana unnecessary.

On 5 July 1956, in order to smooth the introduction of the tōyō kanji list, the Japanese Language Council announced a list of substitute characters for words that contained characters not on the official list. The substitutes are usually homophones and often similar in structure to the original, although little regard was paid to meaning.

Words that had several ways of being written were unified using the form that used characters from the list. The list below has some examples. The character in brackets is the old form.

• 注文（註文）chūmon 'order, request'
• 遺跡（遺蹟）kiseki '(historic) ruins'
• 更生（甦生）kōsei 'rebirth' (originally read sosei, and may written as 蘇生 to reflect this)
• 知恵（智慧）chie 'wisdom'
• 略奪（掠奪）ryakudatsu 'pillage, plunder'
• 妨害（妨碍、妨礙）bōgai 'jamming, interference'
• 意向（意嚮）ikō 'intention, idea'
• 講和（媾和）kōwa 'reconciliation, peace'
• 格闘（挌闘）kakutō 'fist fight'
• 書簡（書翰）shokan 'letter, epistle'

Generally jargon and other specialist words that had more than one way of writing were also to be written using characters from the list.

• 骨格（骨骼）kokkaku 'skeletal structure'
• 奇形（畸形）kikei 'birth defect'

Other words that used kanji not included in the list were given phonetic substitutes.

• 防御（防禦）bōgyo
• 扇動（煽動）sendō 'abet, agitate'
• 英知（叡智）eichi 'wisdom'
• 混交（混淆）konkō 'mix together'
• 激高（激昂）gekikō 'excited, enraged'

Japanese words and phrases