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{{Use American English|date=January 2019}}▼
{{Short description|Structure of the Japanese writing system}}
{{aboutAbout|the modern writing system and its history|an overview of the entire language|Japanese language|the use of Latin letters to write Japanese|Romanization of Japanese}}
▲{{Use American English|date=January 2019}}
{{Infobox writing system
| name = Japanese
| languages = [[Japanese language]]<br>[[Ryukyuan languages]]<br>[[Hachijō language]]
| type = mixed
| typedesc = [[Logogram|logographic]] ([[kanjiKanji]]), [[syllabary|syllabic]] ([[hiragana]] and [[katakana]])
| time = 4th century AD to present
| family = (See [[kanji]] and [[kana]])
| unicode = [https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U4E00.pdf U+4E00&ndash;U+9FBF] Kanji<br />[https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U3040.pdf U+3040&ndash;U+309F] Hiragana<br />[https://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/U30A0.pdf U+30A0&ndash;U+30FF] Katakana
| sample = Heibon-pp.10-11.jpg
| caption = Japanese novel using ''kanji kana majiri bun'' (text with both [[kanji]] and [[kana]]), the most general [[orthography]] for modern Japanese. [[Ruby character]]s (or ''[[furigana]]'') are also used for kanji words (in modern publications these would generally be omitted for well-known kanji). The text is in the traditional ''[[Horizontal and vertical writing in East Asian scripts|tategaki]]'' ("vertical writing") style; it is read down the columns and from right to left, like traditional Chinese. Published in 1908.
| iso15924 = Jpan
| direction = {{Plain list|
| direction= When written vertically, Japanese text is written from top to bottom, with multiple columns of text progressing from right to left. When written horizontally, text is almost always written left to right, with multiple rows progressing downward, as in standard [[English language|English]] text. In the early to mid-1900s, there were infrequent cases of horizontal text being written right to left, but that style is very rarely seen in modern Japanese writing.{{citation needed|date=June 2017}}
* Top-to-bottom, right-to-left
* Left-to-right, top-to-bottom
* Right-to-left, top-to-bottom (infrequent){{Citation needed|date=June 2017}}
}}
}}{{Needs more references|date=June 2024}}{{Japanese writing}}
 
The modern '''Japanese writing system''' uses a combination of [[Logogram|logographic]] [[kanji]], which are adopted [[Chinese character]]s, and [[Syllabary|syllabic]] [[kana]]. Kana itself consists of a pair of [[syllabary|syllabaries]]: [[hiragana]], used primarily for native or naturalisednaturalized Japanese words and grammatical elements; and [[katakana]], used primarily for foreign words and names, [[Gairaigo|loanwords]], [[onomatopoeia]], scientific names, and sometimes for emphasis. Almost all written Japanese sentences contain a mixture of kanji and kana. Because of this mixture of scripts, in addition to a large inventory of kanji characters, the Japanese writing system is considered to be one of the most complicated currently in use.<ref name="Shohov2004">{{cite book|author=Serge P. Shohov|title=Advances in Psychology Research|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BDisMH0IpFcC&pg=PA28|year=2004|publisher=Nova Publishers|isbn=978-1-59033-958-9|page=28}}</ref><ref name="Nakajima2002">{{cite book|author=Kazuko Nakajima|title=Learning Japanese in the Network Society|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FkBdWFwh-MEC&pg=PR12|year=2002|publisher=University of Calgary Press|isbn=978-1-55238-070-3|page=xii}}</ref>{{Sfn|Seeley|1991|p=ix}}
 
Several thousand kanji characters are in regular use, which mostly originate from traditional Chinese characters. Others made in [[Japan]] are referred to as "Japanese kanji" ({{lang-ja|和製漢字|wasei kanji|label=none}}), also known as "[our] country's kanji" ({{lang-ja|国字|kokuji|label=none}}). Each character has an intrinsic meaning (or range of meanings), and most have more than one pronunciation, the choice of which depends on context. Japanese primary and secondary school students are required to learn 2,136 [[jōyō kanji]] as of 2010.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Japanese Kanji List|url=http://www.saiga-jp.com/language/kanji_list.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304190101/http://www.saiga-jp.com/language/kanji_list.html|archive-date=2016-03-04|website=www.saiga-jp.com|access-date=2016-02-23|url-status=usurped}}</ref> The total number of kanji is well over 50,000, though this includes tens of thousands of characters only present in historical writings and never used in modern Japanese.<ref>{{Cite web|title = How many Kanji characters are there?|url = http://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/11735/how-many-kanji-characters-are-there|website = japanese.stackexchange.com|access-date = 2016-02-23}}</ref>{{Better source needed|date=October 2023}}
 
In modern Japanese, the hiragana and katakana syllabaries each contain 46 basic characters, or 71 including [[diacritics]]. With one or two minor exceptions, each different sound in the Japanese language (that is, each different syllable, strictly each [[Mora (linguistics)|mora]]) corresponds to one character in each syllabary. Unlike kanji, these characters intrinsically represent sounds only; they convey meaning only as part of words. Hiragana and katakana characters also originally derive from Chinese characters, but they have been simplified and modified to such an extent that their origins are no longer visually obvious.
 
Texts without kanji are rare; most are either children's books — sincebooks—since children tend to know few kanji at an early age — orage—or early electronics such as computers, phones, and video games, which could not display complex [[grapheme]]s like kanji due to both graphical and computational limitations.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-to-play-and-comprehend-japanese-games.350246/ |title=How To Play (and comprehend!) Japanese Games |website=GBAtemp.net -> The Independent Video Game Community |access-date=2016-03-05}}</ref>{{Better source needed|date=October 2023}}
 
To a lesser extent, modern written Japanese also uses initialisms from the [[Latin alphabet]], for example in terms such as "BC/AD", "a.m./p.m.", "FBI", and "CD". [[Romanized Japanese]] is most frequently used by foreign students of Japanese who have not yet mastered kana, and by native speakers for [[Japanese language and computers|computer input]].
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*transliteration of foreign words and names, such as {{lang|ja|コンピュータ}} (''konpyūta'', "computer") and {{lang|ja|ロンドン}} (''Rondon'', "London"). However, some foreign borrowings that were naturalized may be rendered in hiragana, such as たばこ (''tabako'', "tobacco"), which comes from Portuguese. See also [[Transcription into Japanese]].
*commonly used names of animals and plants, such as {{lang|ja|トカゲ}} (''tokage'', "lizard"), {{lang|ja|ネコ}} (''neko'', "cat") and {{lang|ja|バラ}} (''bara'', "rose"), and certain other technical and scientific terms, suchincluding aschemical and mineral names such as {{lang|ja|カリウム}} (''kariumu'', "potassium"), {{lang|ja|ポリマー}} (''porimā'', "polymer") and {{lang|ja|ベリル}} (''beriru'', "beryl").
*occasionally, the names of miscellaneous other objects whose kanji are rare, such as {{lang|ja|ローソク}} (''rōsoku'', "candle"); the kanji form, {{lang|ja|蝋燭}}, contains the [[hyōgaiji]] {{lang|ja|蝋}}.
*[[onomatopoeia]], such as {{lang|ja|ワンワン}} (''wan-wan'', "woof-woof"), and other [[Japanese sound symbolism|sound symbolism]]
*emphasis, much like [[Italic type|italicisation]] in European languages.
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== Spacing and punctuation ==
{{See also|Japanese punctuation}}{{No sources|section|date=June 2024}}
 
Japanese is normally written without spaces between words, and text is allowed to wrap from one line to the next without regard for word boundaries. This convention was originally modelled on Chinese writing, where spacing is superfluous because each character is essentially a word in itself (albeit compounds are common). However, in kana and mixed kana/kanji text, readers of Japanese must work out where word divisions lie based on an understanding of what makes sense. For example, {{lang|ja|{{nowrap|あなたはお母さんにそっくりね。}}}} must be mentally divided as {{nihongo krt||{{nowrap|あなた}}　は　{{nowrap|お母さん}}　に　{{nowrap|そっくり}}　ね。|Anata wa okāsan ni sokkuri ne|"You're just like your mother"}}. In rōmaji, it may sometimes be ambiguous whether an item should be transliterated as two words or one. For example, {{nihongo krt||愛する||"to love"}}, composed of {{nihongo krt||愛|ai|"love"}} and {{nihongo krt||する|suru|"to do"|extra=(here a verb-forming suffix)}}, is variously transliterated as {{transl|ja|aisuru}} or {{transl|ja|ai suru}}.
 
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The period immediately following [[World War II]] saw a rapid and significant reform of the writing system. This was in part due to influence of the Occupation authorities, but to a significant extent was due to the removal of traditionalists from control of the educational system, which meant that previously stalled revisions could proceed. The major reforms were:
 
* {{nihongo|''[[Modern kana usage|gendai kanazukai]]''|現代仮名遣い}}—alignment of kana usage with modern pronunciation, replacing the old [[historical kana usage]] (1946);
* promulgation of various restricted sets of kanji:
** {{nihongo|''[[tōyō kanji]]''|当用漢字}} (1946), a collection of 1850 characters for use in schools, textbooks, etc.;
** kanji to be used in schools (1949);
** an additional collection of {{nihongo|''[[jinmeiyō kanji]]''|人名用漢字}}, which, supplementing the ''tōyō kanji'', could be used in personal names (1951);
* simplifications of various complex kanji letter-forms {{nihongo|''[[shinjitai]]''|新字体}}.
 
At one stage, an advisor in the Occupation administration proposed a wholesale conversion to rōmaji, but it was not endorsed by other specialists and did not proceed.{{Sfn|Unger|1996}}
 
In addition, the practice of writing [[yokogaki and tategaki|horizontally in a right-to-left direction]] was generally replaced by left-to-right writing. The right-to-left order was considered a special case of vertical writing, with columns one character high,{{Clarify|reason=it seems left-to-right writing is meant rather than right-to-left: it is the only horizontal writing mentioned (before) in the context; please refer to the Talk page as well|date=September 2022}}, rather than horizontal writing per se; it was used for single lines of text on signs, etc. (e.g., the station sign at Tokyo reads {{lang|ja|駅京東}}, which is {{lang|ja|東京駅}} from right-to-left).
 
The post-war reforms have mostly survived, although some of the restrictions have been relaxed. The replacement of the ''tōyō kanji'' in 1981 with the 1,945 {{nihongo|''[[jōyō kanji]]''|常用漢字}}—a modification of the ''tōyō kanji''—was accompanied by a change from "restriction" to "recommendation", and in general the educational authorities have become less active in further script reform.{{Sfn|Gottlieb|1996}}
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