kanji (the so-called jōyō kanji, or kanji for daily use) in 1981. Japanese students are expected to learn how to read all of these kanji by the time they graduate high school. Additional kanji are used in proper names and certain other words.
You might think that there are too many kanji characters to learn, but don’t get discouraged! If you learn the first several hundred kanji characters, you will be able to understand or guess the meaning of most street signs, restaurant menus, merchandise names, a variety of instructions, and much more! Furthermore, it is a lot of fun to learn kanji because the characters have interesting historical and cultural backgrounds and amazing compositional structures. Each kanji character has a unique meaning and shape, so each time you learn a new kanji character, you’ll feel a bit like you’ve made a new friend.
The key to your ultimate success is to learn the basic kanji correctly and solidly. A thorough knowledge of the simplest kanji will provide you with a firm foundation for mastering more complex kanji quickly. The 103 kanji included in this book are the basic kanji used in everyday life and also commonly appear in Level 5 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. If you make a manageable plan for learning with this workbook everyday, you’ll be able to enjoy the process of learning kanji and greatly improve your reading proficiency in Japanese. This introduction provides you with the basic information you need to know about the development and use of kanji and shows you how to write them properly.
How did kanji develop?
The word kanji literally means “characters of the Han Dynasty of ancient China” (206 B.C.E. to 220 A.D.). The initial forms of kanji originated in the Yellow River region of China between 2000 and 1500 B.C.E. The earliest preserved characters were written on tortoise shells and animal bones, and about 3,000 characters have been discovered from this early period. Depending on how they were formed, kanji can be classified into four main categories: pictorial kanji, indicative kanji, compound ideographic kanji, and phonetic-ideographic kanji.
Pictorial kanji originated from pictures of objects or phenomena. For example:
| Meaning | Original Picture | Modern Kanji |
| River |  | 川 |
| Mountain |  | 山 |
| Tree |  | 木 |
| Sun |  | 日 |
| Moon |  | 月 |
| Rain |  | 雨 |
Indicative kanji were created as symbolic representations of abstract concepts using points and lines. For example:
| Meaning | Original Sign | Modern Kanji |
| One |  | 一 |
| Two |  | 二 |
| Three |  | 三 |
| Top |  | 上 |
| Bottom |  | 下 |
Compound ideographic kanji were formed by combining two or more pictorial or indicative kanji to bring out a new but simple idea. For example:
| Meaning | Combining Multiple Kanji | Resulting Kanji |
| Woods | 木 + 木 tree + tree | 林 |
| Forest | 木 + 木 + 木 tree + tree + tree | 森 |
| Bright | 日 + 月 sun + moon | 明 |
Finally, phonetic-ideographic kanji were formed by combining an element that expressed meaning and an element that carried the sound. For example, the following characters all stand for some body of water:
| Meaning | Combining Elements | Kanji |
| Inlet | 氵+ 工 water + KŌ | 江 |
| Ocean | 氵+ 羊 water + YŌ | 洋 |
| River | 氵+ 可 water + KA | 河 |
The left side of each character above, 氵, contributes the meaning, showing that each kanji’s meaning is related to water. The right side of each character 工, 羊, or 可, contributes the sound, showing how the kanji should be pronounced.
Kanji characters were brought to Japan from China between the fourth and the fifth centuries A.D. Until then, there were no written symbols in Japanese. The Japanese initially developed a hybrid system where kanji were given Japanese pronunciations and were used for writing Japanese. This system proved unwieldy, since Japanese and Chinese grammar and structure are so different. Then, they developed a system, man’yōgana, in which a limited set of kanji was used to write Japanese words with their sounds. Hiragana and katakana were developed in the Heian Period (794-1185) from some of the kanji characters included in man’yōgana. About 2,000 kanji as well as hiragana and katakana are still used in modern Japanese. Interestingly, there are some kanji characters that were created in Japan. For example, the kanji 峠 (mountain pass), 畑 (field of crops), and 働 (work) were all created in Japan by combining multiple existing kanji components.
How are kanji pronounced?
The Japanese language is very different from the Chinese language, having very distinct grammar and sounds. Many Chinese words consist of one syllable, but most Japanese words have more than one syllable. So, the assignment of a Japanese pronunciation to each kanji required both flexibility and creativity.
On-readings and kun-readings
There are two different ways of reading kanji in Japanese: on-readings (or on-yomi) and kun-readings (or kun-yomi). When kanji characters were first introduced to Japan, the original Chinese pronunciations were also adapted with only minor modifications. Such Chinese ways of reading kanji are called on-readings and are still used, especially when a character appears as a part of a compound where two or more kanji are combined to form a word.
At the same time, many kanji characters were assigned the pronunciation of the existing native Japanese word whose meaning was closest to that of the character. Such Japanese readings are called kun-readings, and are used especially when a character occurs independently in a sentence. For example, the character 母 is pronounced bo (on-reading) when used as a part of the compound word 母国, bokoku (mother country), but is pronounced haha (kun-reading) when used by itself. This is illustrated in the following sentence.
私の母の母国はフランスです。
Watashi no haha no bokoku wa Furansu desu.
My mother’s mother country is France.
In this workbook, on-readings are shown in katakana and, when Romanized, in upper-case letters. Conversely, kun-readings are shown in hiragana and in lower-case letters when Romanized.
Some kanji characters have more than one on-reading or kun-reading, and different readings are used in different contexts. Also note that there are special cases where it is not possible to clearly divide a kanji compound into components that can be pronounced separately.
Okurigana
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