Kanji are the Chinese characters that are used in the modern Japanese logographic writing system along with hiragana (ひらがな, 平仮名), katakana (カタカナ, 片仮名), Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet. The Japanese term kanji (漢字) literally means "Han characters".
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History

Chinese characters first came to Japan on articles imported from China. An early instance of such an import was a gold seal given by the emperor of the Eastern Han Dynasty in 57 AD. It is not clear when Japanese people started to gain a command of Classical Chinese by themselves. The first Japanese documents were probably written by Chinese immigrants. For example, the diplomatic correspondence from King Bu of Wa to Emperor Shun of the Liu Song Dynasty in 478 has been praised for its skillful use of allusion. Later, groups of people called fuhito were organized under the monarch to read and write Classical Chinese. From the 6th century onwards, Chinese documents written in Japan tended to show interference from Japanese, suggesting the wide acceptance of Chinese characters in Japan.

The Japanese language itself had no written form at the time kanji were introduced. Originally texts were written in the Chinese language and would have been read as such. Over time, however, a system known as kanbun (漢文) emerged, which involved using Chinese text with diacritical marks to allow Japanese speakers to restructure and read Chinese sentences, by changing word order and adding particles and verb endings, in accordance with the rules of Japanese grammar.

Chinese characters also came to be used to write Japanese words, resulting in the modern kana syllabaries. A writing system called man'yōgana (used in the ancient poetry anthology Man'yōshū) evolved that used a limited set of Chinese characters for their sound, rather than for their meaning. Man'yōgana written in cursive style became hiragana, a writing system that was accessible to women (who were denied higher education). Major works of Heian era literature by women were written in hiragana. Katakana emerged via a parallel path: monastery students simplified man'yōgana to a single constituent element. Thus the two other writing systems, hiragana and katakana, referred to collectively as kana, are actually descended from kanji.

In modern Japanese, kanji are used to write parts of the language such as nouns, adjective stems and verb stems, while hiragana are used to write inflected verb and adjective endings (okurigana), particles, native Japanese words, and words where the kanji is too difficult to read or remember. Katakana is used for representing onomatopoeia, non-Japanese loanwords, certain naming, and for emphasis on certain words.

Hiragana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana and kanji; the Latin alphabet is also used in some cases. Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each symbol represents one mora. Each kana is either a vowel (such as a あ); a consonant followed by a vowel (such as ka か); or n ん, a nasal sonorant which, depending on the context, sounds either like English m, n, or ng (IPA: [ŋ]), or like the nasal vowels of French.

Hiragana are used for words for which there are no kanji, including particles such as kara から "from," and suffixes such as ~san さん "Mr., Mrs., Miss, Ms." Hiragana are also used in words for which the kanji form is not known to the writer or readers, or is too formal for the writing purpose. Verb and adjective inflections, as, for example, BE MA SHI TA (べました) in tabemashita (食べました, tabemashita? "ate"), are written in hiragana. In this case, part of the root is also written in hiragana. Hiragana are also used to give the pronunciation of kanji in a reading aid called furigana. The article Japanese writing system discusses in detail when the various systems of writing are used.

There are two main systems of ordering hiragana, the old-fashioned iroha ordering, and the more prevalent gojūon ordering.
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History

Hiragana developed from man'yōgana, Chinese characters used for their pronunciations, a practice which started in the 5th century. The forms of the hiragana originate from the cursive script style of Chinese calligraphy. The figure below shows the derivation of hiragana from manyōgana via cursive script. The upper part shows the character in the regular script form, the center character in red shows the cursive script form of the character, and the bottom shows the equivalent hiragana.

When they were first created, hiragana were not accepted by everyone. Many felt that the language of the educated was still Chinese. Historically, in Japan, the regular script (kaisho) form of the characters, so-called otokode, "men's writing", was used by men; the cursive script (sōsho) form of the kanji was used by women. Thus hiragana first gained popularity among women, who were not allowed access to the same levels of education as men. From this comes the alternative name of onnade (女手, onnade?) "women's writing". For example, The Tale of Genji and other early novels by female authors used hiragana extensively or exclusively.

Male authors came to write literature using hiragana. Hiragana, with its flowing style, was used for unofficial writing such as personal letters, while katakana and Chinese were used for official documents. In modern times, the usage of hiragana has become mixed with katakana writing. Katakana is now relegated to special uses such as recently borrowed words (i.e., since the 19th century), names in transliteration, the names of animals, in telegrams, and for emphasis.

Originally, all sounds had more than one hiragana. In 1900, the system was simplified so each sound had only one hiragana. Other hiragana are known as hentaigana

The pangram poem Iroha-uta ("ABC song/poem"), which dates to the 10th century, uses every hiragana once　(except n ん, which was just a variant of む before Muromachi era). In the chart below, the romanization shows the hiragana; the reading in modern Japanese is in parentheses.

Note that the last line begins with an obsolete kana (we ゑ).
いろはにほへと(いろはにおえど) _ I ro ha ni ho he to (Iro wa nioedo) _ Even the blooming flowers
ちりぬるを(ちりぬるを) _ chi ri nu ru wo (chirinuru o) _ Will eventually fade
わかよたれそ(わがよたれぞ) _ wa ka yo ta re so (waga yo tare zo) _ Even our world
つねならむ(つねならん) _ tsu ne na ra mu (tsune naran) _ Is not eternal
うゐのおくやま(ういのおくやま) _ u wi no o ku ya ma (ui no okuyama) _ The deep mountains of vanity
けふこえて(きょうこえて) _ ke fu ko e te (kyō koete) Cross them today
あさきゆめみし(あさきゆめみじ) _ a sa ki yu me mi shi (asaki yume miji) _ And superficial dreams
ゑひもせす(えいもせず) _ we hi mo se su (ei mo sezu) _ Shall no longer delude you.

Katakana is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet. The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji.

Katakana are characterized by short, straight strokes and angular corners, and are the simplest of the Japanese scripts.

There are two main systems of ordering katakana: the old-fashioned iroha ordering, and the more prevalent gojūon ordering.

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History

Katakana was developed in the early Heian Period from parts of man'yōgana characters as a form of shorthand. For example, ka カ comes from the left side of ka 加 "increase". The table below shows the origins of each katakana: the red markings of the original Chinese character eventually became each corresponding symbol.

The romanization of Japanese or rōmaji is the use of the Latin alphabet to write the Japanese language. Japanese is normally written in logographic characters borrowed from Chinese (kanji) and syllabic scripts (kana). The romanization of Japanese is done in any context where Japanese text is targeted at those who do not know the language, such as for names on street signs and passports, and in dictionaries and textbooks for foreign learners of the language. The word "rōmaji" is sometimes incorrectly transliterated as romanji or rōmanji.

There are several different romanization systems. The three main ones are Hepburn romanization, Kunrei-shiki Rōmaji (ISO 3602), and Nihon-shiki Rōmaji (ISO 3602 Strict). Variants of the Hepburn system are the most widely used.

All Japanese who have attended elementary school since World War II have been taught to read and write romanized Japanese. Romanization is also the most common way to input Japanese into word processors and computers. Therefore, almost all Japanese are able to read and write Japanese using rōmaji. The primary usage of rōmaji is on computers and other electronic devices that do not support the display or input of Japanese characters, in educational materials for foreigners, and in academic papers in English (or other Western languages) written on Japanese linguistics, literature, history, and culture.
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History

The earliest Japanese romanization system was based on the orthography of Portuguese. It was developed around 1548 by a Japanese Catholic named Yajiro. Jesuit presses used the system in a series of printed Catholic books so that missionaries could preach and teach their converts without learning to read Japanese orthography. The most useful of these books for the study of early modern Japanese pronunciation and early attempts at romanization was the Nippo jisho, a Japanese-Portuguese dictionary written in 1603. In general, the early Portuguese system was similar to Nihon-shiki in its treatment of vowels. Some consonants were transliterated differently: for instance, the /k/ consonant was rendered, depending on context, as either c or q, and the /ɸ/ consonant (now pronounced /h/) as f, so Nihon no kotoba ("The language of Japan") was spelled Nifon no cotoba. The Jesuits also printed some secular books in romanized Japanese, including the first printed edition of the Japanese classic The Tale of the Heike, romanized as Feiqe no monogatari, and a collection of Aesop's Fables (romanized as Esopo no fabulas). The latter continued to be printed and read after the suppression of Christianity in Japan (Chibbett, 1977).

Following the expulsion of Christians from Japan in the late 1590s and early 1600s, rōmaji fell out of use, and were only used sporadically in foreign texts until the mid-19th century, when Japan opened up again. The systems used today all developed in the latter half of the 19th century.

The first system to be developed was the Hepburn system, developed by James Curtis Hepburn for his dictionary of Japanese words and intended for foreigners to use. Hepburn's system included representation of some sounds that have since changed. For example, Lafcadio Hearn's book Kwaidan shows the older kw- pronunciation; in modern Hepburn romanization, this would be written Kaidan (lit., ghost tales.)

As a replacement for Japanese writing system

In the Meiji era, some Japanese scholars advocated abolishing the Japanese writing system entirely and using rōmaji (lit., Roman letters) instead. The Nihon shiki romanization was an outgrowth of this movement. Several Japanese texts were published entirely in rōmaji during this period, but it failed to catch on. Later, in the early 20th century, some scholars devised syllabary systems with characters derived from Latin (rather like the Cherokee syllabary); these were even less popular, because they were not based on any historical use of the Latin alphabet. Today, the use of Nihon shiki for writing Japanese is advocated by Oomoto and some independent organizations.