History of Writing

Japanese writing, employing a combination of kanji and kana, originated with the adoption and adaptation of Chinese characters in the 5th-7th centuries CE, to be applied to the Japanese (spoken) language, a language with completely separate origins.

Though a massive portion of Japanese vocabulary today derives from Chinese terms, and adaptation of Chinese pronunciation (e.g. kanji for the Chinese hanzi 漢字), Japanese grammar, word order, and sentence structure differs entirely, and initially at least the nuanced connotations and meanings of words were different, with characters being chosen in a great many cases for concepts (words) that were not perfectly comparable. Chinese characters were also used solely for their sounds, in order to represent native Japanese words (see man'yôgana); these later evolved into hiragana and katakana - two syllabaries of phonetic symbols that represent only sounds and not inherent meanings.

Over the centuries, Japanese writing of course took myriad forms running the full gamut from works solely in kana to those solely in kanji, being used to produce everything from poetry and literature, to letters and other forms of communications, to formal records. Forms using kanji exclusively, or almost exclusively, are known as kanbun, while other forms are known as wabun.

Writing was done chiefly, if not exclusively, with brushes for many years, until the advent of the pen in modern times. Woodblock printing in the Edo period (17th-19th centuries) became a major mode of publication of written materials; though Japan briefly experimented with movable type in the late 16th century, it was only in the late 19th century that moveable type re-emerged and replaced woodblock as the chief mode of publication. The advent of moveable type, along with the shift from brushes to pens/pencils, brought about significant changes in the aesthetic forms of Japanese characters, and of Japanese writing as a whole. Pen & pencil produce much sharper lines, with sharper contours and consistent thickness of line; moveable type and, later, typewriters and modern electronic printing & displays, allowed for the language to become considerably standardized, such that the flowing and cursive forms of the past have now become relatively stark and standard in form.

History

The earliest object with written characters on it to be uncovered in Japan dates all the way back to 57 CE. This is a golden seal granted to the Japanese state of Na by Emperor Guangwu of the Han Dynasty. However, writing is not believed to have been truly adopted by Japanese elites in any significant way until the 5th century CE, and it was only beginning in the 7th century that materials began to be read and written more widely by the capital elites, including Buddhist and Confucian texts, and other Chinese materials.

The Nihon shoki and Kojiki suggest that figures such as Wani or Achiki came to Japan from Paekche during the reign of Emperor Ôjin, and introduced the Analects of Confucius and other documents at that time. Though the dating of the events of the Nihon shoki and Kojiki would place this in the 3rd-4th centuries, scholars today believe that if the introduction of the Analects and the Thousand Character Classic by Wani and Achiki actually took place, it more likely took place in the early 5th century.

Outside of the golden seal of Na, another of the oldest objects found in Japan bearing inscriptions is a 4th century seven-branched sword, associated with Isonokami Shrine in Tenri City, Nara prefecture, and believed to have been produced in Korea. It is associated with the myths of Empress Jingû, who according to the Nihon shoki is said to have invaded Korea in 364, and to have been given a seven-branched sword and a seven-branched mirror by the King of Paekche in 372. Indeed, the sword associated with Isonokami Shrine is inscribed with a date corresponding to 369 in the era names of China's Eastern Jin Dynasty; the Jin are believed to have given the sword to Paekche as a gift.

The oldest objects with written inscriptions believed to have been made in Japan include a sword found in the Eta Funayama kofun, dating to the 5th century, a sword found in the Inariyama kofun, dating to 471, and a mirror dating to 443 or 503, associated with Sumida Hachiman Shrine. The Inariyama sword, found in the Inariyama kofun in Gyôda City, Saitama prefecture, has 57 characters on one side, and 58 on the other. It is believed to date to the reign of Emperor Yûryaku. The mirror, meanwhile, associated with Sumida Hachiman Shrine in Sumida-machi, Hashimoto City, Wakayama prefecture, has 48 characters inscribed upon it, and is believed to have been made in Japan by an immigrant from Paekche. The date is given according to the sexegenary cycle, and could correspond to either 443 or 503 CE.

Buddhist texts are believed to have been first conveyed to Japan from Paekche in the 6th century. It is believed that it was sometime around this time, in the 5th-6th centuries, that Japanese first began to adopt, and adapt, Chinese characters in earnest. Characters were employed, sometimes for their meaning, sometimes just for their sound, in order to represent native Japanese words (yamato kotoba). This was the beginning of what is known as man'yôgana. One of the simplest examples of this can be seen in the character 「安」, meaning "peaceful" or "calm" in Chinese. The Japanese already had a word for this concept, yasuraka, and began using this character to represent that word. They also took from it its Chinese pronunciation, whatever that may have been at the time (today, in modern Mandarin, it's pronounced ān), so 安 can be pronounced in Japanese as either yasu- or an. But, at this early stage, the Japanese also used the character purely for its sound, not for its meaning, simply to represent the sound 'a'. In some of the earliest documents, the full character 安 is used precisely in that way, merely to represent the sound 'a'. Over time, it later became simplified into the kana forms あ and ア, which today are phonetic characters which contain no inherent meaning, but only convey the sound 'a'.

Japanese continued to use kanji in this way, merely for their sound and not for meaning, all the way down until the Meiji period (late 19th century), albeit to a lesser and lesser extent over the centuries, as terminology became standardized, and kana came to be used ever more exclusively for representing sounds. Terms which continued to use kanji merely for their sounds and not for their meaning are known as employing ateji (当字). Placenames are a prominent example of this, with the characters used to write Nara (奈良), for example, having no particularly relevant meaning. Foreign names, places, and terms also continued to be spelled out in kanji (that is, in ateji) into the Meiji period, with 亜米利加 (a-me-ri-ka) as one such example. The Chinese used characters simply for their sounds sometimes as well, since ancient times, especially in adapting words from foreign languages, such as Buddhist terminology.

As kanji began to be applied to Japanese words, there were many cases in which a single Japanese word covered many different aspects of a single concept, represented already in China by different characters. Thus, for example, the Japanese word au, meaning "to meet" or "to come together," came to be represented by a whole series of characters including 会 (to meet up with people), 合 (to fit together), 逢 (to rendezvous with, romantically, often clandestinely), 遭 (to meet with disaster, to encounter difficulties), all pronounced au.

One of the oldest surviving inscriptions written in Japanese language is found on the statue of Yakushi Buddha in the Kondô of Hôryû-ji. It is written entirely in kanji but with distinctively Japanese turns of phrase, word order, and character choice. An inscription in similar style is found on a stone stele in Gunma prefecture, dated to 681, and considered the oldest stone inscription in Japan.

The Nihon shoki (720) and Kojiki (712) are generally considered the earliest surviving major-length works in Japanese. Other documents from the Shôsôin Imperial Repository of similar age should similar linguistic forms. While the Nihon shoki was written almost entirely in kanji, the Kojiki employed a more thoroughly indigenous (non-Sinic) form. Buddhist texts written in Chinese began to be notated, or re-written, in various ways at this time to become legible as Japanese, marking the beginning of some of the earliest forms of kundoku.