The creation and evolution of Kanji

Have you ever wondered how did the Chinese form Kanjis? Just like the Egyptian heiroglyphs, kanjis were formed observing the nature and its surroundings. Later the Japanese borrowed these ideograms from China for writing their own language.

The Japanese language also uses the kana scripts for writing those words and phrases which cannot be defined through kanji script. These two kana scripts are called hiragana and katakana (which is used to write foreign words).

Now lets learn the formation of some basic kanjis which is used in day to day Japanese language.

1. The Japanese call their own country ‘NIHON’ which is written as  ’NIHON’         . This is a compound kanji ( two or more kanjis put together). Lets see how it was formed.

The sun looks like. The Chinese found that it took too long to draw the rays, so they shortened it to . Then later, to make it easier to write they changed the character to. It is pronounced as ‘HI’ (pronounce as ‘he’) which means the sun. With other kanjis it is generally pronounced as ‘NICHI’.

Lets find out how the other character in the word ‘NIHON’ is formed. The picture of a tree was gradually simplified to then to and finally into . This is how tree is written in Japanese, the character is pronounced as ‘KI’. To form the character of roots from the character of tree was formed. Finally the roots were squared off into a straight line as. Other than meaning root this character also means origin or source. It is usually pronounced as ‘HON’.

So now you know how to write NIHON or NIPPON which means “the origin of the sun.”

2.  Lets learn how to write TOKYO , the capital of Japan.  A sun rising from behind the tree symbolised east. They put together  (tree) and  (sun) to finally write the character  . It is pronounced as ‘HIGASHI’ meaning east and also forms the ‘TO’ of  TOKYO”.

The “KYO” in Tokyo was originally a picture of a Chinese lantern, which looked like . These lanterns were used by the Chinese Emperor and hence symbolised the capital. The character went through a final transformation from to and then to .  So the kanji for Tokyo is  .

3.  Now discover some easy kanjis. Say like person, a general word which can refer to either a man or a woman. The human form was drawn as  and then simplified to . It is pronounced as ‘HITO’ by itself and ‘NIN’ or ‘JIN’ in compounds. For example  ‘NIHONJIN’ which means a Japanese person.

4.  A man with streched arms and feet  meant big. Earlier this character was written as, but now it is written as  . This forms the ‘OO’ in OOKII which means big. Also pronounced as ‘O’ or ‘DAI’ in compounds.

5.  A man with arms and legs pulled towards his side signifies smallness. It was first written as  and then  . It is pronounced as ‘CHII’ in the word CHIISAI which means small. The other pronounciations are ‘KO’ or ‘SHO’ in compunds.