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Introduction
Modern Japanese can be written horizontally, from left to right, or vertically, from top to bottom. Japanese is one of the rare languages that uses multiple writing systems simultaneously, sometimes even in the same sentence. It is written by combining Chinese characters, called kanji, and two sets of syllabic alphabets called kana (hiragana and katakana) along with a few punctuation marks. Each kanji character represents a meaning, while each kana character represents a sound. For example, the following short sentence contains kanji, hiragana, and katakana:
パーティーに来ました。
Pātī ni kimashita.
(He) came to the party.
The non-Chinese loanword パーティー, written pātī in Roman letters and meaning party, is written in katakana. The stem of the verb 来, pronounced ki and meaning to come, is written using kanji. The grammatical particle に, written ni in Roman letters and meaning to, and the inflectional element ました, pronounced mashita (polite past affirmative), are written in hiragana. Isn’t it interesting that all three writing systems can be used in such a simple sentence?
The total number of kana is relatively small: there are only 46 basic characters for each kana system in modern Japanese. By contrast, the total number of kanji is quite large. The Japanese government selected a total of 1,945 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 |