J.P

J, P. "History of Kanji." //History//. 20 June 1999. Web. 14 Sep. 2010. .


 * 1)  “ Kanji, which refers to the Chinese characters used in Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean writing systems, are thought to have originated along the Yellow River in China, around 2000 B.C., when cracks on burned bones, used for divination, were interpreted as real objects, giving a written representation of that object.”
 * 2)  “Chinese version involves the mystic Chinese emperor and supposedly founder of the Chinese civilization, Huandgi, who had a minister named Cang Jie.”
 * 3)  “Cang Jie invented a writing system, the legend says, observing bird steps on the ground. The God of Heaven was so impressed by this display of ingenuity that he caused grain to fall from the skies as a sign of his satisfaction with mankind. This is nothing more than an interesting legend and Cang Jie himself is represented with 2 pairs of eyes.”
 * 4)  “Around 1000 B.C., there is a big change in China, with the brutal disappearance of the Shang dynasty, along with its fortune telling methods. However, the new Zhou dynasty (1100-221 B.C.) starts getting really interested in these turtle shell and bone inscriptions and their matching recordings, which they believe must define some sort of writing system. Non-uniform in size and shape, these drawings and characters are obviously far from defining a writing system, but the fact that they are interpreted to some form of meaning is a clear evidence that they are the base of a writing system. It is during this period that the Chinese characters, or kanji, really take the form of a reliable and systematic tool for recording events.”
 * 5)  “Those non-genuine characters, copied again by ignorant scribes, became usual, and Confucius himself complained about this attitude in a statement around 500 B.C.:”
 * 6)  “Consequently, these made-up characters were multiplied without restraint, to the great prejudice of etymology.”
 * 7)  “ In 221 B.C., after centuries of individually ruled kingdoms, each having their own version of a writing system (with a mix of solid origin and made-up characters), China is finally unified into a single territory with the start of the Qin dynasty (221-206 B.C.). This is a very important date in the history of kanji (and of China, of course) because during the Qin dynasty, everything is normalized throughout China, including road width, weight and measurements units, and of course written characters.”
 * 8)  “The following dynasties, the Han dynasty (206 B.C. to 220 A.D., period during which the first kanji are introduced to Japan),”
 * 9)  “The multiplication of characters is mainly due to the fact that with a rapidly progressing society, new words need to be created for new objects, ideas, concepts... China is ruled with a very powerful government, which records everything that is happening; it is therefore not surprising that many characters are invented at the same time”
 * 10)  “Moreover, writing become a public thing, leading to localized versions of the same character in different regions of China. Finally, ignorance played an important role in the multiplication process, and again, forgotten characters are replaced with made-up ones.”
 * 11)  “Characters are also modified during this period due to the change in the instruments and materials used for writing. In the past, characters were carved in bronze, and wood, where strokes need to be uniform in width.”
 * 12)  “Today in Japan, a minimum of 2,000 kanji are required to read the newspapers and the highest Japanese literature university level students know around 6,500 of them. In China, about 4,000 to 8,000 characters are required to read the newspapers, and a literature university graduate student knows about 12,000 of them. The total number of Chinese characters used throughout history is around 100,000, but most of them are doubles of others, or characters have only been used once.”