Ancient And Modern Kanji Symbolism
Thursday, April 7th, 2011The Kanji script is today associated more so with the country of Japan rather than China although the script was initially developed in China. The modern Japanese logographic writing system was derived by the help of Chinese characters which they adopted into their system. The term kanji transforms as Han characters which are Chinese in origin.
How come the Kanji script today belongs to Japan if it had its origin in China? The whole thing was the result of the trade followed by the two countries where Japan would import Chinese articles with Hans script labeled on them.
An example of such an article includes the gold seal that was handed over by the then emperor of the Han dynasty to the Japanese. How and when the Japanese began to gain command over the use of the Chinese characters remains a mystery.
The most believable account is that the first people to make use of the Chinese Kanji script symbols in Japan were actually Chinese immigrants. Otherwise the Japanese had no real means of understanding or comprehending and even learning the Chinese script.
With the passage of time the bonding between the two countries became stronger. There was a constant need of written documentation that was to be transferred between both the countries. therefore a formal body of people known as the fuhito was set up which was trained to handle the documents written in the Chinese script. This paved the way for the acceptance of the Chinese Kanji script in Japan.
At the time when the Chinese Kanji script was introduced in Japan, the country lacked any writing system of its own. Starting out with the Chinese system the country slowly gave form to its own writing system which involved making use of Chinese text with some restructuring according to Japanese grammar.
Yet another improvement made was that the Japanese were presently using the Chinese characters to write Japanese words. This is what gave rise to modern kana syllables. The difference was that whereas the Chinese used their characters as symbols that lacked any phonetic value, the Japanese introduced a phonetic value to the Chinese script.
Where the Kanji script is concerned it is used more extensively in China than in Japan. But one fact that should be kept in mind is the style of both the scripts are quite different. On the surface they may look alike but they are structurally quite dissimilar.
There is another difference in Chinese and Japanese Kanji script when we apply it to the reading part. As discussed the Chinese treat the Kanji characters as symbols without any phonetic suggestion but in Japanese script every syllable has phonetic value.
Chinese symbolic meanings are an integral part of Chinese culture. If you want to read more about Chinese name symbols click on the hyperlinks.