The Japanese Writing System

A Brief History

The Japanese writing system can be traced back to the 4th century AD, when the written Chinese language was introduced to Japan. No definitive evidence of any native Japanese writing system that predates this is known to exist.

Initially, this was not used for writing Japanese: to be a literate Japanese meant the ability to read and write Classical Chinese.

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The Three Systems Of Writing

Written Japanese combines three distinct styles of characters or symbols: kanji, hiragana, and katakana. A fourth style, romaji has also been developed, which uses the roman alphabet.

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