Japanese

In Japanese, the word “Japan” is comprised of two characters: 日本

The first character means “sun.” The second is really the character for “tree” with a horizontal line placed towards the bottom of the center stroke, indicating focus on the root. It means “root.” Together they mean “sun-root,” that is, land from which the sun springs up, or more poetically, "land of the rising sun:" They are pronounced “Ni-Hong,” which is the name of Japan in Japanese. Early visitors from the West heard the strong “h” in “Nihong” as a “p,” which explains why “Nippon” was used for so many years in English.

A third character, 語 (pronounced “go”), is added to create “Nihon-go” or “Japanese Language.” These three characters are “Kanji” characters, representing one of three writing systems simultaneously in use in Japan.

Kanji

Kanji was imported from Chinese many centuries ago, and is ideographic. This means that it is comprised of characters or pictures, not phonetic symbols. One explanation of the origin of the term “Kanji” is that it is a corruption of the Chinese expression “Han-dze,” meaning “Chinese (Han) characters.” It is written 漢字. Over 1,000 of these imported characters are in daily use in written Japanese. Of course, several of them have evolved over the years until they are quite different from their original Chinese models, and the meanings of several of them also have drifted considerably. Thus, knowing Chinese does not guarantee that one could read Kanji.

Hiragana and Katakana

If you look at a Japanese newspaper, you will see much more than Kanji characters. The other two writing systems are called “Hiragana” and “Katakana.” They are sometimes called “alphabets,” but this is a misnomer. It is true that characters of Hiragana and Katakana tell you how to pronounce the syllable in question, but they are not “letters” that stand for “vowels” and “consonants,” the way Western alphabets work.

This is how Hiragana is written in Hiragana: ひらがな. It looks rounded and flowing to the Western eye, while Katakana seems more angular and stark. This is katakana: アメリカ(“America”). The preference in educated writing is to use Kanji whenever possible, then Hiragana, and then Katakana only when needed for clarity (as in foreign terms, country names and technical words). For example, older forms of messaging (like telegraph or Telex) required the draft message to be written in Katakana because of its relative simplicity. Today it is still the main medium for messaging by cell phone. A hand-written message will probably be written mostly in Katakana so as to be more legible. In advertisements, Katakana is used for some headlines and for listing telephone numbers, also because of its simplicity and clarity. Japanese with very rudimentary education will be able to read Katakana fairly well, and perhaps Hiragana, too, but their command of Kanji may be very limited.