WORLD BUDOKANJI COMMISSION. W.B.C.: Budokanji

The World Budokanji Commission W.B.C. was founded jointly by Grandmaster Sir.C.S.Chew & Grandmaster Prof.Dr.Dibyendu Nag in 1991 the project was launched for the Olympic Tokyo 2020. Our motive is to include Karate-Do into the Olympics & Recognized it through the United Nation Institute for Training And Research. BUDO_KANJI is a type of Martialyogarts to learn the Translation of BUDOKANJI. Contact: olympicouncil@gmail.com +91.9874741567

Local developments and divergences from Chinese

Since kanji are essentially Chinese hanzi used to write Japanese, the majority of characters used in modern Japanese still retain their Chinese meaning, physical resemblance with some of their modern traditional Chinese characters counterparts, and a degree of similarity with Classical Chinese pronunciation imported to Japan from 5th to 9th century. Nevertheless, after centuries of development, there is a notable number of kanji used in modern Japanese which have different meaning from hanzi used in modern Chinese. Such differences are the result of:

the use of characters created in Japan,
characters that have been given different meanings in Japanese, and
post-World War II simplifications (shinjitai) of the character.

Likewise, the process of character simplification in mainland China since the 1950s has resulted in the fact that Japanese speakers who have not studied Chinese may not recognize some simplified characters.

Kokuji

In Japanese, Kokuji (国字^?, "national characters") refers to Chinese characters made outside of China. Specifically, kanji made in Japan are referred to as Wasei kanji (和製漢字^?). They are primarily formed in the usual way of Chinese characters, namely by combining existing components, though using a combination that is not used in China. The corresponding phenomenon in Korea is called gukja (國字), a cognate name; there are however far fewer Korean-coined characters than Japanese-coined ones. Other languages using the Chinese family of scripts sometimes have far more extensive systems of native characters, most significantly Vietnamese chữ nôm, which comprises over 20,000 characters used throughout traditional Vietnamese writing, and Zhuang sawndip, which comprises over 10,000 characters, which are still in use.
Since kokuji are generally devised for existing native words, these usually only have native kunreadings. However, they occasionally have a Chinese on reading, derived from a phonetic, as in働, dō, from 動, and in rare cases only have an on reading, as in 腺, sen, from 泉, which was derived for use in technical compounds (腺 means "gland", hence used in medical terminology).
The majority of kokuji are ideogrammatic compounds (会意字), meaning that they are composed of two (or more) characters, with the meaning associated with the combination. For example, 働 is composed of 亻 (person radical) plus 動 (action), hence "action of a person, work". This is in contrast to kanji generally, which are overwhelmingly phono-semantic compounds. This difference is because kokuji were coined to express Japanese words, so borrowing existing (Chinese) readings could not express these – combining existing characters to logically express the meaning was the simplest way to achieve this. Other illustrative examples (below) include 榊sakaki tree, formed as 木 "tree" and 神 "god", literally "divine tree", and 辻 tsuji "crossroads, street" formed as 辶 (⻌) "road" and 十 "cross", hence "cross-road".
In terms of meanings, these are especially for natural phenomena (esp. species) that were not present in ancient China, including a very large number of fish, such as 鰯 (sardine), 鱈 (codfish), and 鱚 (sillago). In other cases they refer to specifically Japanese abstract concepts, everyday words (like 辻), or later technical coinages (such as 腺).
There are hundreds of kokuji in existence.^[24] Many are rarely used, but a number have become commonly used components of the written Japanese language. These include the following:
Jōyō kanji has about 9 kokuji; there is some dispute over classification, but generally includes these:

働どう dō, はたら(く) hatara(ku) "work", the most commonly used kokuji, used in the fundamental verb hatara(ku) (働く^?, "work"), included in elementary texts and on theProficiency Test N5.
込こ(む) ko(mu), used in the fundamental verb komu (込む^?, "to be crowded")
匂にお(う) nio(u), used in common verb niou (匂う^?, "to smell, to be fragrant")
畑はたけ hatake "field of crops"
腺せん sen, "gland"
峠とうげ tōge "mountain pass"
枠わく waku, "frame"
塀へい hei, "wall"
搾しぼ(る) shibo(ru), "to squeeze" (disputed; see below); a

jinmeiyō kanji

榊さかき sakaki "tree, genus Cleyera"
辻つじ tsuji "crossroads, street"
匁もんめ monme (unit of weight)

Hyōgaiji:

躾しつけ shitsuke "training, rearing (an animal, a child)"

Some of these characters (for example, 腺, "gland")^[25] have been introduced to China. In some cases the Chinese reading is the inferred Chinese reading, interpreting the character as a phono-semantic compound (as in how on readings are sometimes assigned to these characters in Chinese), while in other cases (such as 働), the Japanese on reading is borrowed (in general this differs from the modern Chinese pronunciation of this phonetic). Similar coinages occurred to a more limited extent in Korea and Vietnam.
Historically, some kokuji date back to very early Japanese writing, being found in the Man'yōshū,for example – 鰯 iwashi "sardine" dates to the Nara period (8th century) – while they have continued to be created as late as the late 19th century, when a number of characters were coined in the Meiji era for new scientific concepts. For example, some characters were produced as regular compounds for some (but not all) SI units, such as 粁 (米 "meter" + 千 "thousand, kilo-") for kilometer – see Chinese characters for SI units for details.
In Japan the kokuji category is strictly defined as characters whose earliest appearance is in Japan. If a character appears earlier in the Chinese literature, it is not considered a kokuji even if the character was independently coined in Japan and unrelated to the Chinese character (meaning "not borrowed from Chinese"). In other words, kokuji are not simply characters that were made in Japan, but characters that were first made in Japan. An illustrative example is ankō (鮟鱇^?,monkfish). This spelling was created in Edo period Japan from the ateji (phonetic kanji spelling) 安康 for the existing word ankō by adding the 魚 radical to each character – the characters were "made in Japan". However, 鮟 is not considered kokuji, as it is found in ancient Chinese texts as a corruption of 鰋 (魚匽). 鱇 is considered kokuji, as it has not been found in any earlier Chinese text. Casual listings may be more inclusive, including characters such as 鮟.^[26] Another example is 搾, which is sometimes not considered kokuji due to its earlier presence as a corruption of Chinese 榨.

Kokkun

In addition to kokuji, there are kanji that have been given meanings in Japanese different from their original Chinese meanings. These are not considered kokuji but are instead called kok‌kun (国訓) and include characters such as:

Char.	Japanese		Chinese
Char.	Reading	Meaning	Pinyin	Meaning
藤	fuji	wisteria	téng	rattan, cane, vine^[27]
沖	oki	offing, offshore	chōng	rinse, minor river (Cantonese)
椿	tsubaki	Camellia japonica	chūn	Toona spp.
鮎	ayu	sweetfish	nián	catfish (rare, usually written 鯰)

Types of Kanji: by category

Main article: Chinese character classification

Han-dynasty scholar Xu Shen in his 2nd-century dictionary Shuowen Jiezi classified Chinese characters into six categories (Chinese: 六書 liùshū, Japanese: rikusho). The traditional classification is still taught but is problematic and no longer the focus of modern lexicographic practice, as some categories are not clearly defined, nor are they mutually exclusive: the first four refer to structural composition, while the last two refer to usage.

Shōkei moji (象形文字)

Shōkei (Mandarin: xiàngxíng) characters are pictographic sketches of the object they represent. For example, 目 is an eye, while 木 is a tree. (Shōkei 象形 is also the Japanese word for Egyptianhieroglyphs). The current forms of the characters are very different from the originals, though their representations are more clear in oracle bone script and seal script. These pictographic characters make up only a small fraction of modern characters.

Shiji moji (指事文字)

Shiji (Mandarin: zhǐshì) characters are ideographs, often called "simple ideographs" or "simple indicatives" to distinguish them and tell the difference from compound ideographs (below). They are usually simple graphically and represent an abstract concept such as 上 "up" or "above" and 下 "down" or "below". These make up a tiny fraction of modern characters.

Kaii moji (会意文字)

Kaii (Mandarin: huìyì) characters are compound ideographs, often called "compound indicatives", "associative compounds", or just "ideographs". These are usually a combination of pictographs that combine semantically to present an overall meaning. An example of this type is 休 (rest) from 亻 (person radical) and 木 (tree). Another is the kokuji 峠 (mountain pass) made from 山 (mountain), 上 (up) and 下 (down). These make up a tiny fraction of modern characters.

Keisei moji (形声文字)

Keisei (Mandarin: xíngshēng) characters are phono-semantic or radical-phonetic compounds, sometimes called "semantic-phonetic", "semasio-phonetic", or "phonetic-ideographic" characters, are by far the largest category, making up about 90% of the characters in the standard lists; however, some of the most frequently used kanji belong to one of the three groups mentioned above, so keisei moji will usually make up less than 90% of the characters in a text. Typically they are made up of two components, one of which (most commonly, but by no means always, the left or top element) suggests the general category of the meaning or semantic context, and the other (most commonly the right or bottom element) approximates the pronunciation. The pronunciation relates to the original Chinese, and may now only be distantly detectable in the modern Japanese on'yomi of the kanji; it generally has no relation at all to kun'yomi. The same is true of the semantic context, which may have changed over the centuries or in the transition from Chinese to Japanese. As a result, it is a common error in folk etymology to fail to recognize a phono-semantic compound, typically instead inventing a compound-indicative explanation.

Tenchū moji (転注文字)

Tenchū (Mandarin: zhuǎnzhù) characters have variously been called "derivative characters", "derivative cognates", or translated as "mutually explanatory" or "mutually synonymous" characters; this is the most problematic of the six categories, as it is vaguely defined. It may refer to kanji where the meaning or application has become extended. For example, 楽 is used for 'music' and 'comfort, ease', with different pronunciations in Chinese reflected in the two differenton'yomi, gaku 'music' and raku 'pleasure'.

Kasha moji (仮借文字)

Kasha (Mandarin: jiǎjiè) are rebuses, sometimes called "phonetic loans". The etymology of the characters follows one of the patterns above, but the present-day meaning is completely unrelated to this. A character was appropriated to represent a similar sounding word. For example, 来 in ancient Chinese was originally a pictograph for "wheat". Its syllable was homophonous with the verb meaning "to come", and the character is used for that verb as a result, without any embellishing "meaning" element attached. The character for wheat 麦, originally meant "to come", being a keisei moji having 'foot' at the bottom for its meaning part and "wheat" at the top for sound. The two characters swapped meaning, so today the more common word has the simpler character. This borrowing of sounds has a very long history.

Related symbols

Collation

Kanji, whose thousands of symbols defy ordering by conventions such as those used for the Latin script, are often collated using the traditional Chinese radical-and-stroke sorting method. In this system, common components of characters are identified; these are called radicals. Characters are grouped by their primary radical, then ordered by number of pen strokes within radicals. For example, the kanji character 桜, meaning "cherry", is sorted as a ten-stroke character under the four-stroke primary radical 木 meaning "tree". When there is no obvious radical or more than one radical, convention governs which is used for collation.
Other kanji sorting methods, such as the SKIP system, have been devised by various authors.
Modern general-purpose Japanese dictionaries (as opposed to specifically character dictionaries) generally collate all entries, including words written using kanji, according to their kanarepresentations (reflecting the way they are pronounced). The gojūon ordering of kana is normally used for this purpose.

Kanji education

An image that lists most joyo-kanji, according to Halpern's KLD indexing system, with kyo-iku kanji color-coded by grade level.

Japanese school children are expected to learn 1006 basic kanji characters, the kyōiku kanji, before finishing the sixth grade. The order in which these characters are learned is fixed. Thekyōiku kanji list is a subset of a larger list, originally of 1945 kanji characters, in 2010 extended to 2136, known as the jōyō kanji – characters required for the level of fluency necessary to read newspapers and literature in Japanese. This larger list of characters is to be mastered by the end of the ninth grade.^[28] Schoolchildren learn the characters by repetition and radical.
Students studying Japanese as a foreign language are often required by a curriculum to acquire kanji without having first learned the vocabulary associated with them. Strategies for these learners vary from copying-based methods to mnemonic-based methods such as those used inJames Heisig's series Remembering the Kanji. Other textbooks use methods based on theetymology of the characters, such as Mathias and Habein's The Complete Guide to Everyday Kanji and Henshall's A Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters. Pictorial mnemonics, as in the text Kanji Pict-o-graphix, are also seen.
The Japanese government provides the Kanji kentei (日本漢字能力検定試験 Nihon kanji nōryoku kentei shiken; "Test of Japanese Kanji Aptitude"), which tests the ability to read and write kanji. The highest level of the Kanji kentei tests about six thousand kanji.

WORLD BUDOKANJI COMMISSION. W.B.C.

Tuesday, 27 September 2016

Budokanji