Font reform in Japan
During the font reform in Japan in 1946, the Chinese characters that corresponded to the traditional Chinese characters were replaced by new characters, mostly with fewer strokes. The “old” Kanji were then called Kyūjitai ( 旧 字体 ; in Kyūjitai 舊 字體 ; German “old characters”) or Kyūkanji ( 旧 漢字 ; in Kyūjitai 舊 漢字 ; German “old Kanji”). The newly created characters have been referred to as Shinjitai ( 新 字体 / 新 字體 ) or Shinkanji ( 新 漢字 ) since then . These ancient characters are now almost completely out of use in Japan, in contrast to the traditional Chinese characters that are still in use in Taiwan , Hong Kong and even to a limited extent in the People's Republic of China .
Differences in print and cursive script before the script reform
In Japan, several variants were used in parallel before the font reform. The handwriting differed in some variants from the printed script. In the course of the font reform, the cursive variants were mostly raised to the printing form.
| Pamphlet | Handwriting | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| 黃 | 黄 | |
| 德 | 徳 | |
| 竝 | 並 | |
| 黑 | 黒 | |
| 戶 | 戸 or 户 | Also as a radical |
| 硏 | 研 | |
| 示 | 礻 | As a radical |
Note: Not all fonts show the differences between characters.
Today's use of the ancient Kanji
Nowadays the ancient Kanji are almost completely out of use. Almost no books are printed in old Kanji anymore. In contrast, the old characters are still used to a limited extent for emphasis. In Japan, for example, old variants such as 龜 、 晝 etc. Find. In names such as B. Personal names, geographical locations or company names, the old characters are still used. Examples:
- Mori Ōgai ( 森 鷗 外 , today's variant would be 森 鴎 外 )
- Yasukuni Shrine ( 靖國神社 , today's variant 靖国神社 ). The Yasukuni shrine itself uses the old version, street signs etc. also use the new version.
- Akira Kurosawa ( 黒 澤 明 , today: 黒 沢 明 . Here, however, there is a mixture of old and new characters, the completely old version would be 黑澤 明 )
Some signs can still be found in normal use today. So was z. For example, the symbol for “dragon” ( 龍 ) is simplified to 竜 , but 龍 is still used very often. Other characters, such as 國, are also still widely used. Other Kyūjitai, on the other hand, are as good as extinct.
Old characters in computer fonts
The old Kanji basically have their own code points in Unicode . For example, the old character from 国 (U + 56FD), 國 , has its own code point under U + 570B. These same code points are also used in traditional Chinese. However, various smaller differences, such as the radicals 示 / 礻 or 食, have not been coded separately in the course of the Han standardization . As a result, there was no way of displaying old variants on the computer with Unicode for a long time, as this could only be displayed with a different font. Because of this, Unicode was not very popular in Japan. It was only with the Ideographic Variation Selectors that a possibility was introduced to encode old characters.
literature
- 萩 野 貞 樹 『舊 漢字 - 書 い て 、 覺 え て 、 樂 し み て』 文藝 春秋 、 東京 都 、 2007 年 ISBN 978-4-16-660579-8
- 江守賢 治 『階 行草 筆順 ・ 字体 字典』 第二 版 、 三省 堂 、 東京 都 、 2002 年 ISBN 978-4-385-15049-9