1.3. KANJI 19
tend to span from the late thirteenth century to well into the Edo period
(
, edojidai), also known as the Tokugawa period (
, toku-
gawajidai) running from the seventeenth to the late nineteenth century.
The naming for these readings, however, can be slightly confusing.
readings are known aswu readings. However, they do not so much
refer to the Wu dynasty (which spans the first two centuries a.d.) as simply
to the region the readings are believed to have come from ( being the
name of the Wu region in Jiangnan, , in modern China). The
readings are calledhanreadings, but have essentially nothing to do with
the Han Dynasty, which spanned the late third century BCE.
The readings, equally confusing, are referred to as Tang read-
ings, even though this name would be more appropriate for the read-
ings, which actually derive from Tang Chinese. Rather, derive their
readings from Chinese as it was used during the Sung dynasty and on-
ward.
In addition to these changes to Chinese readings, the wriĴen lan-
guage itself slowly moved away from Chinese proper, through a Chinese-
Japanese hybrid wriĴen language, to what is essentially the Japanese we
know today: mixed Chinese characters with syllabic script (itself derived
from Chinese characters being used phonetically) with different readings
for Chinese characters typically indicating different interpretations of the
characters used.
While there had been no wriĴen language before the introduction of
Chinese, there had certainly been a language, which survived throughout
the ages by virtue of the commoners not needing to bother with writing,
and thus not incorporating Chinese into their language as much as royals
and officials would. This eventually led to native Japanese readings being
applied to wriĴen Chinese, giving us two different reading ”systems”: the
, ’onyomi’, which are the Chinese derived readings, and the
,
’kunyomi’, which are the native Japanese derived readings.
A major problem with kanji is that without a knowledge of the kanji
in question, it is not always clear when to use which reading. There are no
rules that state that certain kanji are read in a particular way when used
on their own, or when part of a word, and so the only real way to make
sure you are using the right reading for a kanji is to look it up and then
remember the reading for thecontextthe kanji was used in.
This usually leads to the question of why kanji are still being used,
when other languages only use phonetic scripts. The Japaneseabstracted
syllabic scripts from Chinese for phonetic writing, so why the continued