26 CHAPTER 1. THE SYNTAX
left, and something else to the right. This is not a coincidence: most kanji
can be described as some bit that is used by a number of other kanji, plus
a unique part that identifies that particular kanji. The bit of kanji that is
shared by several (or in some case lots of) kanji is called a ”radical”, and
can be used to look up a kanji if you have no idea what it means or even
how to pronounce it.
The very first Chinese character dictionary, the Shuōwén Jiězì (
), published in the year 121, used 214 such characters as index-
ing shapes, calling them bushu,
. While this scheme was thought up
almost two millenia ago, amazingly this method of organising kanji has
not been fundamentally altered ever since: while wriĴen Chinese, and
later Japanese, changed over the centuries, the only thing that has really
changed is the number of indexing radicals. Current indices list around
400 shapes as radicals, compared to the original 214, mostly due to many
shapes being considered ”variations” of the classic radicals these days. For
instance: while originally only was considered a radical (radical number
49, in fact), Chinese characters have changed over the course of centuries
so that now the shapes and are also used, and are considered varia-
tions of the original. Kanji that use any of these three shapes may thus
be found grouped together.
Some variations on the traditional radicals are simple, such as
changing ever so slightly to become the left element in , the only real
difference being that the lower horizontal stroke is slanted a liĴle. How-
ever, some variations are more drastic, such as becoming the left ele-
ment in ; the top stroke has disappeared. The most drastic changes we
see, however, are those where a radical is no longer readily recognisable
as stemming from a particular kanji. For instance, if you didn’t know any-
thing about kanji, you would be hard pressed to imagine that the left com-
ponent in is actually considered the radical form of. Or that the top
component in is actually the radical form of the kanji. Probably the
most confusing of all radicals are the radical forms of the kanji pair and
, which both turn into , but on different sides of more complex kanji:
is indexed by , while is indexed by!
1.3.5 Styles
There are several writing ”styles” for Japanese, each associated with differ-
ent uses. The most common use by far is the kaisho,
, style, or ”print”
style. Textbooks, novels, newspapers, webpages, virtually all material in-
tended for mass reading consumption uses this style. There are a few dif-