Japanese vocabulary consists of four lexical strata: native vocabulary, Sino-Japanese words, foreign loans, and onomatopoeic expressions. Each stratum is associated with phonological and semantic characteristics. The native vocabulary reflects the socioeconomic concerns of traditional Japanese society, which were centred on farming and fishing. The words associated with rice, a staple food in Japan, clearly delineate the form or state of the rice to which they refer; the rice plant is ine, raw rice is kome, and cooked rice is either gohan or meshi. Both gohan and meshi are used to refer to meals in general, as an English speaker might use the word bread in the phrase ‘our daily bread.’ Another example of native vocabulary is the variety of names given to certain types of fish according to their size.

Some Chinese words are generally believed to have been introduced into Japan during the 1st century ce, or possibly before that. A systematic introduction of the Chinese language, however, occurred about 400 ce, when Korean scholars introduced Chinese books to Japan. Sino-Japanese words now constitute slightly more than 50 percent of the Japanese vocabulary, a proportion comparable to that of Latinate words in the English vocabulary. Both Chinese or Chinese-based words in Japanese and Latin or Latin-based words in English are also similar in their tendency to express abstract concepts and to make up a great part of the academic vocabulary. Contrary to what is suggested by the term kan-go ‘Chinese word,’ a large number of Sino-Japanese words were actually coined in Japan, using existing Chinese characters. Forms such as shakai ‘society’ and kagaku ‘science’ have been borrowed back into Chinese and adopted by Korean through the medium of shared Chinese characters.

Loanwords other than those constituting the stratum of Sino-Japanese words are lumped together as gairai-go, literally ‘foreign-coming words.’ In the contemporary Japanese vocabulary, English words dominate that category, with slightly more than 80 percent. Also evident are the linguistic legacies of 16th-century Portuguese, Spanish, and, in particular, Dutch missionaries and traders, as in such Modern Japanese words as pan ‘bread’ (from Portuguese paõ), tabako ‘tobacco’ (from Portuguese tabaco), tenpura ‘[English tempura, a deep-fried dish]’ (from Portuguese tempero), biiru ‘beer’ (from Dutch bier), penki ‘paint’ (from Dutch pek), and orugōru ‘music box’ (from Dutch orgel). As illustrated in the last example, foreign loans are phonologically fully Japanized, with vowels appropriately inserted or appended and with occasional consonantal adjustments, although an initial p, which is lacking in Japanese, is left intact.

In fact, only the vocabularies of the native and the Sino-Japanese strata of Modern Japanese lack an initial p. It occurs quite frequently in the onomatopoeic vocabulary—e.g., pachi-pachi (referring to hand-clapping sounds), piku-piki (referring to a slight repetitive movement of an object), piri-piri (referring to a state of annoyance or irritation). As these examples suggest, Japanese sound symbolism encompasses not only mimetic expressions of natural sounds but also those that depict states, conditions, or manners of the external world as well as those symbolizing mental conditions or sensations. Sound-symbolic words permeate Japanese life, occurring in animated speech and abounding in literary works of all sorts.

Writing systems

The earliest attempts to write Japanese involved the use of not only Chinese characters but also Classical Chinese grammar, as is evident in the preface to the 8th-century Kojiki. Within some 50 years, by the time the Man’yōshū was completed, the Japanese had begun to use the sounds of Chinese character names to write Japanese phonetically. For example, the Japanese word yama ‘mountain’ was written phonetically by using the character sounding like ya with another character sounding like ma. Although there are earlier examples of the phonetic use of Chinese characters (such as in the songs of the Kojiki itself), it is known among Japanese grammarians as man’yō-gana, because its expression is most diversified in the Man’yōshū.

Two kinds of kana, or syllabic writing, developed from man’yō-gana. Katakana, which is angular in appearance, developed from the abbreviation of Chinese characters, and hiragana, rounded in appearance, by simplifying the grass (cursive) style of writing. Originally used as mnemonic symbols for reading Chinese characters, kana were eagerly adopted by women with literary aspirations; these women had been discouraged from learning Chinese characters, which belonged to the male domain of learning and writing. Murasaki Shikibu’s 11th-century Genji monogatari, considered by many to be Japan’s greatest literary achievement, was written almost entirely in hiragana. In contemporary Japanese writing, Chinese characters (kanji) and hiragana are used in combination, the former for content words and the latter for words such as particles and inflectional endings that indicate grammatical function. Katakana are used largely for foreign loanwords, telegrams, print advertising, and certain onomatopoeic expressions.

The use of kana made it possible to write a word in two ways. The Japanese word for ‘mountain’ could be written in kana (phonetically) by using two characters—that for ya and that for ma—or in kanji (by using the Chinese character meaning ‘mountain’). That possibility helped to establish a relation between the Chinese character and its Japanese semantic equivalent and led to the practice of assigning a dual reading to Chinese characters: the Sino-Japanese reading (called on-yomi), based on the original Chinese pronunciation, and the Japanese reading (kun-yomi). Thus, the Chinese character originally meaning ‘mountain’ could be read as both san in on-yomi and yama in kun-yomi. Because Chinese words and their pronunciations were borrowed from different parts of China as well as during different historical periods, Modern Japanese includes many characters having more than one on-yomi reading.

The complexity of reproducing the strokes for each character and the multiple readings associated with it have stimulated movements to abolish Chinese characters in favour of kana writing or even more radical movements for completely romanizing the Japanese language. All these, however, have failed. Despite their complexity, Chinese characters retain a number of advantages over phonetic writing systems. For one thing, many homophonous words are visually distinguishable. For another, the meanings of unknown words written in Chinese characters can be surmised through the ideographic nature of these characters. That semantic transparency and the characteristic configurations of characters enable easy recognition and understanding of a passage. These strengths and Japan’s high literacy rate make the abolishment of Chinese characters very unlikely.

Nevertheless, the shapes of Chinese characters have been simplified, and the number of commonly used characters has been limited. In 1946 the Japanese government issued a list of 1,850 characters for that purpose. Revised in 1981, the new list (called Jōyō kanji hyō “List of characters for daily use”) contains 1,945 characters recommended for daily use. That basic list of Chinese characters is to be learned during primary and secondary education. When newspapers use characters not on the list, they also supply the reading in hiragana.