Japanese language
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Japanese is the principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people. It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan, the only country where it is the national langu
A page from the Man'yōshū, the oldest anthology of classical Japanese poetry
A 12th-century emaki scroll of The Tale of Genji from the 11th century
Keiten Aijin
Kanji
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Kanji are logographic Chinese characters, historically adapted from Chinese writing scripts, used in the writing of Japanese. They comprised a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time
Japanese language
…to indicate the relative status of the speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters, known as kanji (漢字, 'Han characters'), with two unique syllabaries (or moraic scripts) derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana (ひらがな…
Nihon Shoki (720 CE), considered by historians and archaeologists as the most complete extant historical record of ancient Japan, was written entirely in kanji.
A young woman practicing kanji. Ukiyo-e woodblock print by Yōshū Chikanobu, 1897.