Kanji, which refers to the Chinese characters used in Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese and Korean writing systems, are thought to have originated along the Yellow River () in China, around 2000 B.C., when cracks on burned bones, used for divination, were interpreted as real objects, giving a written representation of that object.

Or at least this is the most widely accepted version. The (alternative) traditional Chinese version involves the mystic Chinese emperor and supposedly founder of the Chinese civilization, Huandgi (), who had a minister named Cang Jie. Cang Jie invented a writing system, the legend says, observing bird steps on the ground. The God of Heaven was so impressed by this display of ingenuity that he caused grain to fall from the skies as a sign of his satisfaction with mankind. This is nothing more than an interesting legend and Cang Jie himself is represented with 2 pairs of eyes.

Another interesting and more factual version suggests that Chinese characters actually derived from the Sumerian cuneiform drawings. This is a very interesting theory, because it is believed that the concept of writing existed in the Middle-East fertile crescent (located in present-day Southern Iraq) long before China started its own. Since the Sumerian civilization suddenly disappeared from the historical radar (or more accurately moved to an unknown place), it is not impossible that they ended up in China, as some recent objects found in Northern China have strange resemblance with Sumerian objects.

The picture on the side shows the picture of a Sumerian stone.

But let's stick with today's official story (somewhat confirmed by a recent discovery in March 1998) for now, and consider that kanji originated in China, around 2000 B.C..

The Early Times

At that time, during the Xia () dynasty (2000-1500 B.C., China's oldest dynasty) and the Shang () dynasty (1500-1000 B.C., China's oldest confirmed dynasty), people live in fear of the power of nature, which they believe is controlled by Heaven. Heaven is the absolute being and kings are its intermediates. Everytime some serious question rises (next season's weather, best day to procreate, success of the next crop...), kings refer to the Heaven, burning turtle shells or animal bones, and analyze the resulting cracks or splits of the surface of the shells and bones to answer all these important questions. The analysis is usually just a subjective match between the shape of the cracks with real life objects. However, each of these divination sessions are recorded by scribes and registrars of the kings, who carve the crack shapes and the drawing of the newly matched objects (which later became characters) in bones, or wood. In time, these recordings become a habit and define the foundation of a writing system. Some drawing become so familiar that an official (but informal) definition and pronunciation is given and the drawing becomes a character. The study of these recordings shows that the characters recorded at that time varied a lot from one session to another. About 3000 characters have been discovered from this early period, half of which we still can't understand the meaning.

The picture on the side shows a piece of a turtle shell, with some kind of cracks used for divination.

Around 1000 B.C., there is a big change in China, with the brutal disappearance of the Shang dynasty, along with its fortune telling methods. However, the new Zhou () dynasty (1100-221 B.C.) starts getting really interested in these turtle shell and bone inscriptions and their matching recordings, which they believe must define some sort of writing system. Non-uniform in size and shape, these drawings and characters are obviously far from defining a writing system, but the fact that they are interpreted to some form of meaning is a clear evidence that they are the base of a writing system. It is during this period that the Chinese characters, or kanji, really take the form of a reliable and systematic tool for recording events.

However, early in-depth study of the characters form, shape and meaning was neglected and, in time, the scribes became more and more ignorant about the origin of the characters. Moreover, when they did not remember the genuine character, they would invent a new approximated one. Those non-genuine characters, copied again by ignorant scribes, became usual, and Confucius himself complained about this attitude in a statement around 500 B.C.: "When I was young, I still knew some scribes who left blank the characters which they could not write; now there are no more such men". Consequently,  these made-up characters were multiplied without restraint, to the great prejudice of etymology.

The picture on the side shows a bone with incised drawings, from the mid-Shang dynasty.

The Standardization Times

In 221 B.C., after centuries of individually ruled kingdoms, each having their own version of a writing system (with a mix of solid origin and made-up characters), China is finally unified into a single territory with the start of the Qin () dynasty (221-206 B.C.). This is a very important date in the history of kanji (and of China, of course) because during the Qin dynasty, everything is normalized throughout China, including road width, weight and measurements units, and of course written characters. The prime-minister LiSu (), at that time, is a very motivated person; he writes and publishes a new official index of the characters (known as the SanTsang, ), containing 3300 characters, which becomes the reference and is declared mandatory for scholars. This book does not include any new character primitive, but new characters using existing primitives for objects and concepts that were unknown before. It also tries to fix some of the mistakes made before, but sometimes under the wrong character shape (which we can correct some of his mistakes today). Out of the 3300 characters in this book, most of them are simple enough that they are still in use today (although mostly for seals rather than on a printing form).

The picture on the side shows such a seal with 4 characters.

The following dynasties, the Han () dynasty (206 B.C. to 220 A.D., period during which the first kanji are introduced to Japan), then about 400 years of a big mess, then the Sui () dynasty (589-618 A.D.), and then the Tang () dynasty (618-907 A.D.), are important periods for these characters, as they go through tremendous multiplications and modifications. The multiplication of characters is mainly due to the fact that with a rapidly progressing society, new words need to be created for new objects, ideas, concepts... China is ruled with a very powerful government, which records everything that is happening; it is therefore not surprising that many characters are invented at the same time. Moreover, writing become a public thing, leading to localized versions of the same character in different regions of China. Finally, ignorance played an important role in the multiplication process, and again, forgotten characters are replaced with made-up ones.

Characters are also modified during this period due to the change in the instruments and materials used for writing. In the past, characters were carved in bronze, and wood, where strokes need to be uniform in width. Then, the brush is used, adding beauty and speed to the writing and eliminating the need for uniform strokes. According to some sinologists however, the invention of the brush and paper for writing was fatal for the characters, as a brush cannot trace lines against the hair, therefore many characters could not be written and were replaced by arbitrary and fanciful sketches. Finally, the development of the printing technology during the Tang dynasty forced characters to be squared away so that each character would fit in the same square space. The picture on the side shows the Chinese character meaning school, in its orthodox form (it has been simplified since as ).

Above is the character (to like) in various writing styles (from left to right):
original bone carving, soft metal carving, hard metal carving,
seal, traditional, one type of brush calligraphy, another type of brush calligraphy,
and finally regular brush.

The Modern Times

All these changes increase the number of known Chinese characters of a 10x factor, over a period of millenium! LiSu's original dictionary contains 3300 characters, around Jesus Christ time, the latest edition of that reference book (the 7th edition) contains about 7500 characters, 2 centuries later, around 10,000 and at the end of the Tang dynasty, around 30,000. But while accumulating so many of written documents (mostly government related ones), it inherently became obvious that the writing system could not be changed again so much and some standardization needed to take place. In 200 A.D., the great Hsu Shi () published a complete character reference book based on LiSu's, but where everything had been controlled, amended, explained and classified under rational keys, or radicals. This book contains 10,516 characters and is considered, by Chinese philologists (even in the present time), as the authority to be consulted in all doubt. All character dictionaries published in the last 17 centuries take pride on having followed that book.

The picture on the side shows the character meaning bridge, in a calligraphy style.

It is recently (20th century) that the next big change in Chinese characters happens, China simplifying many of its own (sometimes to the extreme), and then after W.W.II, Japan starts a similar process (to a limited extent). As a result, Japan and China have simplified the same characters in different ways, creating a great divergence and some confusion. Taiwan, on the other hand decided to stick with traditional Chinese characters, while Korea is now using their original phonetic writing system, Hangul.

Today in Japan, a minimum of 2,000 kanji are required to read the newspapers and the highest Japanese literature university level students know around 6,500 of them. In China, about 4,000 to 8,000 characters are required to read the newspapers, and a literature university graduate student knows about 12,000 of them. The total number of Chinese characters used throughout history is around 100,000, but most of them are doubles of others, or characters have only been used once.

As a little anecdote, the Director of the French/Chinese Center in Beijing loved these never-used characters. He would sometimes write one on a small notebook and ask a Chinese about it. These Chinese persons were often highly educated people, sometimes with years of Chinese history and art studies, but they obviously couldn't know every single character among the 100,000; nobody does. He would then tell them how lamentable they were and go back to his office, or have lunch.

The picture on the side shows the word kanji, in ... kanji. The term kanji () itself means symbols or characters () of Han () dynasty China, since they were introduced during the Chinese Han dynasty period. In English (as in other European languages), kanji is an uncountable word.

Unlike most ancient writing systems, Chinese characters, or Kanji, made it through history to our current modern world due to a solid semantic base, a design that left a lot of room for improvements and adaptability to changes, and a large civilization who took the habit, over the centuries, to record everything, conveying from generation to generation a system that just could not fade away.

But to the individual who is faced with this enormous amount of characters to learn, some kind of classification is necessary to efficiently study and remember them. The next page details the historical, yet not very useful classification of Chinese characters by types, while the page following it, details a more modern approach to structuring these characters.