The Land od the Rising Yen

name) can end on a consonant, with the exception of n (remember san, for instance). As a result of this the language has about
four dozen syllables. Scholars invented the kana: katakana and hiragana, signs denoting all the syllables of the language. Katakana is used to
write down foreign words and names, and to italicize words, while hiragana is used for those Japanese words and such Japanese names which cannot be
written down in kanji. Both syllabaries are very old: katakana was invented in the eighth, hiragana in the ninth century. There is an
interesting story attached to hiragana. It was originated by a Buddhist
saint, called Kobo Daishi. He wrote a charming little poem, using all hiragana syllables once — but never repeating any one of them. The translation of this hiragana poem is this: ‘All is transitory in this fleeting world. Let me escape from its
illusions and vanities.' 12
    In the olden days any amount of kanji ideographs could be used and high-brow writers, to show off their immense
knowledge, always used as many complicated ideographs as they could dig up. Reading became more and more difficult, endless suffering in fact, but that was the
reader’s funeral. The main thing seemed to be not that he should understand but
that he should be impressed by the author’s erudition. Nevertheless, second
thoughts eventually prevailed and writers started to put next to the more
complicated kanji an explanation of its meaning, in tiny print and in a fourth system, called furigana. A Japanese scholar of an earlier generation
remarked ruefully: ‘A system of writing which is a combination of three systems
and yet needs a fourth to explain itself, is easily the most inferior in the
world.’
    Four systems seem to be quite a
handful; but that is not all. There are ancient, obsolete ideographs understood
only by specialists. While walking in the garden of a Kyoto temple with an
extremely intelligent pupil of Kyoto University I asked him what an inscription
meant. He glanced at it and said: ‘No idea. Old-fashioned writing.’ The truth
is that Egyptian hieroglyphics are a simple way of writing down one’s thoughts
compared with Japanese, which has four alphabets in theory and none in
practice.
     
    The Japanese did not remain unaware
of these disadvantages and in 1948 they instituted reforms to simplify their
writing. They chose two simplified sets of ideographs: 881 was chosen for a not
too well educated but large layer of the population who stopped going to school
at sixteen. Simple books, tales, romances, women’s magazines etc. — i.e. a vast
literature is printed in these selected kanji plus kana.
    This, however, was not enough for a
proper vocabulary so a second compromise was reached. Another set of 1,850 ideographs
(including the 881) was chosen for ordinary newspapers, books and general
literature, and now these 1,850 are almost universally used. There was a great
linguistic controversy: some people said essential ideographs were discarded
while silly, useless ones were retained. But it is like an anthology: one man’s
selection is nobody else’s, and one could argue till doomsday why one poem was
included while another was left out. Whatever the merits of the selection, only
these 1,850 kanji are used in modern publications. This, with kana, means many more than 1,850 words. Because — to complicate their system a little
further — the Japanese have combinations of two or three ideographs. One kanji may mean one thing, another a second thing, but the two together means a third
thing. For example: one sign means road; another railway line; the two together means strategy.
     
    The horrible drawbacks of this system
are obvious.
    (1) It takes a Japanese child about
eleven years to learn to read and write properly, a terrible waste of energy
and ability which, in a sharply competitive world where brains are becoming the
greatest treasure, Japan will not be able to afford indefinitely.
    (2) No one, literally no one, knows
all the ideographs. Scholars may come near enough to perfection but they will
never reach it. At the other end of the scale there are millions who keep
mixing up the ideographs — even the 881 — making the wrong strokes, writing one
thing when they mean another. It’s a question of strokes, not tones, but the
same kind of mistake can be made: you may want to write ‘Morning dew’ and
produce some unutterable vulgarity instead by putting a few strokes wrong.
There are millions