166 Williams Et Al.

Chapter 5

Japanese

We have now seen two historical examples of the adaptation of the Chinese
script to vernacular writing of other languages. While these two examples of
Sinographic writing were based on the same general principles—phonetic and
semantic adaptation—they differed significantly in the details. I have argued
that these differences can be explained by—indeed, were in a sense required
by—the different typological features of the language involved. Vietnamese
provided us with a model of morphographic script adaptation from one isolat-
ing, monosyllabic language to another; Korean with a model of adaptation
from an isolating language to an agglutinating one.
We now turn our attention to Japanese, an agglutinating language with mor-
phological and syntactic structures that are remarkably similar to those of Ko-
rean.1 The greatest typological difference between them is in the phonology. As
we will see below, through all historical periods Japanese has had a significant-
ly simpler phonological structure than Korean. According to the hypothesis
advanced here, the techniques of script adaptation seen in Japan in the devel-
opment of Sinographic vernacular writing should be similar to those seen in
Korea, i.e. should follow the agglutinating model, with some differences neces-
sitated by or facilitated by the differences in phonological structure.
Presenting a challenge to the testing of this hypothesis is the high degree of
cultural interaction between the Korean kingdoms and early Japan during the
period of vernacular script development. There is considerable evidence that,
at least during the earliest stages, Chinese script adaptation in Japan was guid-
ed or inspired by scribes from the Korean peninsula. A central question we
must attempt to answer is the degree to which similar methods of script adap-
tation are attributable to cultural influence on the one hand and to linguistic-
typological features on the other.
The history of writing in Japan differs from the histories of writing in Korea
and Vietnam in three key respects. First, we know a lot more about the early
history of writing in Japan.2 There are fewer gaps in the historical record, a

1 The nature of the historical relationship between Japanese and Korean remains controversial,
with opinion divided on whether the languages are genetically related or not. On various re-
cent hypotheses concerning the nature of the relationship, see Beckwith (2007), Unger (2009),
Vovin (2010), Whitman (2012).
2 As Lurie (2011: 1) puts it, “In the world history of writing, Japan presents an unusually detailed
record of a transition to literacy.”

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004352223_006

Japanese 167

greater quantity of early texts are available, and we have some early Japanese
histories and descriptions which, although they cannot necessarily be taken at
face value in terms of historical accuracy, provide an indigenous perspective
which is close in time to the events themselves. Second, there is an unbroken
tradition of exegetical reading of early Japanese Sinographic texts. This means
that the content and the mechanisms used to represent it in writing are well
understood, despite significant changes in writing practices and in the under-
lying language over the last millennium and a half. In contrast to Korean,
where the tradition of reading hyangga was lost and modern scholars struggle
to reconstruct the form and sense of the poems, and Vietnamese, where the
historical hints of early pedagogical and glossing traditions using Nôm remain
unsubstantiated, the history of Japanese writing is a comparatively open book.
Third, writing was not introduced to Japan through Chinese occupation. The
introduction of Literary Sinitic to Japan was indirect, and took place in the
absence of a local Chinese-speaking population.
The full history of writing in Japan is quite complex, involving many inter-
woven strands of development across many centuries. It is impossible to cap-
ture its full breadth and depth in this chapter, and no attempt is made to do so;
the interested reader is directed to a number of comprehensive studies in Eng-
lish, such as Habein (1984), Seeley (1991), Frellesvig (2010), and Lurie (2011). We
will restrict ourselves to those aspects of the history that bear directly on meth-
ods of representation using the borrowed Chinese script.
This chapter has a similar structure to the previous two. After descriptions
of the history of writing and language in Japan, we will discuss the develop-
ment of vernacular glossing and vernacular writing, and analyze their struc-
tural properties.

5.1 Introduction of Chinese Writing to Japan and Related History

Unlike Korea and Vietnam, Japan’s exposure to Chinese writing was not the
result of a large imperial Chinese presence on local soil.
Archeological evidence shows that artifacts inscribed with Chinese writing
were making their way to the Japanese archipelago as early as the 1st century
BCE, but there is no evidence for literacy at that time. That is to say, items with
Chinese characters on them were probably valued for their aesthetic and cul-
tural associations, not for any direct understanding of their linguistic content.
Literacy—that is, the presence of people on the Japanese archipelago who
were able to use Literary Sinitic as a means of written communication—may
168 Chapter 5

have begun haltingly in the 5th century with the arrival of foreign scribes from
the Korean peninsula. Several inscribed objects, such as the famous late 5th-
century Inariyama kofun 稲荷山古墳 sword excavated in 1968, contain texts
that were produced locally.3 These texts are in Literary Sinitic, with local prop-
er names written phonographically. The 5th-century date for the appearance
of literate scribes is consistent with brief, tantalizing accounts in two impor-
tant 8th-century Japanese histories, Nihon shoki 日本書記 (History of Japan)
and Kojiki 古事記 (Record of ancient matters). They record the arrival at the
Yamato 大和 court (in modern-day Nara 奈良 prefecture) of scribes from the
Korean kingdom of Paekche at the end of the 4th or beginning of the 5th cen-
tury. While the historical accuracy of these accounts is uncertain, there is no
reason to doubt that literacy came to Japan through the efforts of Korean
scribes. The turn-of-the-5th-century date given in the histories fits well with
what is currently known from archeological evidence.4
It is not, however, until the 7th century that literacy became widespread in
Japan, and was integrated into the realms of political administration and social
interaction along with the centralization of the Japanese state. The character-
istics of this period are reminiscent of developments in the Korean kingdoms
a few centuries earlier: document-based administration by the state; the pro-
duction of legal codes, histories, and literary works in Literary Sinitic; the circu-
lation of Buddhist texts; and the training of literate scribes and scholars (Seeley
1991: 40; Lurie 2012: 160–161). It is also during this time that secular and religious
students from Japan visited China to acquire language skills and Literary Sin-
itic texts. And it is during this period that we also see the emergence of Sino-
graphic vernacular writing, i.e. written representation of the spoken Japanese
language.
Numerous factors were involved in the explosive growth of literacy in the
7th century. Miller (1987) points to the pivotal year 663, in which Japanese forc-
es aiding the state of Paekche on the Korean peninsula suffered a crushing
defeat at the hands of Silla and its Chinese Táng ally. This resulted in a large-
scale migration of Paekche refugees to Japan, including literate scribes, admin-
istrators, and other elites. The major military and political setback reoriented
the priorities of the Yamato court, which embarked on a policy of centraliza-
tion of power and military readiness, for which it would rely on an increasingly

3 The year is recorded on the sword in the cyclical hexagesimal system. The most likely years
corresponding to this recorded date are 471 and 531, with most scholars supporting the earlier
date (Lurie 2011: 377).
4 On the challenges of interpreting these passages and of fixing the dates of the historical events
referred to, see Lurie (2011: 109–114).
Japanese 169

text-based means of administration modeled on those of China and Korea. Lu-

rie (2011: 120–121, 127–128) makes the same point and (2012: 181 fn 2) adds that
students returning to Japan following visits to China and Korea were another
crucial factor in spreading literacy.
In Japan, as in Korea and Vietnam, Literary Sinitic remained firmly estab-
lished as the formal written language until relatively recently.5 However, ver-
nacular writing in Japan flourished on a scale that dwarfed anything seen in
Korea or Vietnam. An unbroken, multifaceted practice of written Japanese
composition in many genres began in the late 7th century, reached full flower
in the 8th and 9th centuries, and has continued into the present day. As in Ko-
rea, an elaborated glossing tradition allowing texts with Literary Sinitic written
form to be read into Japanese developed in parallel with vernacular writing.
Vernacular glossing and vernacular writing employed many shared techniques,
which are remarkably similar to those employed on the Korean peninsula.6

5.2 Japanese Historical Linguistic Typology

The genetic affiliation of Japanese, like that of Korean, remains a matter of

controversy. Typologically Japanese is strikingly similar to Korean, especially in
its morphosyntactic structure. This has long suggested a strong historical con-
nection between the languages, although the absence of a large number of
cognates showing regular correspondences in core vocabulary is a puzzling
problem for any hypothesis of historical relationship. One hypothesis (Unger
2009; Whitman 2012) is that Japanese (with its sister language Ryukyuan) de-
rives from a peninsular Korean language related to known forms of Korean
which was later extinguished under unified Silla rule, while other scholars ar-
gue that there is no genetic relationship and that all similarities between Ko-
rean and Japanese are due to contact (e.g. Vovin 2010).
Whatever the origins of Japanese and its historical connections to languages
of the Korean peninsula, what is important for our analysis are the typological

5 Unlike in Korea and Vietnam, however, we also see the development of a classical Japanese
literary language with a higher degree of prestige than the written vernaculars of Korea and
Vietnam ever had.
6 A number of different types of evidence point to Paekche as the Korean source of Japanese
literate practices. In addition to the historical evidence already mentioned, Bentley (2001)
observes that the set of Chinese characters employed as PAPs, i.e. as basic syllabograms, in
Japan overlaps to a significantly greater extent with the pool of phonogram characters attested
in early Paekche writing than it does with the early Koguryŏ and Silla corpuses.
170 Chapter 5

features of Japanese (especially in the 7th century as vernacular glossing and

writing developed) and their degree of similarity to Korean. This brief descrip-
tion of the historical linguistic typology of Japanese is based primarily on Mar-
tin 1987 and Frellesvig 2010.
The periodization of Japanese in Table 5.1 is adapted from Frellesvig (2010:
18).

Table 5.1 Periodization of Japanese

Old Japanese
Early Middle Japanesea
Late Middle Japanese
Early Modern Japanese
Modern Japanese
the language of the Nara period, 8th c. (and earlier)
the language of the Heian 平安 period, 9th–12th c.
the language of the Kamakura 鎌倉 and Muroma-
chi 室町 periods, 13th–16th c.
the language of the Edo 江戸 and Meiji 明治 peri-
ods, 17th–19th c.
Japanese from the beginning of the 20th c. to the
present

a Also known as Classical Japanese, although technically Classical Japanese also refers to the
written language based on Early Middle Japanese in its later use as a “fossilized literary form”
(Tranter 2012b: 212).

We will abbreviate Old Japanese as OJ and Middle Japanese as MJ, distinguish-

ing Early from Late Middle Japanese as EMJ and LMJ, respectively, when neces-
sary.
Throughout all historical periods, Japanese is attested with the following ty-
pological features, which are identical to Korean:

1. verb-final word order;

2. agglutinating morphology, characterized by verbal suffixation;
3. a system of noun-marking case particles and postpositions;
4. a significant number of polysyllabic morphemes.

As we did earlier with Korean, we will illustrate these features with a modern
Japanese sentence. As the later example from Kojiki poem 1 shows, these basic
features are found in Old Japanese as well.
Japanese 171

 Sachi-wa shinshitsu-de ongaku-o kii-te

Sachi-TOP bedroom-LOC music-ACC listen-and
 musuko-to shinbun-o yon-da
son-com newspaper-acc read-past

‘Sachi listened to music in the bedroom and then read a newspaper with her
son.’

The descriptions of Modern Japanese, Middle Japanese, and Old Japanese pho-
nology given here are adapted from Shibatani (1990) and Frellesvig (2010). Only
a few phonetic details are provided.

5.2.1 Modern Japanese phonology

Modern Japanese is represented by the Tokyo dialect standard.
Syllable structure can be schematized as follows, where V represents a
monophthongal vowel:

(Ci)(G)V(ː/Cf)

Japanese is a mora-timed language. Each syllable is either light (one mora) or

heavy (two moras). Those syllables with long vowels or consonant codas are
heavy.
The syllable-initial (Ci) slot can be filled by any one of the consonants in
Table 5.2. This and following charts contain phonemic values; where roman-
ized transcriptions differ, they appear in parentheses. (For example, the chart
gives “s (s/sh)” because Japanese syllables sa and shi illustrate conditioned al-
lophones of /s/.)

Table 5.2 Initial consonants of Modern Japanese

p t (t/ts/ch) k
b d g
m n
s (s/sh) h (h/f )
z
r
w j
172 Chapter 5

(A number of marginal phonemes, which have developed as the result of 20th-

century borrowings of European words, are not included.)
The syllable-final slot (Cf) can be filled with only the underspecified “mora-
ic” consonants /N/ (nasal) and /Q/ (non-nasal). /Q/ never occurs word-finally
or vowel-initially. It assimilates to the place of articulation of the following
consonant, leading to geminate pronunciation. /N/ assimilates to the place of
articulation of a following consonant. In word-final position it is generally real-
ized as a uvular nasal or approximant.
There are five vowels, which can occur both short (one mora) and long (two
moras).

Table 5.3 Monophthongs of Modern Japanese

i ɯ (u)
e o
a

All diphthongs have on-glide /j/ and occur both long and short. It is possible to
analyze syllables with these sounds as palatalized consonants followed by
monophthongal vowels.

Table 5.4 Diphthongs of Modern Japanese

jɯ ( yu)
jo ( yo)
ja ( ya)

Modern Japanese is characterized by a pitch-accent system. The location of

moraic accent within a word determined the pattern of high and low pitches
over all the moras of the word. The functional load of pitch-accent distinctions
is low, but there are a few minimal pairs involving high frequency words, such
as hashi (HL) ‘chopsticks’ and hashi (LH) ‘bridge’. Pitch-accent is not reflected
in the writing system.

5.2.2 Middle Japanese Phonology

By the time of Late Middle Chinese, Japanese phonology was very similar to
that of the modern language. A significant number of changes took place
Japanese 173

through the Early Middle Japanese period that transformed Old Japanese pho-
nology into its modern form.
Syllable structure was (Ci)(G)V(M) where M represents a moraic phoneme,
either consonantal or vocalic. There was, as in Modern Japanese, a distinction
between short or light (mono-moraic) and long or heavy (bi-moraic) syllables.
There were eight moraic syllable-final phonemes: four consonants /N Q C t/
and four vowels /I U Ĩ Ũ/.7 Long syllables (CVV or CVC) consisted of a mono-
moraic CV syllable followed by one of the eight moraic syllable-final pho-
nemes.
The inventory of syllable-initial consonants was nearly identical to that of
Modern Japanese, differing only in lacking /h/ (which developed from Middle
Japanese /p/ in some environments).

Table 5.5 Initial consonants of Middle Japanese

p t k
b d g
m n
s
z
r
w j (y)

The same five vowel phonemes seen in Modern Japanese were also present in
Middle Japanese.

Table 5.6 Monophthongs of Middle Japanese

i u
e o
a

7 The capitalized phonemes (i.e. all but /-t/, which occurred only in SJ syllables) are all under-
specified, acquiring some of their phonological features from their preceding and/or following
sounds. /Q I U/ are non-nasal elements; /N Ĩ Ũ/ are nasal, and /C/ is a consonant underspeci-
fied for nasality. These underspecified phonemes are posited to account for a constellation of
morphophonological rules. /Q C/ only occurred word-medially. For details see Frellesvig (2010,
chapter 7).
174 Chapter 5

There were two more diphthongs than in Modern Japanese. Again the on-
glides of these diphthongs could instead be considered elements of complex
consonant onsets (as they are in Frellesvig (2010)); for convenience we treat
them here as part of the vocalic nucleus.

Table 5.7 Diphthongs of Middle Japanese

ju (yu)
we jo (yo)
ja (ya), wa

The number of basic (i.e. light) syllables was slightly over 100; these are sylla-
bles of the type /ta/, /yo/, /syu/, /gwa/, etc.
Through the addition of the eight moraic syllable-final phonemes, the over-
all number of possible syllables was higher than this. For example, there were
also syllables like /taN/ (word-finally /taɴ/) and /kaŨ/ (realized word-finally as
/kaũ/).
Strictly speaking there was no phonemic vowel length distinction; the con-
trastive long vowels of Modern Japanese developed out of Middle Japanese
heavy syllables with one of the vocalic codas /I U Ĩ Ũ/. The loss of Middle Japa-
nese /-C/ and /-t/ left only the two consonantal codas /N/ and /Q/ in Modern
Japanese.

5.2.3 Old Japanese Phonology

Unlike Middle Japanese and Modern Japanese, Old Japanese had a simple CV
structure. Syllables could begin with any one of the 13 consonants in Table 5.8
or the zero initial.

Table 5.8 Initial consonants of Old Japanese

p t k
b d g
m n
s
z
w r j (y)
Japanese 175

Evidence from written documents of the Old Japanese period shows that the
language at the time had eight distinct vowels, which later developed into the
five vowel system of Middle Japanese that continues into Modern Japanese.
EMJ vowels /i/, /e/, /o/ each derived from two earlier vowels, which are cus-
tomarily distinguished by subscript notation: /i1/ vs. /i2/, /e1/ vs. /e2/, and /o1/
vs. /o2/.8 Scholars differ in their reconstruction of these distinctions, some pro-
posing eight different monophthongal vowel phonemes (usually involving
three “centralized” vowels), others arguing that three of the vowels were actu-
ally diphthongal sequences. We will here follow Frellesvig (2010) and Bentley
(2012) in the latter interpretation.9 Thus the “V” in our CV syllable notation can
stand for a monophthong or one of the sequences /wi/, /je/, /wo/.

Table 5.9 Vowels of Old Japanese

i (= i1), wi (= i2) u
e (= e2), je (ye) (= e1) o (=o2), wo (=o1)
a

Taking into account certain co-occurrence restrictions between consonants

and vowels, there were 88 possible syllables.
The Middle Japanese sound system described above developed out of this
Old Japanese system as the result of a number of significant sound changes,
some of which can be attributed (at least in part) to the stimulus of loan words
from Chinese and others to syllable reduction.10 The most significant of these
changes is the development of bi-moraic syllables.

8 /o1/ and /o2/ were not distinguished after initial labials /p b w/. The distinctions between
/i1/ and /i2/ and between /e1/ and /e2/ were only maintained after velar and labial initials
/k g p b m/. None of the distinctions were maintained in the absence of a consonantal
onset. It is possible that the observed distinctions were not vocalic, but were features of
the consonantal onset or of the syllable as a whole, since the evidence for these distinc-
tions lies in the consistently distinct use of sinograms with different Middle Chinese pro-
nunciations to write OJ syllables that became homophonous in Middle Japanese. The
phonographic use of these sinograms was as syllabograms, revealing nothing directly
about individual segments within the syllables.
9 This is done largely for notational convenience and consistency. For a convincing argu-
ment that all but one OJ vowel was monophthongal, see Miyake (2003: 262–264).
10 Within the field of Japanese historical phonology, the phenomena referred to here as “syl-
lable reduction” are collectively termed onbin 音便, which Frellesvig (2010: 196) defines as
176 Chapter 5

As with Korean, many aspects of the development of vernacular writing in

Japan can be attributed to the morphological and syntactic features that re-
mained consistent throughout the history of Japanese. The simpler syllable
structure of Japanese as compared to Korean, even in the relatively complex
Middle Japanese stage, is also a factor.
In the examples below, Modern Japanese forms (including HJ readings) will
be given in modified Hepburn transcription in italics (using spelled forms giv-
en in parentheses in the charts). Old Japanese and Middle Japanese forms will
be given inside slashes, using the modified IPA seen in parentheses in the
charts. For example, for ‘shellfish’ we have Modern Japanese kai 貝 < Late Mid-
dle Japanese /kai/ < Early Middle Japanese /kawi/ < Old Japanese /kapi/.

5.3 Sino-Japanese

As outlined in the introduction, we use Sino-Japanese (SJ) as a general term

for all borrowings found in Japanese that originate in Chinese sources, regard-
less of time period. We use HJ to refer to the normalized, prescriptive sets of
Japanese pronunciations of Chinese characters as reflected in lexicographic
reference works and pedagogical materials.11 These readings reflect the pro­
nunciations used when Literary Sinitic texts were read aloud in various times
and according to various schools and traditions. HJ also refers to those Japa-
nese morphemes of Chinese origin whose pronunciations conform to one of
the HJ layers. In crucial distinction to both HK and HV, HJ contains three more
or less well defined layers, termed go-on 呉音 (HJ-G), kan-on 漢音 (HJ-K) and
tō-on 唐音 (HJ-T). There are also many Sino-Japanese loanwords with pronun-
ciations that do not match any of these three normalized sets of pronuncia-
tions (although they may historically be related to one of them); we will not
consider these to be HJ in the strict sense.12

“phonemic reinterpretations of a phonetically reduced or weakened realization of a CV

syllable as the realization of a single segment”.
11 As described in the introduction, “HJ” is not an abbreviation, but is modeled on the use of
“HV” (Hán-Việt 漢越) for the equivalent layer in Vietnamese. It may help the reader to use
the mnemonic phrase “Han-Japanese” to remember the sense of “HJ”. As with Sino-Viet-
namese and Sino-Korean, our usage does not always agree with usage of other scholars,
many of whom employ narrower definitions of “Sino-Japanese”.
12 Frellesvig (2010: 274–275) draws a distinction between Sino-Japanese and what he calls
“Japano-Chinese”. He defines Japano-Chinese as “Chinese as a foreign reading language in
Japan”, specifying that it is “a variety of Chinese language” that was “used in the study and
reading of Chinese texts in Japan”. Although he recognizes that this language as used in
Japanese 177

The go-on layer derives historically from Chinese character readings that
entered Japan from the time of the introduction of writing (early 5th century)
up through the mid-7th-century literacy watershed. These pronunciations
probably mostly reflect Sino-Paekche pronunciations used and taught by
scribes from the Korean peninsula (and thus may go back to Chinese dialects
of the Wú 吳 region), but likely were influenced by other sources as well, in-
cluding direct borrowing of Chinese pronunciations.13 Many modern Japanese
HJ-G pronunciations found in lexicographic works do not directly reflect these
historical pronunciations, however, because around the 18th century many
were normalized (or even created) to accord with Middle Chinese phonologi-
cal categories (Frellesvig 2010: 280).
The kan-on layer was established in the late 7th and 8th centuries, with im-
perial backing, as an attempt to bring Chinese-character pronunciations into
line with standard readings being brought back from Táng China. Largely con-
sistent with Late Middle Chinese phonological categories, these readings be-
came the dominant HJ layer, then were, like go-on, regularized in the early
modern period.
The tō-on layer reflects Chinese norms of pronunciation dating to the 12th
century and later, for example those brought to Japan as part of the Zen Bud-
dhism movement.
In the Japanese lexicographic tradition, Chinese-derived pronunciations of
characters (i.e. pronunciations of borrowed Chinese morphemes that are con-
ventionally written with those characters) that do not conform to any of the
three regularized HJ layers are labeled kan’yō-on 慣用音 ‘idiomatic readings’.
(Because kan’yō-on are not normalized readings employed when reading Liter-
ary Sinitic texts aloud, but are attested pronunciations found in Chinese lexical

Japan was “mediated by immigrant or visiting scholars and later monks and nuns from
the Korean peninsula”, he considers it to belong to the realm of Chinese historical phonol-
ogy rather than Japanese historical phonology. In contrast, “Sino-Japanese” are “nativized
norms for pronouncing kanji”, or more specifically, “a nativization of J[apano]-Ch[inese],
removing it from the realm of a foreign language and providing a nativized pronuncia-
tion” which “is in full conformity with Japanese phonology and can be used within Japa-
nese” (p. 278). Frellesvig’s distinction is of theoretical value, but it is not at all clear that
Japano-Chinese really existed as a distinct entity from Sino-Japanese. In the absence of a
Chinese-speaking community within Japan, and with the pronunciation of Chinese
words restricted to the recitation of Literary Sinitic texts, there is no a priori reason to as-
sume that reading pronunciations of Chinese characters in Japan (“Japano-Chinese”)
were not thoroughly nativized in their pronunciations, or were any less thoroughly nativ-
ized pronunciations than the pronunciations we call “Sino-Japanese”.
13 On the Chinese source of Sino-Paekche, see Eom (2014).
178 Chapter 5

borrowings, we consider them to be Sino-Japanese elements that are not part

of HJ. Some, but by no means all, are post-medieval borrowings that belong to
the Recent Sino-Japanese layer.)
As an example, the modern Sino-Japanese pronunciations of the character
杏 (xìng, ‘apricot’) (EMC *ɣəɨjŋB, LMC *xɦjaːjŋC) are:

HJ-G gyō < MJ /gyaũ/

HJ-K kō < MJ /kaũ/
HJ-T an
 kan’yō-on kyō < MJ /kyaũ/

Only a few graphs have modern pronunciations in all four types; it is more
typical for a graph to have only HJ-G and HJ-K readings. If a graph has identical
HJ-G and HJ-K pronunciations, I will simply use the abbreviation HJ. For ex-
ample, 車 (chē, ‘vehicle’) has go-on and kan-on pronunciation sha, which can be
indicated as “HJ sha”.
It is worth pointing out that man’yōgana pronunciations, which are in turn
the sources of the modern kana pronunciations, are distinct from HJ-G. They
are likely to reflect early Sino-Paekche pronunciations. Consider the character
安 (ān, ‘peace’) (LMC *ʔanA):

 man’yōgana a
HJ an

5.4 Glossing Traditions and the Development of Vernacular Writing

As mentioned earlier, much of the history of vernacular glossing and vernacu-

lar writing in Japan closely parallels developments seen on the Korean penin-
sula.
Most likely, techniques of Sinographic adaptation for the writing of Japa-
nese were imported from the Korean peninsula along with knowledge of how
to read and write Literary Sinitic texts. One question that ultimately must be
addressed is the degree to which similarities in Sinographic practice in Japan
and Korea are attributable to cultural interaction, and the degree to which they
are attributable to universal tendencies in script adaptation, constrained by
elements of linguistic typology. As we will see in the analysis section below, the
question is not a simple one to resolve. Cultural influence is certainly a major
factor in the initial establishment of Japanese methods, but ongoing parallel
development of basic methods in later periods (despite the emergence of
Japanese 179

differences of detail and implementation) suggest that linguistic factors are

also significant.
In parallel with Korean kugyŏl—the practice of annotating Literary Sinitic
texts with sinograms used phonographically, along with other markings, to fa-
cilitate reading in the vernacular—beginning in the late 8th century we see
Literary Sinitic texts with overt glossing marks appearing in Japan. The prac-
tices of reading Literary Sinitic texts aloud in the Japanese vernacular, and of
marking up texts to facilitate such reading, are termed Kanbun kundoku 漢文訓
読 or simply kundoku, and the glossing marks are collectively known as kunten
訓点.14 It is highly likely that glossing practices were imported from the Korean
peninsula, at least in their earliest form. The earliest Kanbun kundoku texts in
Japan contain three kinds of glossing marks: punctuation marks showing how
the text is to be divided into sentences or phrases; inversion glosses indicating
that elements in the text are to be reverse-ordered when read aloud; and pho-
nographic character glosses, i.e. sinograms used for their sound values to indi-
cate pronunciations (Whitman 2011: 106). The phonographic glossing characters
were initially man’yōgana, i.e. full-form phonograms, either PAPs or SAPs.15
Later, interpolated phonograms representing morphosyntactic elements to be
added to the text (such as case-marking particles and inflectional endings) be-
come part of kundoku practice as well.
As with kugyŏl, abbreviations of phonographic kunten became quite com-
mon, in order to save space and time. These abbreviated forms of sinograms
were of two types: those abbreviated through cursivization, and those abbrevi-
ated through isolation (the extraction of one part of a graph to represent the

14 On the complex body of terminology associated with the practice and a proposal for ap-
propriate translations into English and Italian, see Whitman et al. (2010). While the read-
ing practice arguably produces a Japanese “translation” of a Chinese text, the whole
apparatus of kundoku differs significantly from translation in a number of respects. As
Alberizzi (2014: 1) points out, “Kanbun kundoku does not produce a parallel text in the
target language, and it leaves the Chinese original actively present in the reading context,
using it as a ‘visual’ outline to facilitate comprehension.”
15 We note here in passing, but as not directly relevant to the development of vernacular
writing, the Kanbun kundoku practice of using dots or lines placed in various positions
relative to a Chinese character to indicate morphosyntactic information about its ver-
nacular reading, such as case-marking particles, verbal inflections, and verbal auxiliaries.
We also note the existence of a drypoint glossing tradition parallel to that seen in Korea,
and also not directly relevant to the development of vernacular writing. (One interesting
aspect of these two techniques is that by avoiding the use of phonographic glossing, such
glosses might conceivably have allowed a Literary Sinitic text to be read aloud either in
Korean or in Japanese from a single glossed copy. See Whitman (2011: 110).)
180 Chapter 5

whole).16 (The examples of kugyŏl in Table 3.11 illustrate the isolating tech-
nique of abbreviation.)
In the 10th century, practices of abbreviation in both vernacular glossing
and phonographic vernacular writing led to the precursors to modern hiraga-
na 平仮名 (phonograms abbreviated from sinograms by cursivization) and
katakana 片仮名 (phonograms abbreviated from sinograms by isolation).17
These were not yet scripts, but haphazard abbreviations of man’yōgana pho-
nograms. Although not regular, consistent, or standardized, they nevertheless
could be said to form cohesive sets of graphs.
An example of Kanbun kundoku is given below. This is an example of modern
glossing, intended not for historical accuracy but to illustrate the techniques
involved. The original text, in two columns seen on the left with modern punc-
tuation, is read from top to bottom and right to left in the traditional fashion
(starting with “頭” and ending with “木”). It is a line from a 5th-century Liter-
ary Sinitic text titled Shù yì jì 述異記 concerning the formation of the world
from the body of a mythical giant. The text is presented again on the right with
kunten marks added. The marks at the lower left edge of characters, 一 (yī, ‘one’)
and 二 (èr, ‘two’), are sequencing marks, indicating that the elements of the text
must be re-ordered when it is read aloud in Japanese. The small vertical line
between graphs, as seen in 脂膏 (zhī, ‘fat’ + gāo, ‘grease’ > ‘fat’) and 毛髮 (máo, ‘fur’
+ fǎ, ‘hair’ > ‘hair’), indicates that these are compound words whose components
must remain together in the same sequence when reordering of sentence ele-
ments occurs. The marks on the lower right edge of characters are phonogram
glosses in katakana, indicating case-marking particles and verbal inflections to
be appended to the Japanese equivalents of the words written in Chinese. For
example, the first graph 頭 (tóu, ‘head’) is marked with ha ハ, here representing
the topic marker wa. The second graph 為 (wéi ‘do, be, act as’) is marked with ri
リ, indicating that the connective suffix -ri is to be appended to the Japanese
verbal root na- that is equivalent to the Chinese verb written with 為.
The modern Mandarin pronunciation of the text and its translation are
­given to the right of the text. When the glossing marks are integrated into the

16 The terms are Seeley’s (1991: 60ff). It is interesting that in the development of phono-
graphic kugyŏl marks, the primary technique of abbreviation is isolation, whereas in Ja-
pan both cursivization and isolation were important parts of different traditions.
17 Frellesvig (2010: 160) points out that “the hiragana and katakana letter shapes were not
the result of independent developments in Japan, but followed continental [i.e. Chinese
and Korean] models”. This statement must be understood in a qualified way; while mod-
els for cursivization and isolation were well known to the Japanese from China and Korea,
and while some graphs were no doubt borrowed in abbreviated form, it is also clear that
many individual graphs had a unique history of abbreviation within Japan.
Japanese 181

text, the resulting written vernacular form appears as indicated under “Kun-
doku rendering”, with the modern Japanese pronunciation given below it.

  Modern Mandarin reading:

 Tóu wéi sì yuè, mù wéi rì yuè, zhīgāo wéi jiānghǎi,
máofǎ wéi cǎomù.
Translation:
“(His) head became the four sacred peaks, his
eyes became the sun and the moon, his fat be-
came the rivers and seas, his body hair and
head hair became the grass and trees.”
 Kundoku rendering:18
頭 ハ 四岳 ト 為 リ， 目 ハ 日月 ト 為 リ， 脂膏 (ハ)
江海ト為リ，毛髪 (ハ) 草木ト為ル。
Modern Japanese reading:19
 Kōbe wa shigaku to nari, me wa jitsugetsu
to nari, shikō (wa) kōkai to nari, mōhatsu
(wa) sōmoku to naru.

The second example (Figure 5.1) is from Alberizzi (2014: 2), illustrating the
same mechanisms but with slightly different terminology. The sentence, taken
from the 12th-century manuscript Hizōhōyaku 秘藏寶鑰 (The precious key to
the esoteric treasure), means “The madmen dwelling in the three worlds do not
know that they are insane.”
Removed from the context of vernacular glossing and put to use in vernacu-
lar writing, by the 11th century both hiragana and katakana can be said to have
become true scripts that functioned independently or in combination with
other scripts as a vernacular writing system.
Figure 5.2 is excerpted from the appendix to Habein 1984. It shows attested
katakana graphs from the Heian 平安 Period (794–1185). The modern katakana
graph for each syllable is given at the top. Then, grouped under the sinograms
(in square brackets) from which they are derived, the various attested phono-
grams used to write that syllable are listed.

18 Bold graphs are in the original Literary Sinitic text. Graphs in parentheses are not explic-
itly marked as kunten but are interpolated into the text by the reader based on parallelism
and/or grammatical necessity.
19 Bold romanization indicates that the word is written in kanji; small caps indicates on
readings of graphs, i.e. Sino-Japanese rather than native Japanese morphemes.
182 Chapter 5

Figure 5.1 Example of Kanbun kundoku (Alberizzi 2014: 2)

Figure 5.2
Heian period katakana graphs
(Habein 1984: 211)
Japanese 183

A comparison of Japanese katakana with Korean kugyŏl shows strikingly

obvious similarities in the technique of isolation and the resulting letter
shapes. But it also makes clear that although the technique of phonological
glossing of Literary Sinitic texts using PAPs may have been borrowed from Ko-
rea into Japan, the actual practice diverged very early, possibly from the begin-
ning. The PAP sets used in each tradition were different, the specific graphs
used to represent syllables (even syllables pronounced essentially identically
in both languages, like /ni/), and the end result of abbreviation (even of the
same graphs) differed in most cases.20 Table 5.10 gives four examples of kugyŏl
graphs and kana graphs with identical forms, but which derive in each tradi-
tion from different sinograms with different phonographic values, followed by
two examples where the graphic origins are identical. (Modern pronuncia-
tions are given for convenience.)

Table 5.10 Comparison of kana and kugyŏl graphs

Form Pronunciation Source graph

Japanese hiragana  つ  tsu < /tu/ 川 (chuān, ‘river’) (HJ sen)a

Korean kugyŏl  つ  ya 也 (yě, particle) (HK ya)
Japanese katakana  ト  to 止 (zhǐ, ‘stop’) (via SAL to- ‘stop’)
Korean kugyŏl ト  wa 臥 (wò, ‘lie down’) (HK wa)
Japanese katakana  ヒ  hi < /pi/ 比 (bǐ, ‘compare’) (HJ hi)
Korean kugyŏl  ヒ  ni 尼 (ní, ‘nun’) (HK i < ni)
Japanese katakana  ロ  ro 呂 (lǚ, surname) (HJ-G ro)
Korean kugyŏl  ロ  ko 古 (gǔ, ‘ancient’) (HK ko)
Japanese katakana    タ  ta 多 (duō, ‘many’) (HJ ta)
Korean kugyŏl   タ  ta 多 (duō, ‘many’) (HK ta)
Japanese katakana    オ  o 於 (yú, ‘to, at’) (HJ-G o)
Korean kugyŏl   オ  ŏ 於 (yú, ‘to, at’) (HK ŏ)

a There is some scholarly disagreement about the sinogram underlying this hiragana, and the
source of the pronunciation /tu/. While 川 is still commonly listed as the source character in
most reference works (as in Figure 5.4), its pronunciation makes this identification problem-
atic. A number of other proposals have been raised. Whitman (personal communication, May
24, 2018) suggests that the source might be 斗 (dǒu, ‘ladle’) (HJ-G tsu < /tu/).

20 Though some were identical, most likely due to chance. See Whitman (2011: 112) for some
examples.
184 Chapter 5

As in Korea, a close connection exists between the development of vernacular

glossing of Literary Sinitic texts and of vernacular writing. Frellesvig (2010:
263–266) goes so far as to argue that Japanese vernacular writing was derived
from Kanbun kundoku as a reversal of the process: an encoding of what had
previously been decoded. “In the course of kanbun-kundoku, fixed, habitual
renditions of individual kanji arose, resulting in conventional associations of
many kanji with specific OJ words; or in other words, the establishment of con-
ventional ‘kun-readings’ of kanji. Once this association of decoding (reading)
was established, the next step of reversing the relation to one of encoding
(writing) was not a big one.” Frellesvig provides an example: it is only after the
sinogram 目 (mù, ‘eye’) became consistently and conventionally glossed with a
phonogram representing /me/, thus indicating that the word should be read as
the Japanese word for ‘eye’, /me/ (as in the kundoku example given earlier), that
a Japanese person would consider writing down the Japanese word for ‘eye’ by
using the graph 目 as SAL.21 Frellesvig makes the exceedingly strong claim that
“all logographic writing of Japanese derives from kanbun-kundoku reversed
from reading to writing”.
While Frellesvig’s claim could be correct, he provides no evidence, either
material or theoretical, that Kanbun kundoku necessarily precedes vernacular
writing. And there is some counter-evidence: the many-to-one relationship of
graphs to native morphemes in vernacular writing would not emerge if those
relationships were based on conventionalized decodings of graphs into native
words.22 Training in the reading of Literary Sinitic, even in the absence of any
kind of formalized vernacular reading of Chinese texts, would have been suf-
ficient to establish a link between the Chinese character 目 and the native
Japanese word for ‘eye’, much in the same way that a contemporary North
American student of Literary Sinitic would learn the character 目 by associat-
ing it with the English word ‘eye’, even in the absence of a Kanbun-kundoku-like
glossing tradition today in the United States or Canada.23 Put another way, it is
entirely possible that kun readings had an existence independent of and prior
to the practice of kundoku. This is consistent with the surviving material
­evidence: “Adaptations of Chinese writing to inscribe the vernacular in Korea

21 I have simplified this example somewhat; see Frellesvig (2010: 264) for additional details.
22 To put it another way, multiple kun readings of a single graph provide evidence of starting
with a native word and seeking the closest Chinese equivalent. This is because more than
one Japanese word might be deemed closest in meaning to the same Chinese word. For
example, 日 (rì, ‘sun, day’) has kun readings hi (the native Japanese morpheme for ‘sun’)
and ka (the bound native Japanese morpheme for number of days or the day of the
month).
23 See Footnote 44 of Chapter 3.
Japanese 185

and Japan precede the first evidence for glossed Chinese texts by several cen-
turies” (Whitman 2014: 7).24
The processes of vernacular glossing and vernacular writing are undoubt-
edly linked historically and conceptually, but it is more reasonable to assume
that their development went hand in hand, with mutual influence and no ab-
solute unidirectionality of causality, during the 7th and 8th centuries in Japan.

5.5 Structure and Function of Vernacular Writing

Just as in Korea, we find both phonetic and semantic adaptations of Chinese

characters to write Japanese words at the very earliest stages, as evidenced by
writing found on excavated artifacts.25 By the 8th century, sinography in Japan
had reached a level of sophistication capable of fully representing Japanese in
written form. In such 8th-century texts as the two histories Kojiki and Nihon
shoki, and the collection of poetry Man’yōshū 万葉集, we see not only the se-
mantic and phonetic uses of sinograms familiar from our earlier discussion of
Korean, but also an explicit understanding of, and technical vocabulary related
to, those uses. Semantic adaptation is potentially ambiguous, because there
may be more than one Japanese word viewed as semantically equivalent to
the conventional Chinese-based meaning associated with a sinogram. In Ko-
jiki, this ambiguity is sometimes eliminated through the use of notes in the
text, called kunchū 訓注, which use sinograms phonographically in order to
specify the pronunciation of a logographically written Japanese word. There
are also notes that indicate that preceding graphs should be read phonographi-
cally, rather than logographically. These notes are typically of the type “此二字
以音” “(read) these two graphs by means of sound gloss (on 音)”. The Japanese
equivalents of Korean hun and ŭm, kun 訓 (‘meaning gloss’) and on 音 (‘sound
gloss’), were employed in the same way to indicate the meanings (using a na-
tive, or perceived as native, Japanese word) and the Chinese-derived sounds
of Chinese characters, respectively. As in Korean, these were both training

24 This does not constitute definitive evidence; it may simply be that earlier examples of
texts glossed in the vernacular have not survived or have not yet been discovered. But
given the fact that vernacular writing does survive in significant quantity from this early
period, the evidence does seem convincing.
25 In the last several decades a large number of mokkan 木簡 ‘wooden tablets’ dating to the
7th and 8th centuries have been unearthed with short texts in Japanese vernacular writ-
ing (Lurie 2011: 121–125). Together with name transcriptions on earlier artifacts like the
Inariyama kofun described above, they demonstrate the role of these two basic ways of
adapting sinograms at the earliest stages of the development of Japanese writing (see
Frellesvig 2010: 22).
186 Chapter 5

tools—tags attached to characters to assist in memorization—and terms for

the different associated pronunciations of characters in vernacular writing.26
Phonetically adapted sinograms, PAPs, are today called man’yōgana 万葉がな
‘Man’yōshū phonograms’ because of their association with phonographic writ-
ing in the Man’yōshū (although they were widely used in other Old Japanese
texts as well).
In Old Japanese texts (such as Kojiki, Nihon shoki, and the Man’yōshū poetry
collection), we mostly see examples of Sinographic usage that closely parallel
the Korean vernacular writing of the hyangga: sinograms are employed both as
SALs and PAPs, and in many cases lexical words (such as nouns and verbs) are
written with the logograms and grammatical elements with the phonograms
(Frellesvig 2010: 16).27 28
There are, however, a number of interesting differences between Korean
and Japanese practices even in this early period, differences that probably
arose as literacy spread beyond a small group of peninsular scribes.
One is related to the unit length represented by PAPs. In Korean, these pho-
nograms write single syllables or sub-syllabic elements such as individual con-
sonants. In Japanese practice, most often the phonograms were used for single
Japanese syllables, but sometimes graphs with consonant-coda Chinese pro-
nunciations were used to write two syllables of Japanese (Seeley 1991: 50; Oster-
kamp 2011). For example, the sinogram 博 (bó, ‘extensive’) (EMC *pakD) was
used to write the OJ two-syllable sound sequences /paka/ and /paku/.

26 The use and meaning of kun and on for modern Japanese people is notably different from
the use of hun and ŭm for modern Korean people. In modern Korean writing, sinograms
are only used to write HK loanwords, and thus are always pronounced with their ŭm
‘sound gloss’. The hun functions only as a tag for learning and specifying characters. In
modern Japanese writing, however, sinograms can be employed to write native Japanese
words (through semantic adaptation) as well as SJ loanwords. In the first case they are
said to have a kun reading (kun’yomi 訓読み), and in the second case an on reading
(on’yomi 音読み). Some characters have multiple kun readings (because historically
more than one Japanese word was deemed equivalent to a given Chinese morpheme) and
multiple on readings (due to the layering of SJ pronunciations), all instantiated by written
forms of words in the modern lexicon.
27 There is considerable variation from these general tendencies. For example, in the first
poem of Man’yōshū, the Old Japanese word /moti/ ‘holding’ is written in two different
ways: with two syllabic phonograms 母乳, and with a semantically-adapted logogram 持
(chí, ‘grasp’). (The possibility of a semantic role of the phonograms as a second layer of
meaning in the poem cannot be discounted, as the sequence of 母 (mǔ, ‘mother’) and 乳
(rǔ, ‘milk, breast’) can also be read in Literary Sinitic as a meaningful phrase. The Man’yōshū
is known for complicated wordplay of this sort.)
28 Some important details about these early Japanese writing practices were given incor-
rectly in Handel (2009: 105–106).
Japanese 187

The other two are large-scale vernacular writing practices in Japan which
have no known Korean equivalents: (1) writing long passages of text phono-
graphically, without logograms, as in the poems recorded in Kojiki (Frellesvig
2010: 13, 19); (2) making a clear graphic distinction between logograms repre-
senting lexical elements and phonograms representing grammatical elements,
as in the texts known as senmyō-gaki 宣命書き ‘edict writing’ (Seeley 1991: 54;
Frellesvig 2010: 16).
As an example of (1), consider the first poem in Kojiki, written as a sequence
of 31 sinograms representing 31 syllables of Old Japanese as PAPs. 久 (jiǔ, ‘long
time’) writes the Old Japanese syllable /ku/ in both /kumwo/ ‘cloud’ and /tuku-
ru/ ‘to make’ (conclusive form); 都 (dū, ‘capital city’) writes the Old Japanese
syllable /tu/ in /tuma/ ‘wife’ and /tukuru/.
The text, interpretation, and translation of Kojiki 1 given here are taken from
Frellesvig (2010: 19).

Text:
夜久毛多都伊豆毛夜幣賀崎都麻碁微爾夜幣賀崎都久流曾能夜幣賀崎袁

Interpretation:
夜久毛 多都 伊豆毛 夜幣賀崎 都麻碁微 爾
 ya-kumwo tatu idumwo ya-pye-gaki tuma-gomwi ni
eight-cloud rise.adn Izumo eight-fold-fence wife-enclosing dat

夜幣賀崎 都久流 曾 能 夜幣賀崎 袁

 ya-pye-gaki tukuru so no ya-pye-gaki wo
eight-fold-fence make.concl that gen eight-fold-fence excl

Translation:
‘The many-fenced palace of Idumo  Of the many clouds rising—  To dwell
there with my spouse  Do I build a many-fenced palace:  Ah, that many-
fenced palace!’

 Senmyō-gaki is a style of Old Japanese vernacular writing found in senmyō 宣

命 ‘imperial edicts’, for which it is named, as well as some other texts. The writ-
ing is mostly logographic, but with some phonograms used for grammatical
elements. The language of the texts is formal and stylized, and may reflect the
same kind of Sinicized hybrid language that we see in Korean idu. What is no-
table about senmyō-gaki in terms of Sinographic formalism is that “some gram-
matical elements were written phonographically in smaller size characters
than the rest of the text” (Frellesvig 2010: 16), thus correlating the adaptation
188 Chapter 5

method of the characters with a visual distinction to aid the reader in navigat-
ing potential ambiguity.
We have already seen that phonographic adaptation of Chinese characters
to represent Korean language elements could be of two types. The more com-
mon was direct adaptation based on the ŭm, or Sino-Korean sound gloss: a
PAP. But the sound value of the phonogram could also be determined based on
a semantic equivalence to a native word, yielding by indirect or secondary
phonetic adaptation what we have called an SAP. We saw the example of 火
(huǒ, ‘fire’), via semantic adaptation to write Middle Korean /pɨl/ 블 ‘fire’, used
to represent the Korean syllable /pɨl/ without regard to meaning. Presumably
this kind of phonetic adaptation is dependent on the semantic adaptation of
the graph having already been conventionalized in the writing system. That is,
for the reader to use the graph phonetically, it would first be necessary that he
or she would already have a conventional association of the graph with the na-
tive word as an SAL.29
This practice appears to have been more common in Japanese than in Ko-
rean, to the extent that man’yōgana are typically classified into two types. The
normal or direct adaptation of a graph as a PAP is termed ongana 音がな ‘pho-
nogram based on on reading’. These phonograms are used to write sequences
of Japanese sounds based on Sino-Japanese pronunciation (on). The secondary
phonographic usage as SAP is termed kungana 訓がな ‘phonogram based on
kun reading’. As in the Korean case, the graph must first be understood as an
SAL, writing a Japanese morpheme based on the character’s conventional Chi-
nese meaning; it is then employed as a phonogram to write a sequence
of Japanese sounds similar in pronunciation to that Japanese morpheme. For
example 鶴 (hè, ‘crane’) can be used as a logogram to write the native Japanese
word tsuru ‘crane’, and also as a kungana SAP to write a verbal inflection, the
adnominal perfective suffix -tsuru.30

29 Note that this adaptation can be accurately described as “indirect” or “secondary” only
from the perspective of the original Chinese character’s usage in Literary Sinitic. For users
of the Korean script, the phonetic adaptation directly follows from the graph’s already
conventional use as a logogram in vernacular Korean writing.
30 It is interesting to consider whether the use of 鶴 to represent the inflectional ending
/-turu/ > -tsuru could be considered logographic rather than phonographic. The answer to
the question depends on whether this usage resemanticizes 鶴 to represent a particular
sequence of morphemes, in such a way that it would not be considered appropriate to
write a different homophonous sequence without going through a further process of pho-
netic adaptation. This question is almost impossible to fully resolve philologically. For
example, an absence of instances of 鶴 writing any sound sequence /turu/ other than the
two described here would not constitute sufficient evidence to determine that the graph
is being used logographically; it may just so happen that the graph was not applied to
Japanese 189

One additional development in Japan warrants description. A number of

sinograms, not found in the Chinese script, were newly created in Japan to
represent native morphemes. These kokuji 国字 (“national graphs”) were in ex-
istence as early as the 9th century. The number of kokuji was never very large,
especially if you discount rare ones (although there seem to have been more of
them in common use than in Korea, especially to write the names of local flora
and fauna), but they are of interest for several reasons. First, they have internal
structure analogous to the internal structure of compound Chinese characters.
Second, they reveal the existence of perceived gaps in the Japanese Sinograph-
ic script, which ultimately came to favor the use of logograms for verbal and
nominal roots. If a Japanese word had no close semantic equivalent in Literary
Sinitic vocabulary, then there would be no source sinogram appropriate for
semantic adaptation to write that root. The creation of a kokuji filled the gap.
Some examples will be given in the next section.31

5.6 Japanese Sinography: Classification of Methods

We now present a classification of sinograms as found in Japanese vernacular

writing, using the same framework as that for Korean and Vietnamese. For con-
venience, examples are illustrated with modern Japanese forms and pronun-
ciations whenever they derive from earlier MJ and OJ forms that do not differ
in any respect that interferes with the efficacy of the example. In other cases
earlier forms are also given.

5.6.1 Adapted Sinograms: Method and Result

In Japanese vernacular writing, as in Korean but notably different from Viet-
namese, adapted sinograms form the overwhelming majority of all sinograms.

other /turu/ sequences in extant texts. But we also cannot prove that it is a phonogram in
the absence of its use to write only part of a morpheme. Ultimately the answer to this
question lies not in the evidence of usage for a particular graph like 鶴, but in the overall
patterns of usage seen in the writing system as a whole. For the most part, kungana seem
not to have been resemanticized, and as shown by very term kungana (a compound with
second element -kana~-gana), the native Japanese tradition of analysis treats this as a
phonogram.
31 For a brief general overview on types of kokuji, with examples, see Osterkamp (2017a:
115–116). A comprehensive study is Sasahara 2007.
190 Chapter 5

5.6.1.1 Type 1
 Adaptation: Direct
 Result: Logogram
 Designation: DAL (directly-adapted logogram)
 Schematic: G (P, S) > G (P, S)

This is the normal way to represent borrowed SJ vocabulary, and exactly paral-
lels usage in Korea and Vietnam. Unlike in Korean where this usage ultimately
became restricted to the recognized HK layer of SK, sinograms in Japan contin-
ued to be used for borrowed morphemes in all SJ layers, including non-stan-
dardized ones.

Sinogram Chinese morpheme Sino-Japanese morphemes

1 東 dōng ‘east’ HJ-G tsū, HJ-K tō ‘east’
2 京 jīng ‘capital city’ HJ-G kyō, HJ-K kei, HJ-T kin ‘capital city’
3 明 míng ‘bright’ HJ-G myō, HJ-K mei, HJ-T min ‘bright’
4 四 sì ‘four’ HJ shi ‘four’
5 多 duō ‘many’ HJ ta ‘many’

5.6.1.2 Type 2
 Adaptation: Semantic
 Result: Logogram
 Designation: SAL (semantically-adapted logogram)
 Schematic: G (P1, S) > G (P2, S)

This kind of usage is most commonly found with noun and verb (including
adjective) stems, and other lexical words with relatively specific semantics. As
with Korean, case-marking particles and verbal inflections were mostly not in-
cluded in Type-2 sinographic representations, although there were exceptions
to this general pattern.

Sinogram Chinese morpheme Japanese root32

6 夜 yè ‘night’ yoru ‘night’ (N)
7 明 míng ‘bright’ aka- ‘bright’ (Adj)
8 月 yuè ‘moon’ tsuki ‘moon’ (N)
9 入 rù ‘enter’ i- , hai- ‘enter’ (V)
10 多 duō ‘many’ ō- ‘many’ (Adj)

32 Using Modern Japanese pronunciations, as we do here, raises challenges of morphologi-

cal analysis. The bound forms given here should be considered approximations of the
roots; depending on how one carries out morphological analysis, the root forms can differ
somewhat.
Japanese 191

5.6.1.3 Type 3
 Adaptation: Phonetic
 Result: Phonogram
 Designation: PAP (phonetically-adapted phonogram)
 Schematic: G (P, S) > G (P′) (where P′ is identical to, or derived from, P)

This is the first and most common sub-type of the so-called man’yōgana, which
the native tradition calls ongana, i.e. pronunciations based on Chinese. In the
Old Japanese period these Type-3 graphs could be used to write entire texts. In
later periods their usage became restricted to representing those words and
morphemes which were not typically represented by logograms of Types 1 and
2. After the Old Japanese period they frequently occurred in abbreviated form
but are here presented in full form. (Some of these graphs survive in abbrevi-
ated form as modern kana; see Figure 5.4.)

Sinogram Chinese morpheme Japanese sound sequence

11 牟 móu ‘obtain’ mu
12 武 wǔ ‘martial’ mu
13 無, 无 wú ‘not have’ mu
14 天 tiān ‘sky’ te
15 八 bā ‘eight’ ha < /pa/
16 多 duō ‘many’ ta

While most graphs adapted in this way were syllabograms, some were bisyl-
labic, although this usage fell out of practice with the gradual consolidation of
man’yōgana into the syllabic kana scripts.

Sinogram Chinese morpheme Japanese sound sequence

17 目 mù ‘eye’ OJ /muku/

5.6.1.4 Type 4
 Adaptation: Semantic then Phonetic
 Result: Phonogram
 Designation: SAP (semantically-adapted phonogram)
 Schematic: G (P1, S) > G (P2, S) > G (P2′) (where P2′ is identical to, or derived
from, P2)

As with Korean, this type is actually the result of iterating a Type-2 and a Type-
3 adaptation. This development was common enough in the history of Japa-
nese writing that this type of SAP was given a special term in the native
192 Chapter 5

Japanese tradition, kungana, as distinct from the Type-3 ongana. Some

man’yōgana functioned this way.

Sinogram Chinese morpheme Japanese sound sequence

18 鶴 hè ‘crane’ /turu/
19 女 nǚ ‘woman’ /mye/

Example 18 was discussed earlier. Another example is 19, the use of 女 (nǚ, ‘fe-
male’) to write Old Japanese /mye/, which eventually led to the two modern
kana forms め and メ for me.

5.6.2 Innovated Sinograms and Sinogram Sequences: Method and Result

As in Korean, Japanese vernacular writing made use of sinogram sequences
(involving phonetic determinatives) and graphic modification (notably abbre-
viation) to resolve ambiguity. A small number of innovated sinograms were
also created to fill semantic gaps in the logographic inventory, i.e. cases where
no Chinese characters were perceived to be equivalent to Japanese roots to be
written logographically. In the native tradition they are called kokuji 国字 ‘na-
tional graphs’ (or, more freely, ‘Japanese characters’ or ‘Japanese sinograms’).

5.6.2.1 Type 5: Semantic and Phonetic Elements are Both Present

The agglutinating typology of Japanese made it relatively simple to distinguish
verbal roots from affixes, but unlike in Korean, this was complicated by the
pervasive CV structure of the language. Many verbal roots have consonantal
endings (e.g. Old Japanese /ok-/ ‘to put’, /sak-/ ‘to bloom’). This creates a mis-
match between morpheme boundaries and syllable boundaries, creating chal-
lenges for a hybrid system in which logograms write roots and phonograms
write affixes. Morphologically a form like /saku/ ‘it blooms’ consists of stem
/sak-/ (which is bound and not pronounceable as it violates Japanese syllable
structure) and conclusive suffix /-u/: /sak-u/. But phonologically this form con-
sists of two syllables: /sa/+/ku/. Because the phonograms are syllabic, the pho-
nological level takes precedence in written representation. Thus in the modern
script saku is written not with a phonogram representing u but with a phono-
gram representing ku: 咲く.
One way to think about this representation is that it automatically entails
a redundant representation of the /k/ phoneme of saku, which is part of the
verb root sak- and is thus already represented by the logogram 咲. As we will
see below in the analysis section, this situation provides a mechanism for re-
solving ambiguities of logographic usage. It differs from the typical mecha-
nism described for Korean in that the phonetic element serves two roles
Japanese 193

simultaneously: it acts as a phonetic determinative by reiterating part of the

pronunciation of the root (such as a final consonant) and represents part or all
of the following suffix. It thus straddles a morpheme boundary.33
Belonging to this type are also the few kokuji that have true phonetic-se-
mantic structure, of the phonetic-taxonomic subtype. As one might imagine,
this type is only found when the roots to be written (typically monosyllabic
nouns that are not of recognized Chinese origin) have pronunciations that also
occur in HJ, and thus are homophonous with the on reading of an existing si-
nogram. This necessary restriction may explain the rarity of this type.

  Kokuji Japanese element Source of components

20 燵 -tatsu part of kotatsu 火 ‘fire’ + 達 (dá, ‘reach’) (HJ-K tatsu)
21 鮟 an- part of ‘anglerfish’ 魚 ‘fish’ + 安 (ān, ‘peace’) (HJ an)
22 鱇 -kō part of ‘anglerfish’ 魚 ‘fish’ + 康 (kāng, ‘healthy’) (HJ kō)
23 腺 sen ‘gland’ ⺼ ‘flesh’ + 泉 (quán, ‘spring’) (HJ-K sen)

 Kotatsu is a native Japanese word that in modern usage refers to a low covered
table with a heat source underneath it. Ankō is a native Japanese word for a
species of fish. In both cases, a part of the word—which does not necessarily
have an independent morphemic identity—matches an HJ pronunciation,
and can therefore be represented phonetically by a sinogram.
The last character was relatively recently created, as is the word it is used to
write. According to the Nihon Kokugo daijiten (Nihon Daijiten Kankōkai 2000–
2002) the word sen ‘gland’ was coined around 1805 by the scholar Udagawa
Genshin 宇田川玄真 as an equivalent to the Dutch anatomical term klier
‘gland’. The coinage was apparently based on a perceived metaphorical rela-
tionship between anatomical glands and (water) springs, so the phonetic ele-
ment of the graph can be considered etymological as well.34

5.6.2.2 Type 6: Only Semantic Elements are Present

Most kokuji (innovated Japanese sinograms) are compound graphs whose
components are already found in Chinese characters. They tend to be seman-
tic-semantic compounds. This is not surprising, because it would normally not
be possible to find a Chinese character whose pronunciation would make it
suitable as a phonetic element in a graph representing a polysyllabic Japanese
root. (There are no Sino-Japanese readings that match the pronunciations of
any of the example roots given below, unlike in the Type-5 examples above.)

33 As we will see later, there is a remarkable parallel with Sumerian.

34 Interestingly, this word and sinogram have been borrowed into Chinese and Korean.
194 Chapter 5

The following four examples of kokuji are all still in use in the modern Japanese
script.

 Kokuji Japanese morpheme Source of components

24 働 hatarak- ‘to work’ 亻 ‘person’ + 動 ‘move’
25 峠 tōge ‘mountain pass’ 山 ‘mountain’ + 上 ‘above’ + 下 ‘below’
26 辻 tsuji ‘crossroad’ ⻍ ‘go’ + 十 ‘ten’ (but here iconic for ‘cross’)
27 鱈 tara ‘cod’ 魚 ‘fish’ + 雪 ‘snow’

It is interesting that among the most commonly used kokuji like the four exam-
ples here, one of the two semantic elements is a common Chinese taxogram,
giving these characters the “look and feel” of Chinese phonetic-taxonomic
compounds. Unlike the Vietnamese Type-6 forms, they give the impression
of being ordinary Chinese characters.35 But no phonetic element is present.
Structurally, the graphs can be viewed as having two different kinds of seman-
tic components: one a taxogram that corresponds to the general semantic
field of the morpheme (human motion, mountain phenomenon, road/travel
phenomenon, and fish type) and the other a graph that provides a specific se-
mantic feature within that category. The right side of 峠 (25) is made up of two
distinct elements, 上 (shàng, ‘above’) and 下 (xià, ‘below’), that must be consid-
ered independent in order to motivate the structure of the graph (even though
they are merged to 卡 (kǎ, ‘checkpoint’) in some styles of writing). The inside of
辻 (26) is graphically identical to 十 (shí, ‘ten’), but it is in fact an iconic repre-
sentation of two lines crossing. Thus while all four of these example characters
have the graphic appearance of phonetic-taxonomic compounds, they are in
fact of a number of different structural types, among them: synonymic-taxo-
nomic and semantic-iconic.
The use of Type-5 and Type-6 innovated sinograms in Japanese writing is of
interest for what it tells us about the structural patterns of vernacular ­Japanese
writing. Already in the Old Japanese period PAPs were available to represent
those lexemes which lacked perceived semantic equivalents within the Liter-
ary Sinitic lexicon. But the stable writing system that eventually developed
depended for its legibility on the division of labor between logograms and­

35 In fact, by analogy with Chinese phonetic-semantic compounds, some of these sinograms

have been given artificial, anachronistic HJ pronunciations. For example, based on a kind
of back formation that reinterprets the non-taxogram semantic component 動 as a pho-
netic element, 働 was given HJ reading dō.
Japanese 195

phonograms for different categories of linguistic units, so it was a natural out-

come that a way was devised to represent these basic verb and noun roots with
logograms.

5.6.2.3 Type 7: Only Phonetic Elements are Present

Sequences of phonograms were regularly employed to write sequences of Jap-
anese syllables. Depending on the style of vernacular writing, entire texts could
be written this way, or only non-lexical morphemes such as suffixes and gram-
matical particles. Unlike in Korean, there were no sound sequences that were
not easily represented by the relatively small set of PAPs termed man’yōgana,
and thus there was no need for the creation of any specially structured phono-
grams. This is in contrast to Korean and Vietnamese, where we saw innovated
sinograms used to represent consonant clusters within syllables. For this rea-
son we do not consider Japanese to have Type-7 graphic structures.36

5.6.2.4 Type 8: Graphic Modification (Abbreviation)

We have already seen the role that abbreviation played in the Korean gloss-
ing tradition kugyŏl. Similar developments happened within Japanese. Type-3
and Type-4 graphs were used for centuries in full and abbreviated forms before
the abbreviated forms eventually supplanted the full forms, at which point
man’yōgana can be said to have been replaced by hiragana and katakana. This
abbreviation served a useful purpose even outside of contexts where space and
time were limited (such as annotations of Literary Sinitic texts): it created a
graphic distinction between logograms and phonograms, avoiding a source of
potential ambiguity.37
The examples below of abbreviated forms are all derived from phonograms
presented in the discussion of Type-3 and Type-4 graphs. All of these examples
have survived into the modern kana systems (and thus appear in Figure 5.4).

Sinogram Chinese morpheme Japanese value (script)

28 ム < 牟 móu ‘obtain’ mu (katakana)
29 む < 武 wǔ ‘martial’ mu (hiragana)

36 There are a few exceptions, used for writing proper names, such as maro 麿, formed from
two sinograms read for their sound value, ma 麻 and ro 呂. See Osterkamp 2017a: 115.
37 This distinction is also no doubt the major reason that modern Japanese writing has no
orthographic spacing. The graphic alternation between the representation of lexical
words and grammatical material helps the reader to determine word and constituent
boundaries.
196 Chapter 5

30 ん < 無, 无 wú ‘not have’ -n < /mu/ (hiragana)

31 て < 天 tiān ‘sky’ te (hiragana)
32 テ < 天 tiān ‘sky’ te (katakana)
33 ハ < 八 bā ‘eight’ ha < /pa/ (katakana)
34 タ < 多 duō ‘many’ ta (katakana)
35 め < 女 nǚ ‘woman’ me (hiragana)
36 メ < 女 nǚ ‘woman’ me (katakana)

5.6.2.5 Variation
As with Vietnamese and Korean, we do not see, nor do we expect to see, regu-
larity in Sinographic vernacular writing in the pre-modern era. Of particular
note is the lack of consistency in the selection of characters to serve as phono-
grams in the Old Japanese era. We see a many-to-one application of sinograms
to the writing of a limited number of syllables of Old Japanese.38 This variation
persisted even as the phonograms were conventionalized in abbreviated form
as kana; only at the turn of the 20th century were the modern hiragana and
katakana scripts standardized without variant forms.

5.7 Later Script Developments

Japanese is striking, in comparison with modern Korean and modern Vietnam-

ese, for employing today a writing system that is structurally very similar to the
early form of Sinographic vernacular writing from which it is descended, the
mixed-script form known as kanji-kana majiribun 漢字仮名混じり文. Mixed-
script writing developed in the Early Middle Japanese period (mid-Heian era),
and became dominant in the Late Middle Japanese period in tandem with the
solidification of the Classical Japanese written language, completely supplant­
ing purely phonographic writing.39 This type of writing uses full-form sino-

38 A notable exception is Kojiki, which consistently uses only a single phonogram for each
distinct OJ syllable. This consistency can be observed even in the short example text, the
first Kojiki poem, mentioned earlier in this chapter.
39 Frellesvig (2010: 158) laments this development, noting that “regrettably perhaps, the ele-
gant and economic tradition of simple hiragana writing, which is a fully sufficient means
of representing Japanese, was lost”. Frellesvig’s expression of regret seems to be an aes-
thetic response, and can be seen as part of a larger trend among some Western scholars
who have expressed dissatisfaction with the perceived complexity of modern Japanese
writing, a dissatisfaction perhaps deepened by the fact that a purely phonographic Japa-
nese script seems tantalizingly close at hand. Frellesvig does not explore the possibility
that changes in the phonology and lexicon of Japanese (e.g. the development of a simple
Japanese 197

grams (kanji) extensively as SALs for most lexical words (native Japanese as
well as Sino-Japanese), and kana (i.e. PAPs in conventionally abbreviated form)
for grammatical words and inflectional suffixes. Thus modern Japanese writ-
ing, alone of all the modern writing systems in the Sinographosphere, exten-
sively retains all the basic graph types that are the hallmark of Sinographic
adaptation: SALs, PAPs and SAPs, in addition to directly adapted graphs (DALs)
for Sino-Japanese borrowings.40
While in the Late Middle Japanese period katakana was the commonly used
form of kana in mixed-script writing, in modern writing it is hiragana that
plays this role, with katakana mostly reserved for writing modern (i.e. non-Si-
no-Japanese) borrowings from other languages such as English, sound effects,
and to express emphasis or other distinctions typographically (much as bold-
ing, italics, or underlining does in English writing).41 A functional distinction
between katakana and hiragana, already latent in the historical origin and
graphic genius of the two scripts, became more solidified in the Middle Japa-
nese period, with katakana better suited to the narrow spaces available for an-
notation in Kanbun kundoku and to the formalism of mixed-script writing, and
hiragana better suited to calligraphic expression and certain literary genres.
Only later as the modern script developed did hiragana displace katakana as
the default phonographic script.
The practice of using phonograms to provide phonetic glosses for logo-
grams, a fundamental component of the vernacular glossing tradition, later
became an available tool within the vernacular writing tradition.42 In its mod-

syllabic structure to a more complex moraic structure and the increasingly large number
of Sino-Japanese loanwords) may have influenced the direction of writing systems devel-
opment.
40 SALs are equivalent to kun’yomi kanji; PAPs to kana developed from ongana; SAPs to kana
developed from kungana; and directly adapted graphs equivalent to on’yomi kanji. While
modern Korean writing until recently made extensive use of sinograms, and even today
sinograms are still employed in some limited contexts, these uses were all limited to HK
vocabulary, equivalent only to Japanese on’yomi usage.
41 The preference for katakana over hiragana in Middle Japanese mixed-script writing is
likely connected to the intimate relationship between the practices of Kanbun kundoku
(vernacular glossing, which used katakana abbreviations) and vernacular writing as they
developed in tandem. This led to a cultural association of katakana with Literary Sinitic
writing in particular and thus with more formal and higher-prestige written contexts in
general.
42 The use of phonograms as disambiguators is already seen in Kojiki. For example, the
opening passage writes the name of the god Kuni-no-tokotachi using the sinograms 國之
常立. An annotation specifies that the last two graphs 常立 are to be read with the
198 Chapter 5

ern and premodern applications it is known as furigana 振り仮名 or ruby (Japa-

nese rubi).43
In the text shown in Figure 5.3, the sinograms 冰柱 (bīng, ‘ice’ + zhù, ‘pillar’ >
‘icicle’) are marked with furigana tsurara つらら. This resolves the multiple pos-
sibilities for the word represented by the graphs in this context, telling us that
they write the native Japanese word tsurara ‘icicle’ (i.e. as a kun’yomi SAL) rath-
er than the Sino-Japanese word hyōchū ‘id.’ (i.e. as a HJ on’yomi).
As Japanese phonology shifted from syllabic to moraic in the development
of Old Japanese into Modern Japanese, the kana scripts also shifted from syl-
labic representation to moraic representation. Although commonly referred to
as syllabograms, the characterization is not fully accurate. There are signifi-
cantly fewer moras than syllables in modern Japanese, making the moraic sys-
tem more efficient than a syllabic system would be.44 Although awkward,
moragram would be an appropriate term.
Figure 5.4 from Frellesvig (2010: 159) lists the basic kana graphs of the mod-
ern writing system, along with their original man’yōgana source characters.
Each cell represents a mora of the spoken language, indicated by the roman-
ized heading. Within each cell, the upper row gives the hiragana graph and the
lower row gives the katakana graph. The source characters are to the right of
the kana graphs. See Section 5.9 for a complete table of kana graph combina-
tions employed to represent all syllables of the modern language.
Note that while most of the modern kana graphs derive from ongana (i.e.
PAP usages), some derive from kungana (i.e. SAP usages). Earlier we already
noted that the two graphs for me are SAPs. Another example is katakana ミ mi,
originating from the SAL use of 三 (sān, ‘three’) to write Japanese mi- ‘three’.

sounds toko (using phonograms 登許) and tachi (using phonograms 多知), respectively,
thus indicating that they write native Japanese rather than Sino-Japanese morphemes.
43 There are numerous uses of ruby in modern Japanese script, ranging from the simple
need to disambiguate to highly complex and playful rhetorical moves that add texture
and meaning to literary expression. See Ariga (1989) for some discussion and examples of
rhetorical uses. In the 19th century it was common for ruby to be used extensively to mark
pronunciations of all kanji in a text, but the usage of ruby was significantly curtailed in the
early 20th century as part of language reform efforts.
44 It is not, however, a desire or need for efficiency that caused the shift in the unit of repre-
sentation of kana, but simply the shift in the underlying phonology. With existing kana
representing only light (i.e. mono-moraic) syllables, it was natural to simply extend the
system by inventing a few more kana to represent those syllable-final moraic elements
that make up heavy syllables.
Japanese 199

Figure 5.3
A modern Japanese passage
excerpted from Inoue 1996:217.
The word 氷柱 with furigana
annotation tsurara つらら is at
the top of the third line from
the right.
200 Chapter 5

Figure 5.4 Chart of modern Japanese kana graphs and their source characters (Frellesvig
2010: 159)

5.8 Analysis

We begin this section with a paragraph from Frellesvig (2010: 13) expressing the
new scholarly consensus about the origins and early development of Japanese
writing (emphasis mine):45

Chinese script may be adapted to write other languages either logograph-

ically or phonographically. Pre-alphabetic writing in Korean comprises
the following three main types: (a) pure logographic writing, with kanji
[sic] used for lexical words, but with no indication of grammatical parti-
cles or morphology; b) logographic writing, with conventionalized logo-
graphic and phonographic writing of some grammatical elements
(Korean idu ‘clerk readings’); (c) logographically written lexical items
supplemented by phonographically written grammatical elements
(hyangch’al). These types are all found in the OJ text corpus. It is likely
that the correspondences in specific types of writing on the continent

45 This new consensus emerged in recent decades as a result of the discovery of previously
unknown Korean excavated manuscripts that have shed new light on the early history of
writing on the Korean peninsula, giving concrete examples of early Korean usages that
parallel Japanese usages.
Japanese 201

and in Japan reflect a common continental source rather than parallel

development and there is therefore little sense in trying to reconstruct
an independent course of evolution of adapting Chinese script to write
Japanese. However, writing extensive text passages entirely or mostly
phonographically, reflected in the widespread use of man’yōgana … is a
practice not attested in Korean sources which therefore seems to be an
independent development which took place in Japan.

There is, to be sure, little question that contact-stimulus with Korean peninsu-
lar scribes was instrumental in setting the initial course for writing develop-
ment in Japan. But in my view Frellesvig’s statement is too strong. As his own
observation of a key difference between early Japanese and early Korean writ-
ing attests, Japan diverged quickly from Korea, and this is attributable to differ-
ences in the linguistic structures of the languages involved. Had the linguistic
typologies of Korean and Japanese been more different, the means of adapting
Chinese characters to the vernacular writing of Japanese would certainly have
diverged even more from those of Korea. To the extent that parallel pathways
of development continued even after literacy in Japan moved well beyond the
purview of peninsular scribes in the 7th century, we see the combined effects
of the constraints and motivations of linguistic typology at work. In this sec-
tion I hope to show how small differences in typology account for a number of
divergent developments (not just the one mentioned by Frellesvig). At the
same time, I will argue that practices brought over from the peninsula were
successfully implemented only because of the typological similarities of the
languages. From the 8th century on, we must view parallel developments as
primarily independent, since the scope and variation of literary practice on
the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago had become so great that
points of cultural contact could have had only a limited influence on further
developments.
Moreover, the typologies of the languages continued to develop over the
half millennium following the initial development of vernacular writing in
both places. Japanese phonology became more complex, developing from a
CV-syllabic structure to a mora-based structure that permitted CVC syllables.
Korean phonology, already richer than Japanese phonology to begin with, be-
came more complex in a different way, developing cluster initials. Each lan-
guage steadily gained Chinese loanwords, but in Japanese more doublets and
triplets accumulated as different reading traditions were imported, while in
Korea a single set of Sino-Korean readings became conventionalized. In the
modern era, only Type-1 uses of sinograms survived in Korea, those writing Si-
no-Korean morphemes, while in Japan sinograms continued to be used to
write native Japanese words as well.
202 Chapter 5

Comparing the development of vernacular writing for the two languages, a

number of differences can be observed, which correlate well with the typo-
logical differences.
First: Chinese characters were easily adapted to a full Japanese syllabary in
the Old Japanese period. The number of OJ syllables was small, and their pro-
nunciations were effectively a subset of Sino-Japanese readings of Chinese
characters. This meant it was a simple matter to select Chinese characters that
could be phonetically adapted to represent all the syllables of Japanese. Once
the syllabary was in place, and in particular after abbreviation had led to the
establishment of distinct phonographic scripts, it could be extended and mod-
ified to accommodate historical changes in Japanese phonology, in particular
the development of bi-moraic syllables. (Some of these changes were dis-
cussed in the previous section on the later developments of hiragana and
katakana.)
The situation in Korea was notably different. Although there are many un-
knowns about Old Korean phonology, we can say with certainty that the native
Korean syllable inventory was not a subset of Sino-Korean pronunciations. Old
Korean syllables had codas like /s/ that occurred neither in Chinese nor in Ko-
rean ŭm pronunciations of Chinese characters. By the time of Middle Korean
the number of Korean syllables that could not be represented by Sino-Korean
had only increased, with the development of onset consonant clusters. So
while it was possible to adapt Chinese characters phonetically to represent the
small subset of Korean syllables that occurred as grammatical particles and
inflectional endings, a full syllabary never developed. For this reason Korean
texts were never written entirely in Sinographic phonograms. Only after the
15th-century invention of the Hangul alphabet did it become possible to write
native Korean entirely phonographically.
Second: Koreans adapted some sinograms to represent individual conso-
nants. These served as phonetic determinatives, disambiguating multiple pos-
sible pronunciations associated with sinograms by specifying the final sound
of the word represented. (This use was discussed in the Korean chapter under
Type 5.) In Japanese there were no such consonantal applications of phono-
grams, because Old Japanese lacked CVC syllables. (When /-N/ developed later,
in the Middle Japanese period, the phonographic kana syllabaries were already
in place, and were simply modified by the addition of moragrams to represent
this element.)
Third: In both Japanese and Korean writing, the use of logograms to write
native verb roots was generally unambiguous because the presence of inflec-
tional endings was sufficient to indicate that the verb root was native, while
the presence of a “dummy verb” (Korean ha-, Japanese su- ‘to do’) was required
Japanese 203

to carry the inflections for Chinese-borrowed verb roots.46 But nominal uses of
logograms led to greater potential for ambiguity. Thus we see a greater need for
disambiguating strategies in this context. In Korean a phonetic determinative
consonant could be appended. In Japanese, phonograms spelling out the in-
tended pronunciation could be written alongside the graphs. Had there been
multiple layers of Sino-Korean words in common use, the consonant-coda dis-
ambiguating strategy would not have been sufficient in Korean: after all, mul-
tiple borrowings of the same Chinese morpheme could end up with the same
coda consonant in Sino-Korean pronunciation. In Japanese, where there were
such multiple layers, a mechanism that could provide a full specification of
pronunciation was necessary, accounting for the use of ruby (or furigana).
In Chapter 3 on Korean, various contexts that lead to ambiguity and various
strategies for resolving that ambiguity were discussed. The framework present-
ed there is also helpful for understanding developments in Japanese, which
sometimes resolved similar problems in different ways.
A fundamental challenge in a vernacular writing system derived from the
Chinese script is that of distinguishing phonetic adaptations from semantic
adaptations, since the same sinogram might be potentially employed in both
ways within the same text. A theoretically available method mentioned in the
Korean chapter was a formal graphic distinction, either systematic or sporadic,
between graphs of each type. In the history of Japanese writing, we see pre-
cisely this development along two different pathways. One is size: as described
earlier, senmyō-gaki style wrote phonograms in a smaller size than logograms,
making the difference in function visually explicit. A second is shape: by re-
taining full form characters as logograms, and using abbreviated characters as
phonograms, a formal distinction can be made, as happened with the conven-
tionalization of abbreviated graphs in the development of kana. Both of these
methods can be traced back to the practice of annotation that is fundamental
to vernacular glossing: when marking up a Literary Sinitic text, phonographic
glosses are necessarily smaller and are likely to be abbreviated.47

46 As for distinguishing among multiple possibilities for which native verb root is intended,
we will discuss below the interesting methods that developed for phonetic determina-
tion.
47 There may also be a connection to the common practice in Literary Sinitic texts of provid-
ing exegetical commentary in two lines of smaller characters, to visually distinguish the
original text to which exegesis is being applied from the annotations themselves. Note
that this practice differs from vernacular glossing in that the annotations are not squeezed
into the margins of an existing text, but are interpolated as the contents of the original
text are copied out.
204 Chapter 5

A second fundamental challenge is disambiguating multiple possible refer-

ents of a logogram. Such ambiguity arises from two factors. The first is borrow-
ing. Familiarity with Literary Sinitic to the extent necessary for semantic
adaptation of logograms to write the native language inevitably entails the
borrowing of Chinese morphemes into the native written language (and, ulti-
mately, into the native spoken language). Moreover, in situations where a com-
munity of Chinese speakers is present (as in early Vietnam and Korea), Chinese
morphemes will be directly borrowed into the native spoken language through
bilingual contact. The result is that a logogram of Chinese origin will poten-
tially represent both native and Chinese morphemes. The second source is
one-to-many semantic relationships between Chinese and the native lan-
guage. When characters are selected to write native lexical items, it is done on
the basis of perceived similarity of meaning. In practice, the inevitable lack of
isomorphy between the two lexicons means that that same sinogram might be
adapted to write more than one native morpheme with similar semantics. We
saw an example earlier in Footnote 24 of Chapter 5: the graph 日 (rì, ‘sun, day’)
used to write Japanese hi ‘sun’ and -ka ‘number of days’.
Some of the resulting ambiguity is theoretical: in practice it is naturally re-
solved by context or through native-speaker lexical knowledge. For example,
in certain compounds or collocations only one morpheme may possibly occur
out of all those potentially represented by a character. To take a very simple
example from modern Japanese, consider the Chinese character 車 (chē, ‘vehi-
cle’). It can represent the borrowed HJ morpheme sha ‘vehicle’ or the native
Japanese morpheme kuruma ‘vehicle’, i.e. it can be read with its on’yomi or
kun’yomi pronunciations. While in isolation this character can be said to be
ambiguous in terms of its reading, in an actual text it never is. This is because
the HJ morpheme sha is bound and occurs only in compounds; kuruma is not
only free, but is morphologically less productive: it occurs in far fewer com-
pounds.48 A proficient reader will therefore not consider the sequence of
graphs 電車 to be ambiguous; it can only represent densha ‘trolley’ and ipso
facto 車 itself can only represent sha, not kuruma, in this context. Moreover,
the problem of ambiguity between, say, a HJ-K and a HJ-G reading of a charac-
ter is often also resolved in context, because some compound words involve

48 This is typical for Japanese kanji representing noun and verb roots. HJ morphemes are
bound, so when the kanji writes one it necessarily appears in a compound written with
two kanji. Many native morphemes are free, so may be written by the kanji in isolation.
There are, however, many exceptions to these generally observed tendencies. Moreover, it
must be remembered that free native Japanese morphemes also occur in compounds. For
example, kuruma is found in the compounds kazaguruma 風車 ‘windmill’ and haguruma
歯車 ‘gear’ (with morphophonologically conditioned voicing of k- to g-).
Japanese 205

the morpheme from one of these Sino-Japanese layers and some involve the
morpheme from another. Native speakers who know their own lexicons will
seldom consider a logogram to be ambiguous when it occurs in a compound.49
It is the problem of ambiguity when it is not resolved through lexical or real-
world context that requires a graphic mechanism of resolution. (Such situa-
tions are actually quite rare in running text.) We have already seen one such
method, that of annotated phonograms, which in the modern writing system
are known as furigana or ruby. There is another method, however, which often
obviates the need for furigana. It is related to the nature of Japanese verbal
inflection and phonological typology. For simplicity we will use modern Japa-
nese examples to illustrate.
In our discussion of Type-5 graphic usage in Japanese, we saw that there was
a mismatch between verbal root structure and Japanese syllable structure. To
recapitulate the example given there: morphologically a form like saku ‘(it)
blooms’ consists of stem sak- and non-past suffix -u: sak-u, but phonologically
this form consists of two syllables: sa+ku. Because syllabic phonograms are
employed in the writing system, the phonological level takes precedence in
writing. Thus saku is written not with a phonogram representing u but with a
phonogram representing ku. In the modern script this is 咲く. A second exam-
ple is the verb ‘speak’, hanas-. The inflected form hanasemasu ‘able to speak
(polite)’ is morphologically hanas- plus suffixes -e-masu, but phonologically it
is hana+semasu, and thus is represented as 話せます in the writing system. The
kanji logogram 話 (huà, ‘speak, speech’) writes the native morpheme hanas- as
SAL, while the hiragana phonogram せ writes the syllable se, encompassing
the root-final phoneme /s/, redundantly represented, and the potential suffix
-e.
The interesting point here is that when the same sinogram has been used
as SAL to write more than one native Japanese verb, in some cases the syl-
labic aspect of the writing system automatically provides disambiguation by
specifying the final consonant of the verb root, and thus in effect acting as a

49 Again, there are exceptions: consider the two-kanji sequence 氷柱, which could repre-
sent a Sino-Japanese compound hyōchū ‘icicle’ or the synonymous native Japanese word
tsurara. These words were discussed earlier as an example of a situation in which ruby
text is warranted for disambiguation. (There is admittedly a danger of circularity in any
argument about the need for disambiguation in a case like this. It is possible that this
kanji sequence would never have come to be used to write the native Japanese tsurara
word in the first place if the possibility of using ruby text was not already present.) It is
also interesting that tsurara appears to be monomorphemic—although the etymology is
not clear—which means it is the combination of two kanji that is functioning like a single
logogram here.
206 Chapter 5

phonetic determinative. For example, consider the two verbs de- ‘to go out’ and
its causative counterpart das- ‘to put out’. Their non-past (imperfective) in-
flected forms are deru and dasu, respectively. Both verb roots are written with
the logogram 出 (chū, ‘to go out’). Because the /s/ of das- is redundantly indicat-
ed by the following kana graph, the two verbs are disambiguated even though
the roots are both written with the same logogram. Compare the forms in
Table 5.11.

Table 5.11 Two Japanese verbs written with 出

 de- ‘to go out’  das- ‘to put out’

plain non-past  deru 出る  dasu 出す

plain past  deta 出た  dashita 出した
negative  denai 出ない  dasanai 出さない

The /s/-initial syllables written by す, し, さ in the second-column forms unam-

biguously indicate that the verb represented by 出 is das- and not de-.
That this redundancy of representation in the writing system is not just a
necessary (if beneficial) consequence of the mismatch between Japanese mor-
phological and phonological structure, but also of some independent value, is
confirmed by the fact that sometimes entire syllables are redundantly repre-
sented rather than just root-final consonants. For example, the verb tabe- ‘eat’
is written using the SAL 食 (shí, ‘eat’). But the plain non-past form taberu is not
written 食る (i.e. logogram for verb root tabe-, phonogram for inflectional suffix
-ru), even though nothing precludes such a representation, but 食べる, with
the syllable be of the root redundantly represented by the phonogram べ.50
In sum, we see similar patterns in the development of Korean and Japanese
vernacular writing: (1) a tendency for noun and verb roots to be written with
SALs, and for grammatical elements (case-marking particles, verbal inflec-
tions, clausal connectives, etc.) and non-lexical words (adverbs) to be written
with PAPs. (2) a tendency for PAPs to become abbreviated (through both cur-
sivization and isolation), but for SALs to retain the full, complex form. (3) the
creation of small numbers of new graphs, compounded of existing compo-
nents, to fill semantic gaps that SALs cannot fill.

50 See Chapter 8 for a remarkably similar usage in Sumerian. We have also noted earlier the
possibility that a similar mechanism was used in Korean hyangch’al.
Japanese 207

These similarities can only partially be attributed to the historical connec-

tion between writing on the Korean peninsula and on the Japanese archipela-
go. In particular, techniques of vernacular glossing of Literary Sinitic which
were introduced to Japan from Korea were influential in the development of
vernacular writing in both places. But it is important to remember that if the
techniques employed for vernacular glossing and vernacular writing in Korea
had been incompatible with the typology of Japanese, they would not have
persisted.51 Moreover, the fact that systemic parallels between the two were
marked by significant individual differences—such as the selection and ab-
breviation of particular sinograms to serve as phonograms—shows that paral-
lel developments happened even in the absence of direct influence. This
strongly suggests that those developments were promoted by—or at the least,
were not precluded by—the common linguistic features of Korean and Japa-
nese.
But we also see some key differences between Korean and Japanese, differ-
ences that are often overlooked by scholars seeking to emphasize the historical
connection between the two. And these are indeed areas where typological
differences between the two languages either prevented the use of certain
techniques, or permitted—even motivated—techniques for Japanese that
were not appropriate for Korean. Among these differences are (1) the existence
of fully phonographic writing in the Old Japanese and Early Middle Japanese
period; (2) the use of individual sinograms to represent two native syllables of
Old Japanese; (3) the development of consonantal PAPs in Korea but not in
Japan; (4) the use of differences in graph size to distinguish SALs from PAPs in
some types of Japanese writing;52 (5) the development of complete phono-
graphic syllabaries (later mora-based graphs) in Japan but not in Korea; (6) the
eventual displacement (first partial, but by now nearly complete) of Chinese-
derived scripts by an independently created alphabet in Korea; (7) the creation
of a small number of phonetic-phonetic compound graphs for Korean sylla-
bles beginning with consonant clusters.53

51 It is an interesting thought experiment to consider what would have happened if 5th-

century Korean scribes had first introduced writing to Vietnam. I contend that Vietnam-
ese vernacular writing would not have—could not have—proceeded on a pathway
similar to Japanese.
52 Frellesvig (2010: 16): “Senmyō-gaki is similar to the mixed writing of modern Japanese, in
the sense that both exhibit a high degree of orthographic distinction between lexical
words and grammatical elements.” In modern writing it is a script difference, rather than
a size difference, that manifests the distinction.
53 Interestingly, the creation of phonetic-phonetic (Type-6) compound graphs is an exam-
ple of similarity in Sinographic writing of Vietnam and Korea that has no parallel in Ja-
pan. It was a parallel phonological change—the development of syllable-initial consonant
208 Chapter 5

Whether my claims about the crucially important role of linguistic typology

in shaping the aspects of vernacular writing adapted from a morphographic
script can rise above mere speculation is a question that we can now seek to
address. I hope I have already shown the plausibility of those claims, i.e. that
they are compatible with the known facts, logically consistent, and applicable
in a comparative setting. But the claims will be more persuasive if they can be
shown to have predictive power, and if they remain unrefuted by historical
evidence involving other writing systems, both within and outside the Sinogra-
phosphere.

5.9 Appendix to Chapter 5

Table 5.12 Hiragana: basic moragrams

a あ i い u う e え o お
ka か ki き ku く ke け ko こ
sa さ shi し su す se せ so そ
ta た chi ち tsu つ te て to と
na な ni に nu ぬ ne ね no の
ha は hi ひ fu ふ he へ ho ほ
ma ま mi み mu む me め mo も
ya や yu ゆ yo よ
ra ら ri り ru る re れ ro ろ
wa わ  wi ゐ  we ゑ  wo を
-N ん
-Q っ

Notes to Table 5.12: The syllables wi, we and wo no longer occur in modern Jap-
anese. The kana graphs for wi and we are therefore encountered only in older
texts preserving pre-1946 conservative spellings; but the graph for wo を is used
to distinctively write the object-marking particle -o.54

clusters in both Vietnamese and Korean—that motivated the creation of dual-phonetic

characters to “spell” the syllables in question.
54 It could therefore be considered a logogram rather than a phonogram, via a resemantici-
zation process that results from the elimination of the possibility of it being used to rep-
resent a similar sound sequence in any other morpheme. We might even call it a
phonetically adapted logogram (PAL). It is a definitive example of the role we speculated
might exist for /turu/ in Footnote 32 of Chapter 5. (An interesting aside: the Japanese
subordinating particle no is always written with the hiragana graph no の. Although this
 Japanese 209

The syllable-final moraic consonant -Q is represented by a small-sized graph

tsu つ; it results in germination of a following obstruent, e.g. matta まった. Long
vowels are indicated by adding a graph for a, i, u, e, or o, e.g. tō とう.

Table 5.13 Hiragana: modified and combined moragrams

ga が gi ぎ gu ぐ ge げ go ご kya きゃ kyu きゅ kyo きょ

za ざ ji じ zu ず ze ぜ zo ぞ gya ぎゃ gyu ぎゅ gyo ぎょ
da だ ji ぢ zu づ de で do ど sha しゃ shu しゅ sho しょ
ba ば bi び bu ぶ be べ bo ぼ ja じゃ ju じゅ jo じょ
pa ぱ pi ぴ pu ぷ pe ぺ po ぽ cha ちゃ chu ちゅ cho ちょ
nya にゃ nyu にゅ nyo にょ
hya ひゃ hyu ひゅ hyo ひょ
bya びゃ byu びゅ byo びょ
pya ぴゃ pyu ぴゅ pyo ぴょ
mya みゃ myu みゅ myo みょ
rya りゃ ryu りゅ ryo りょ

Notes to Table 5.13: Most of the modified moragrams employ a diacritic to indi-
cate voicing. A special diacritic is used to distinguish the p- series from the h-
series. Combined moragrams for syllables with on-glide -y- are formed by
appending a small-sized graph representing ya, yu, or yo to a base graph repre-
senting a syllable ending in -i.

is not a logogram in Japan, it is frequently used as such in Taiwan in informal handwriting,

where it writes the Mandarin subordinating particle de (normally 的). What we have here
is a phonogram which is associated by Taiwan Chinese speakers (many of whom have at
least a passing familiarity with Japanese) with a particular morpheme; it is then borrowed
as an SAL to write the functionally similar Chinese morpheme. The motivation for this,
when a perfectly serviceable Chinese character already exists, is the convenience of the
one-stroke Japanese graph, which saves time in handwriting. The original motivation may
also have been at least partially ludic.)
 210 Chapter 5

Table 5.14 Katakana: basic moragrams

a ア i イ u ウ e エ o オ
ka カ ki キ ku ク ke ケ ko コ
sa サ shi シ su ス se セ so ソ
ta タ chi チ tsu ツ te テ to ト
na ナ ni ニ nu ヌ ne ネ no ノ
ha ハ hi ヒ fu フ he ヘ ho ホ
ma マ mi ミ mu ム me メ mo モ
ya ヤ yu ユ yo ヨ
ra ラ ri リ ru ル re レ ro ロ
wa ワ  wi ヰ  we ヱ  wo ヲ
-N ン
-Q ッ
-ː ー

Notes to Table 5.14: As with hiragana, the katakana graphs for wi and we are
obsolete and the graph for wo ヲ is used to only to write the object-marking
particle -o.
The syllable-final moraic consonant -Q is represented by a small-sized graph
tsu ツ; it results in germination of a following obstruent, e.g. sutoppu ストップ
‘stop’. Long vowels are indicated by adding the length graph ー, e.g. kādo カード
‘card’.

Table 5.15 Katakana: modified and combined moragrams

ga ガ gi ギ gu グ ge ゲ go ゴ kya キャ kyu キュ kyo キョ

za ザ ji ジ zu ズ ze ゼ zo ゾ gya ギャ gyu ギュ gyo ギョ
da ダ ji ヂ zu ヅ de デ do ド sha シャ shu シュ sho ショ
ba バ bi ビ bu ブ be ベ bo ボ ja ジャ ju ジュ jo ジョ
pa パ pi ピ pu プ pe ペ po ポ cha チャ chu チュ cho チョ
nya ニャ nyu ニュ nyo ニョ
 she シェ hya ヒャ hyu ヒュ hyo ヒョ
 je ジェ bya ビャ byu ビュ byo ビョ
 che チェ pya ピャ pyu ピュ pyo ピョ
 fa ファ  fi フィ  fe フェ  fo フォ mya ミャ myu ミュ myo ミョ
 va ヴァ  vi ヴィ  vu ヴ  ve ヴェ  vo ヴォ rya リャ ryu リュ ryo リョ
Japanese 211

Notes to Table 5.15: The combined graphs with a small-sized a ア, i イ, e エ, or o

オ, seen in the lower left portion of the chart, are mainly used to write foreign
syllables that do not occur in native Japanese or Sino-Japanese words. These
syllables are presented in italicized Romanization in the chart. They are not
normally found in hiragana, since it is typically only katakana that is used to
represent such foreign words.