According to Wikipedia, revision of the 常用漢字 (Jōyō kanji) was first proposed in February 2005 and work began in September of the same year.
2005年2月に国語分科会が「情報化時代に対応するために常用漢字のあり方を検討すべき」であるとした報告書を文化審議会に提出した。これを受けて、同年3月、中山文部科学相は常用漢字表の見直しの検討などを文化審議会に諮問した。同年9月から文化審議会・国語分科会の漢字小委員会が常用漢字見直しの審議に入った。
– Wikipedia
Three years later, there was news as recently as last month of a tentative list to be released in February of 2009. The new list is currently said to have removed 5 kanji and added 188 new ones, bringing the new total from 1945 to 2128 characters.
文化審議会国語分科会の漢字小委員会は１５日、常用漢字表に新たに入れる可能性の高い漢字１８８字からなる字種候補案を承認した。話題になった「俺（おれ）」も含まれる。今後、音訓を決める段階や、来年２月に作成される新常用漢字表（仮称）試案を修正する段階で、この追加字種の数は若干変わる可能性もあるが、ほぼ固まった。
現行の常用漢字表からはずす可能性が高いのは銑・錘・勺・匁・脹。１９４５字からなる常用漢字表からこの５字をはずし、新たに１８８字を追加すれば、新常用漢字表は２１２８字となる。
– 朝日（２００８年7月15日）
The new additions apparently also include the “controversial” character 「俺」. Personally, it seems crazy to not include it based on how often it’s used. And what is so controversial about 「俺」 anyway especially considering the fact that they’re adding kanji like 「勃」 and 「淫」? That’s just my opinion in any case and I think the difficulty they are having in determining the criteria for what goes in the list is indicative of fundamental problems with the whole idea behind the list in the first place.
Never let the 常用漢字表 tell you which kanji to learn or not learn
What is the purpose of the 常用漢字表 anyway? To tell you which kanji to learn? So I’m supposed to learn 「斤」, some obscure unit of measurement but not the kanji for the word “who” （誰）? That makes perfect sense, right?!
Also, why did they even have the removed characters （銑・錘・勺・匁・脹） in the first place? Was “pig iron” commonly used at some point in time? I mean, the list came out the year I was born and I don’t think I’m THAT old. And why haven’t they removed stuff like 畝 or 逓 yet? I don’t think they come even close to falling in the category of “common usage” no matter how you define it.
And now, almost 30 years later they’re finally going to add kanji for words like “smell” （匂い）, “loose” （緩い）, “nail” （爪）, and “butt” （お尻） in 2010? What kind of crap list were we using all these years?
The list burned me personally when I bought my first kanji dictionary. It only had the 常用漢字 because after all, that’s all we need to know, right? Well, one of the FIRST words I encountered in my self-study was 「瞳」 and guess what, it’s not in the list! If I had known better, I would have never wasted money on anything that only covered the 常用漢字.
Thankfully, I later found an online dictionary that didn’t use the 常用漢字表 as an excuse to be lazy and saved me from quitting Japanese in frustration. For comparison, the 漢字源 in my Canon G90 has 13,112 characters, almost 16x what my first crap dictionary had.
Don’t fall into the trap of learning from a list
In my opinion, the worst problem with the list is that it fools innocent learners such as you and I into thinking we should use it somehow in our studies. The thinking goes, “Hey here’s a list of (supposedly) common kanji. I should make up some index cards and memorize them one by one.”
However, what many beginners don’t realize is that you have to be some kind of super-genius to memorize 1945 characters with absolutely no context. Even if you DID somehow manage to memorize them all, you’re not learning any real words, you have no idea which readings are used and when, and you have no sense of when and how it’s used. Where’s the reading material, vocabulary, and conversation practice? It’s like putting the cart before the horse AND sitting in the seat backwards.
The first character on the list is 「亜」 for crying out loud! For all you know, that’s the most useful character in the world when in fact I have never used it in all my years of study. Do YOU write 「アジア」 and 「アメリカ」 as 「亜細亜」 and 「亜米利加」? I sure hope not! I thought for a second that maybe it’s used in the word 「唖然」 but no, not even! If anything, 「唖」 belongs in the list much more than 「亜」 if you ask me. Obviously, they never consulted me (I was -2 months old at the time) and no, it’s not in the list.
Conclusion
I don’t know, maybe the list has some good uses for educators, policy makers, publishers, and whatnot. It’s certainly better to have an improved version over the crappy one we have now. But I can’t help but think it was overused throughout the years and caused more harm than good for people learning Japanese. Personally, I think we would have been better off without the damn list in the first place.
The bottom line is whatever new list they come up with and no matter how “good” it is (whatever that means), we should always think of it as a guide and never forget to use good ol’ common sense.
Out of interest, how are they planning on fitting them into the school curriculum?
Which grades get which new characters I wonder…
I don’t know, did they ever fit it into the school curriculum? I thought the recommended kanji for each grade was completely separate from the 常用漢字 list.
Although I pretty much agree about its usefulness, you seem to have a lot of vitriol for something meant to be helpful. At least they’re trying to improve it. 😉
I personally use the list to try to be thorough in learning all the kanji. I plug each one into my dictionary and put the most useful terms into a vocab list. Later I review the list (I use HTML/CSS to obscure the terms with gray background so that they work a bit like flashcards), trying to come up with the words and write the kanji down from memory. It’s actually moderately useful.
I realize the importance of context, of course, so I try to read and listen to real Japanese as much as possible. But the 常用漢字表 helps me gauge my progress and, again, be as thorough as possible.
I could care less what they do with the jouyou kanji list. However, I demand that they erase the recommendation to use 混ぜ書き such as ぼっ発, ねつ造, etc.. Isn’t it common sense that using mazegaki like that makes reading more troublesome rather than easier? Furigana would be ideal but even just displaying the non-jouyou kanji without furigana would be preferable to reading 改ざん and the rest of its kin. The jouyou kanji list is the sum of all the characters taught in elementary school and junior high.
@Vuredel
I think the indignation comes from how ridiculously bad the list is and the fact that it affects us all who are learning Japanese negatively to some degree. Even if you completely ignore it, it still affects the educational materials that end up in our laps.
@Christopher
Totally agree, あ然 is another example. IME is even smart enough to have 変換 for the mixed version automatically. Too smart, in my book.
I feel sorry for the elementary and junior high kids who had to memorize 畝, 逓, 璽, etc.
A great writing, one which I agree very much.
In the past, I learned grade 1, then grade 2, then grade 3 Jouyou kanji. Around that time period, I slowly realized that lists are kind of pointless anyway (because I encountered non-Jouyou kanji in songs — you know, stuffs like 瞳 and 誰) and that focusing on Jouyou kanji makes you infatuated with learning many kanji without context. So I stopped learning from it. Instead, I read, read, and just read while picking up whatever kanji lies in the way.
Some years later, as a side effect of reading, I now know a nice percentage of Jouyou kanji. Not 100% yet, which shows how useful they are (and about the three kanji 畝, 逓, 璽 written in the article, I never encountered it elsewhere before). On the other hand, as can be expected by anyone doing real reading, I’ve encountered around 150 jinmeiyou kanji and 700+ kanji not in any government-approved list (including the 唖 in 唖然 :)).
As a side note, when I first learned Japanese the earliest kanji I tried to write was 愛 and 夢, because I’m really familiar with seeing them in subbed anime theme songs. That’s already the right path of learning kanji, and I wonder why I even went astray :)…
Neither have I and I doubt I will ever see those and a bunch of others in the list in real life. According to the Wikipedia entry, the imperial seal 璽 was added due to political pressure and so I’m guessing it’ll probably remain in the revised list as well. Another reason to ignore the list.
The biggest problem with the Jouyou list — is simply that it’s existence has ‘satisfied’ most people and consequently prevented someone from coming up with something better. Actually, I don’t know exactly how bad it is, but starting with Chinese I used the ‘3000 most frequent characters’ in Wenlin (which they generated from analysis of authentic text). A similar frequency-based list for Japanese based on text in novels and newspapers would be super cool. (And I think couldn’t make such blatantly retarded omissions as 誰, 俺, etc.)
Seriously, 29 years is too long in revising the list. They should be doing it every year.
The reason they can’t revise it too often is that revisions to the list cause huge costs for schools because much of the kokugo teaching and learning material needs to be revised to reflect the new jouyou list.
I did however read in some article that starting with this reform they will be revising kanji policies more often in reaction to the quick pace of change of kanji usage in the information age.
Personally I’m already looking ahead to the approaching 漢字統一. ^^ It’s a very interesting proposition for all of East Asia. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it taekk.
http://www.chosunonline.com/article/20071103000035
Just the fact that 誰 is omitted and 俺 was controversial makes me wonder what the hell the list is even for.
I also picked up 瞳 from songs. The list clearly can’t have be created from compiled 漢字 based on frequency of usage so I’m wondering…how was it decided and who is it for?!
I want to defend it by saying kanji usage has increased with recent technology but still Japanese hasn’t changed THAT much in 30 years.
By the way, Mizuumi wrote up a Polish translation of this post here:
http://kantanda.wordpress.com/2008/08/15/guest-post-nowe-%E5%B8%B8%E7%94%A8%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97-i-dlaczego-powinnismy-to-miec-gdzies/
あっ、書くの忘れてしまった、ごめんね。
もう一度、本当にありがとうわ。 ＾＾
こちらこそ、翻訳ありがとう。
I agree completely with what you say, taekk.
On a side note, as an exception to confirm the rule, I’ve just encountered the character 亜 (http://www.tt.rim.or.jp/~rudyard/kaego006.html). I find this funny, being only 2 days after your post. >_<
亜種 = subspecies
Due to my limited exposure to Biology in Japanese, I have to admit I have never seen this word before. I still wouldn’t consider it common usage but thanks!
Of course. Everybody just knows that 龍 is way cooler than 竜 right? Right?
After finishing off with Heisig I too wondered why 誰 or 俺 or 頃 or 匂い or 雛 weren’t included within 常用（though Remembering the Kanji Part 1 has a few extras）. But that’s what Remembering the Kanji 3 is for. I couldn’t bear to start again, so here I am, the lone kanji 流浪者。チェ。下らん。
As for 瞳, I’m surprised that it wasn’t on the list. Since I learnt it through RTK1, I already assumed it was. Oh well 😀
You’ll be happy to know what most of those will be in the new list (except for 雛 looks like for now).
I still think they should remove a lot more and some of the new ones like 諧 and 麓 are very questionable.
Here’s the full list of additions likely to make the list according to the 朝日 article.
藤誰俺岡頃奈阪韓弥那鹿斬虎狙脇熊尻旦闇籠呂亀頬膝鶴匂沙須椅股眉挨拶鎌凄謎稽曾喉拭貌塞蹴鍵膳袖潰駒剥鍋湧葛梨貼拉枕顎苛蓋裾腫爪嵐鬱妖藍捉宛崖叱瓦拳乞呪汰勃昧唾艶痕諦餅瞳唄隙淫錦箸戚蒙妬蔑嗅蜜戴痩怨醒詣窟巾蜂骸弄嫉罵璧阜埼伎曖餌爽詮芯綻肘麓憧頓牙咽嘲臆挫溺侶丼瘍僅諜柵腎梗瑠羨酎畿畏瞭踪栃蔽茨慄傲虹捻臼喩萎腺桁玩冶羞惧舷貪采堆煎斑冥遜旺麺璃串填箋脊緻辣摯汎憚哨氾諧媛彙恣聘沃憬捗訃
I guess they are planning on the term 和諧社会 popping up a lot in the future.
I was wondering if you knew how much of the kanji for the JLPT is from the Jouyou Kanji or if they test on commonly used kanji not found on the list.
Great blog entry! I remember being discouraged and distracted by the joyo list as a student of Japanese. I totally agree with you.
Isn’t the list intended for Japanese schoolkids and not foreigners, anyway, though? When it comes to kanji to learn, maybe we foreigners should just mind our own business… 🙂
(Does the joyo list affect the content of the JLPT?)
Yeah. 1kyuu supposedly tests all of the jouyou kanji.
I’m sure the JLPT doesn’t test all of the 常用漢字 considering some of the archaic characters in there. In fact, the official site only says about 2000 characters and doesn’t mention 常用漢字 anywhere. Judging by the fact that 2000>1945, the JLPT might be a factor but I don’t think it’s restricted to it.
http://www.jees.or.jp/jlpt/jlpt_guide.html
But the most important thing to note is that the number of Kanji is irrelevant! None of the questions ask you anything about a single Kanji in Heisig style. The important number you should be paying attention to is 10,000 for vocabulary.
Look at the following sample １級漢字 questions. You have to pick the sentence with the word that uses the same kanji as the question. Knowing a single character is not going to get you anywhere.
今晩泊まるホテルは、山のちゅうふくにある。
１）毎日ふくしゅうしよう。
２）くうふくで夜中に目が覚めた。
３）ふくし関係の仕事に就きたい。
４）おうふく切符を買った。
前の社長は、事業の拡大に失敗して、しっきゃくした。
１）借りた本をへんきゃくする。
２）ラジオドラマをきゃくしょくする。
３）かんきゃくは5万人に上った。
４）きゃくまに花を生ける。
Let’s not knock what they’re doing too harshly. I think their motives are well founded. I’m sure we all agree that most of the common kanji are included and most of the obscure ones are not. What they are doing is tinkering around the edges to make the best of a difficult situation.
I also think it’s too much to expect a perfect solution. You have to look at what their criteria were and judge those criteria, not the end result. That there were surely political aspects and committee decisions involved is part of life. So what if there are a small number of imperfections if the bulk of the work is sound?
As for whether 常用 is a good idea or not, I think it definitely is. Look at where they’re coming from. The original idea behind the 当用漢字 was that publications, newspapers, etc. limit the number of kanji they use to 1850 and use hiragana or furigana for the others to help those with less literacy. Doesn’t stop you using other kanji in songs and artwork for example. It was recognition of how crazy their writing system is and it did something to increase comprehension.
Now people did find 1850 too limiting so they increased it to near 2000 and renamed it to 常用. I personally think increasing the number beyond that is a backward step, unless it’s an indication that literacy is overall increasing.
The list does serve a useful purpose for foreigners learning the language too. Tell me, if you had a choice between learning 2000 kanji chosen at random or the 常用 list, which would you prefer?
Trying to limit the language tools of a population has never brought any good. Every word that is forced into obscurity just because it includes a kanji that is not on the jouyou list is a loss for the Japanese language. If I understand correctly, only newspapers and government publications were told to try to avoid using words that use non-jouyou kanji. No one ever set any limits on novels and magazines and other publications if I recall correctly except maybe encouraging them to use furigana for hard kanji.
@Raichu The literacy argument is no longer valid. In the age of universal education, kanji using countries have the same levels of literacy as alphabet using countries. So give or take 500 kanji or whatever doesn’t make much of a difference.
“Tell me, if you had a choice between learning 2000 kanji chosen at random or the 常用 list, which would you prefer?”
Most foreigners don’t learn Kanji based on either. They learn it based on what their textbooks and learning materials decide is relevant. While this usually overlaps a lot with jouyou kanji, it’s not based on it.
What I think would be much more useful is an analysis of a large collection of works and solid statistical data on the frequency of each kanji. That way, it’s actually based on hard data and not a committee. The list of works analyzed should also be released and maintained so you’ll know of any bias in the source data.
“Every word that is forced into obscurity just because it includes a kanji that is not on the jouyou list is a loss for the Japanese language.”
Oh good, it makes the Japanese language easier to learn because it gets rid of hard words…
Just joking. I’m finding Japanese is a very rich and expressive language, although admittedly its broad vocabulary makes it harder to learn.
I think you do make some valid points.
“an analysis of a large collection of works and solid statistical data on the frequency of each kanji”
I think that would be useful for creating most of a list, but it seems that some kanji might have been included for different reasons, regardless of their frequency. Unless we know what those reasons were, we can’t say they are invalid, so it’s hard to argue either way.
“What I think would be much more useful is an analysis of a large collection of works and solid statistical data on the frequency of each kanji.”
BTW, the KANJIDICT dictionary, which is accessible through Jim Breen’s WWWJDIC server, includes frequency rankings for individual kanji. From the documentation: “The data is based on an analysis of word frequencies in the Mainichi Shimbun over 4 years by Alexandre Girardi.” (http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/kanjidic_doc.html). You can find the analysis at this site (http://ftp.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/00INDEX.html) if you grep for Alexandre Girardi.
What Raichu says makes sense. So perhaps it’s more correct to say that the list is being “used” in the wrong way by many educational institutions, rather than “created” in the wrong way to begin with. The latter may still be true, but one should know what the goals are (which I don’t 😛 ) in the schemes of the authors before deciding.
I learned kanji (well, at least 1400 of them so far) through the book by Henshall, which, yes, is based on the jouyou list. The book is divided by six different “grades” which encompass about 1000 of the jouyou kanji and then about 1000 more “general use” kanji.
I do stand in agreement with you that this is a practically useless way to learn kanji, and that many of them that I have learned through the book I have never seen in writing. I didn’t know this at the time I bought the book however, and I got quite far through before I realized there wasn’t much stock to be put in it.
The main thing that it did benefit me in was in learning new vocabulary. My reading/writing skills are way ahead of my speaking/listening skills and it’s safe for me to say that I knew way too much kanji before I started getting into vocab. Since I already knew all the readings for the kanji, memorizing was a snap. It also was a way to keep my memorizing skills sharp by memorizing random things I would never need to know. This sounds silly, I know, but in the long run it wasn’t so bad. Granted, I do have 500 more kanji to go, and I have a habit of making studying harder on myself than most people do.
The characters that jouyou doesn’t cover like 俺 I simply picked up along the way. In my opinion, no one’s going to get it completely right when the inconsistency of a language is involved.
i LEARN JAPANESE TOO…
BUT 亜 IS USEFUL
東亜
おお！
「韓」も含まれる！
韓国はいつも漢字で書くから、よくした。
逆にずっと今まで「韓」が入ってなかったんだよ！それ、どう思う？？どう考えてもおかしいでしょ？
In an attempt to validate why the 常用漢字 list is whack, I asked nearly all my (English-learning) students about it and they all said it was a list for name-usage.
Considering this it’s not so crazy. That first 漢字、亜 is used in quite a few names. In fact, I don’t have any students that haven’t proclaimed this as not a list only used for naming children.
That considered, it is of no used to J-2nd language learners. Let’s just ignore it. It appears to be for what 漢字 you can use for naming Japanese children, and that’s about it. Nothing more, nothing less.
I doubt it, seeing as how there’s another list for characters used in names not in the 常用漢字 list called 人名用漢字.
http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%BA%BA%E5%90%8D%E7%94%A8%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97
I think the point was that a lot of kanji included in Joyo are there because of their frequency in names. Many archaic kanji are included in Joyo because kids need to be able to read names; of course, that’s obviously not true of the list as a whole — however, if not for including at least some of these name kanji I imagine elected officials would be publicly misreading noteworthy individuals unusual names more often. Also, what was the bit about Heisig and JLPT? I don’t think anyone suggested that the two were the same; one’s a stepping stone, and the other’s a test for if you really want to see how good your Japanese is on a particular scale — JLPT is cool and all, and I buy drinks for my 1-kyu friends but when it came to getting jobs in Japan, every company I’ve known someone to apply to had their own test: learn Japanese for yourself, and if JLPT motivates you, awesome.
「亜」 is actually a pretty handy one to know I’ve found. Not so much for Japanese per se, but it’s a good thought exercise on learning stroke order (espeically when you consider the alternate form) and something that you can pick up commonly on other mainland Asian signage alongside characters that you DO use in Japanese. I wonder if this is perhaps a rationale behind its continued inclusion? As Polak mentioned (some 2 years ago, — oh the joys of your post tags and Highlists list –) being a part of 東亜, it’s a good indicator when your geographical neighbours are perhaps saying stuff about you. 😉
Of course, without knowing that character “uselessly” from glancing at the Joyo list, I’d also never have started seeing it bloomin’ everywhere in architecture. Gah. Cannot be unseen. Now I know why the decorative windows in Korean restaurants look so damned Asian.
Haha. Discussion from pretty long ago. But if 亜 corresponds to the Chinese character 亞, then it could be pretty useful. In Chinese, it is used for a lot of things.
亞 is used for many things with the English prefix sub-. For example, 亞種 subspecies, 亞科 subfamily, 亞屬 subgenus, 亞人口 subpopulation or 亞原子 subatomic. It also means second place, like 亞軍 for runner up. Well, 亞 itself can be used to mean inferior, so 不亞於人 means to not be inferior to anyone.
It can also mean other stuff that carry the meaning “inferior” like, 硫酸 is sulphuric acid (H2SO4) while 亞硫酸 would be sulphuric acid (H2SO3). Similarly, 硝酸鈉 Is sodium nitrate (NaNO3) while 亞硝痠鈉 is sodium nitrite (NaNO2).
I don’t know how useful it is in Japanese. But I assume it’s pretty similar.
I guess it would be useful if you were a biologist or chemist…
I find it that it is better to study 漢字 by reading a ton of manga and playing visual novels for instance.That’s the best way to study(at least for me).
Lol, brilliant article. Let’s see what they choose to do next with the list! ^^
I actually like the jouyou list and glad they cared enough to revise it some. I never looked at the list as something to learn from by memorizing all the kanji from 1 to 2200 or whatever it is. As always i have learned by kanji through reading books and the like and naturally picking them up at a pleasingly quick pace. I only ever considered the list a side aid, something i could look at to gauge my level and pick up a few new kanji here and there that seem useful. Every few months i go thru the list and check off what kanji i know. Right now im at just below 900 jouyou kanji, without this list id have utterly no idea as to how many i know, and for that i am grateful. Thats mostly all i use it for- gauging level and progress. And it helps a lot for the publishing companies or writers to know what to add furigana to and what to leave alone. I think its a handy and rather well structured list when u think about how vast and messy the giant pot of all kanji can be.
The problem is the 常用漢字 are not specifically for reading novels or even teaching the language but are a school syllabus. The point of them is not to teach the language but make sure the important parts of the language for further education are included of parts of the language that are important for cultural reasons and scientific reasons.
Thus the kanji 斤 has to be included. Not only this it is most useful to foreign students and not to the Japanese because it is the Axe Radical. Knowing Radicals can remove a lot of the difficulty of leaning kanji. Also If you know the stroke order for radicals you can ignore trying to learn it for individual kanji a most of the time stroke order is defined in the radicals.
Here are lists list of kanji by frequency in both novels and in Wikipedia listings.
“These reports span over 500 million characters, (over 20k of which are unique). ”
http://foosoft.net/pages/kanji-frequency.html
interestingly on the Wikipedia search:
亜 is at no 810
誰 is at no 1071
on the Wikipedia search:
亜 is at no 810
誰 is at no 1071
on the Wikipedia search:
亜 is at no 810
誰 is at no 1097
Sorry pressed post comment by accident (why I hate typing on a touch Screen )
on the Wikipedia search:
亜 is at no 810
誰 is at no 1071
on the Novel search:
亜 is at no 1097
誰 is at no 158