Taihei Kikuchi (Area Studies, Burmese History)
Heading east along Shijo-dori, the heart of Kyoto’s vibrant downtown, one passes the Kamo River and approaches the famous Yasaka Shrine. Just before the shrine, at the Gion intersection, a striking building catches the eye: the Japan Kanji Museum & Library.
Inside, you can discover playful exhibits such as the “50,000-Kanji Tower,” a massive pillar covered in characters, and a corner to learn about all fish-related kanji. These complex characters, often seen on teacups in traditional sushi restaurants, include 鮪 (tuna), 鯛 (sea bream), and 鯖 (mackerel), and all share the same 魚 (fish) component on the left side. A visit here is highly recommended to experience the overwhelming energy of kanji characters not as a school subject to be tested on, but as a living culture.
After exploring this “Kanji Wonderland,” sociolinguist Katsuhiko Tanaka’s A Linguist’s View on the Kanji Civilization is even more stimulating. The book casts sharp doubt on our common assumptions about the relationship between the Japanese language and kanji, something we take for granted.
Tanaka emphasizes that kanji are not phonetic (representing sounds), but rather ideographic (representing concepts or meanings). For example, when Japanese people see the character 山 (mountain), they read it as “yama,” while in China, it is read as “shān.” This implies that kanji can exist independently of spoken language. Tanaka notes that this separation allowed the written language to function as a form of “intellectual armor,” historically used to restrict access to knowledge and maintain social hierarchy:
Unfortunately, when Japanese people feel that they are in times of crisis, they tend to ‘arm’ themselves with the difficulty of language—either by unnecessarily increasing the number of kanji or by strictly monitoring the use of polite language (keigo). (Tanaka, 2017: 25)
Overwhelming others with complex kanji knowledge and protecting an “insider” logic creates a “fortified” language while alienating learners worldwide. Tanaka argues that discarding overly complex kanji-based words and speaking with words that anyone can understand is the path to transforming Japanese into an open, international language.
The author then expands beyond Japan to the history of East Asia as a whole, noting that to maintain their own identity, ethnic groups that once lived on the periphery of Chinese civilization—such as the Turks, Khitan, and Western Xia—deliberately sought to break away from the influence of kanji and create their own unique writing systems. Professor Tanaka argues that this was a historic challenge to break free from the powerful gravitational pull of the enormous civilizational system known as kanji and give form to their own voices.
When we encounter such a grand historical perspective, we realize that similar “conflicts” have flowed within the Japanese up to the present. For example, some Japanese movements in the late 19th century advocated for the total abolition of kanji in favor of the Latin alphabet, with the poet Ishikawa Takuboku (1886–1912) choosing to write his most private thoughts in a Romaji Diary.
Tadao Umesao (1920–2010), a Kyoto-born intellectual giant and pioneer of field studies in Southeast Asia, was also an avid advocate for Romanization. Having traveled the world, Umesao felt a strong sense of crisis that the confinement of the Japanese language to the kanji framework undermined its internationality. The remarkable clarity and readability of his masterpiece, An Ecological View of History, may be considered a practical application of this philosophy. Is it precisely because of kanji that the Japanese language can express such depth and richness? Or is it the heavy armor of kanji that robs the Japanese language of its freedom? By the time you leave Kyoto, the characters that surround you may look just a little bit different.
(Illustration: Atelier Epocha)
This article is also available in Japanese. >>
「豊かな表現か、重い鎧か：京都で問い直す漢字と日本語の関係」
（菊池泰平）
