Japanese Text

Japanese text is composed of three different scripts mixed together: Kanji ideographs derived from Chinese, and two phonetic scripts (or syllabaries), Hiragana and Katakana.

Although each character in Hiragana has an equivalent in Katakana, Hiragana is the most common script, with cursive rather than block-like letter forms. Kanji characters are used to write root words. Katakana is mostly used to represent "foreign" words--words "imported" from languages other than Japanese.

Kanji has tens of thousands of characters, but the number commonly used has been declining steadily over the years. Now only about 3500 are frequently used, although the average Japanese writer has a vocabulary of about 2000 Kanji characters. Nonetheless, computer systems must support more than 7000 because that is what the Japan Industry Standard (JIS) requires. In addition, there are about 170 Hiragana and Katakana characters. On average 55% of Japanese text is Hiragana, 35% Kanji, and 10% Katakana. Arabic numerals and Roman letters are also present in Japanese text.

Although it is possible to completely avoid the use of Kanji, most Japanese readers find text containing Kanji easier to understand.