Exploring the fundamentals of more than 500 Chinese kanji glyphs used in the Japanese language, derived as an abridged listing taught in grades 1 and 2 from over 13,500 glyphs, including: explanation of original meanings element by element; JIS pronunciations in kana syllabaries and rōmaji; meanings published by Japanese, Chinese, and Unicode external sources; vocabulary examples from Japanese and Chinese selected from over 375,000 dictionary entries; stroke count, Japanese grade and JLPT level; and hyperlinks to elements comprising the glyph.
Have you ever wondered what each individual part means within a kanji glyph? Or, why meanings listed in dictionaries for each element often make no sense when combined, seemingly unrelated to the glyph as a whole?
Did the ancient Chinese sages who designed kanji know exactly what they were doing, or, do the individual strokes have no meaning as the pundits claim today? Is it even possible that 9/10 of the 47,000 glyphs created in China were used for pronunciation only and not for meaning as they claim? If so, why not use syllabaries, phonetics, or an alphabet instead?
The how and why behind the creation of Chinese glyphs is generally forgotten, and along with that the meanings of individual elements which comprise each glyph. Governments and educators do not wish for them to be remembered. Yet, the glyphs remain as descriptions of Chinese cultural anthropology, preserved despite meticulous efforts to eradicate the original meanings. As modern society evolved, the fundamentals behind the glyphs became toxic. The past behavior of humans that is today declared to be immoral is graphically depicted within these ancient glyphs.
Nonetheless, we challenge anyone to find inconsistencies of elemental meanings among the 13,500 glyphs accessible via our website. And we ask, with the technology finally available today that enables reading and republishing in kana the older manuscripts written with kanji, why continue to use this needless encryption method with no modern benefit? In the past, preventing outsiders from entering the society seemed to be a good idea. Perhaps it is still, but at the cost of stifling progress and future growth. In the past, kanji were used by the Chinese sages as a written code deliberately to obscure and prevent others from understanding a text. Only the elite who knew the cipher could understand. Why continue that, particularly since the fundamentals are repulsively immoral based upon modern thought?
So, isn't it finally time to quit using kanji in Japan, write using syllabaries only as it was before accepting Chinese kanji, and use the years now spent in school learning glyphs for the pursuit of more useful and meaningful studies? Billions of conversations and successful communications occur daily without writing a single kanji: it's called talking! Writing in the same manner as the sounds we speak, and adding spaces between words as in other languages, would remove barriers that are now holding back progress and cooperation with the rest of the world. Korea did it. Different kanji meanings with the same sounds are discernible by textual context in the same manner as when spoken, as are the homophones and homonyms of other languages, and as it is now with spoken Japanese. Sure it will require more space to write something; so be it. Knowing the fundamentals behind each kanji ought to cause most everyone to want to stop using them in Japan. Let's hope so. Think of how much better spent would be the study hours of Japanese students learning things that truly matter to the rest of the world, and of all the jobs a changeover would create....
