Modern Japanese writing

Modern Japanese uses a combination of three scripts, all of which derive historically from Chinese characters (Hanzi)

Kanji - Chinese characters borrowed for their meaning value only.  

   Over 2000 used today to write:

            1) Japanese content root morphemes  (true morpheme writing)

            2) each syllable in Chinese borrowed words

KUN reading - Kanji read as a native Japanese morpheme

ON reading - Kanji read in Chinese borrowings

Three main periods of Chinese borrowings give three possible ON readings:

1) go on -mostly Buddhist terms borrowed before the 7th century AD

2) kan on-the bulk of Sino-Japanese borrowings from 7th to 14th cent.

3) toosoo on-a smaller number of borrowings associated with the             arrival of Zen Buddhism in the 14th c.

Which Kanji reading is correct depends on style and context.

Why such complexity?  In medieval Japan, scribes had no political power and made themselves more important by elaborating the writing system.

Japanese function words and grammatical endings had no analog in Chinese They couldn't be written with Chinese characters borrowed for their meaning.

Small number of characters borrowed for their syllabic sound value only.

This gave rise to two regular syllabaries used in addition to the Kanji.

These are called kana, from karina, which means "borrowed name."

Hiragana - "ordinary" or "cursive" kana

   derive from writing a Chinese character cursively (originally the proper                 style for women's writing)

   46 syllabemes used today to write native Jpn function words and endings

Katakana - "partial" kana

      derive from borrowing one piece of a Chinese character, have angular look

      46 syllabemes used today to write words borrowed from English and other languages (except Chinese)

      Also used as a sort of italics to write quoted speech.

How to combine Kanji, hiragana and katakana is very complex

furigana - superscript hiragana added above Kanji in books for children and foreigners to teach pronunciation.

Romaji - English style letters used to transcribe Japanese

No plans to abandon Japanese complex writing in favor of an alphabet.