2. Kanji came to Japan across the sea from China
about 2,000 years ago
Before that only women wrote in Japan
They wrote beautiful artistic hiragana.
3. Buddhist monks from China brought language
What should it be called?
“Characters for men from across the water”
That‟s a great name.
4. water 漢 HAN Ancient name for
China and also
word meaning „for men‟
字 Character
5. You are not alone
Even the samurai and great daimyo had
a hard job learning kanji
Every time they saw this kanji 漢 they started to stress.
The HAN part of the character slowly came to mean difficult
6. And it got even more difficult because of different
dialects – Hanji became Kanji and Nan (difficult)
gained a Japanese meaning
むずかしい
7. So we have these
wonderful, antique, lovely old things.
We must treasure each one and take care
of it.
