🚀 go-pugleaf

Information about the "Kanji of the Day"-Project

Author:
  Kurt Stueber
  Hommelsheimstrasse 7
  D-5308 Rheinbach-Flerzheim

  Tel.: +49 221 5062537
  Fax : +49 221 5062513

  E-Mail:  stueber@vax.mpiz-koeln.mpg.dbp.de

The "Kanji of the Day" is a private project of mine, whose purpose
is of course to teach myself the readings and meanings of Japanese
characters, called kanji.

The kanji graphics are taken from the JIS24. - fonts provided
with the MOKE editor. They are public domain and standard
(JIS = Japanese Industrial Standard). To expand the kanji I use
** to represent a single dot. The size of the signs is 24 x 24
dots.

Old versions of the "Kanji of the Day" - messsages are stored at
the University of Washington Technical Japanese Program which is
now operating an anonymous ftp server for Japanese software and
information files.  The address is:

      uesama.tjp.washington.edu       (128.95.202.40)

This site will be used to store that latest versions of freeware,
shareware, and demonstration versions of commercial software.
There will also be information about using Japanese on computers
(including Ken Lunde's famous "Japan.Inf"), announcements of new
products, descriptions of Japanese language programs around the
country, and anything else that might be useful.

This site contains currently the messages #1 through #50.

BEFORE ASKING ME TO SEND YOU BACK COPIES TRY TO OBTAIN THE
MESSAGES VIA FTP FROM THERE!

The "Kanji of the Day" messages, though supposedly to be produced
one per day appear somewhat less often, because I cannot always
find time enough to produce one and have no access to the network
during weekends. But anyone who is dissatisfied with the speed is
invited to produce similar postings of his/her favorite kanjis
themselves. To my experience this helps your own studies very much,
because you are forced to study a certain kanji very
thoroughly before posting it.

Codes used in the description of a Kanji:

JIS: (serial number) is the serial place in the JIS24. font file
  as found in MOKE 1.0. So 1 is the first kanji (=space) in this
  file and 7882 the last one. This font also contains special
  characters, foreign alphabets and the kana syllabaries.

serial number     description

   2 -127, 136-183, 188-193 special characters
  194-213  numerals italic
  221-246  upper case Roman letters
  253-278  lower case Roman letters
  283-365  hiragana
  367-376  numerals slender
  377-462  katakana
  471-494  upper case Greek letters
  495-502  special characters
  503-525  lower case Greek letters
  526-534  special characters
  535-560  upper case Roman letters slender
  561-564  special characters
  565-597  upper case Russian letters
  602-611  numerals for superscript
  613-645  lower case Russian letters
  649-658  numerals for subscript
  659-722  special characters
  723-748  lower case Roman letters slender
  749-752  spacial characters slender
  753-835  hiragana small (furigana)
  837-846  special characters
  847-932  katakana small (furigana)
  933-1003 special characters
 1411-4375 kanji (sorted by pronounciation)
 4376-4418 special characters
 4419-7802 further kanji (sorted by radical)

To find a certain kanji or character with a program multiply this
serial number by 72, the number of bytes used per kanji. The kanji
are encoded for a 24 times 24 dot matrix rectangle. So you find
3 bytes per line and 24 lines.

The shiftJIS (hexadecimal code) is one of the codes used in
  Japanese text processing software. For further details see
  Ken Lunde's japan.inf file.

NELSON, MIYAMOTO, KUNZE are the authors of Japanese dictionaries
described below.

   OnYomi:    The Chinese-Japanese reading of the character
  Kunyomi:    The purely Japanese reading of the character

Mnemonics:    A sentence or phrase to help you memorize the kanji.

Derivation:   The (not always) etymological derivation of the kanji
              and its parts, taken mostly from MIYAMOTO.


The following dictionaries are used:

SAKADE

  Florence Sakade (Ed.) "A Guide to reading and writing Japanese"
  Revised edition, (C) 1959 Charles E. Tuttle Co. Inc.
  Thirty-fifth printing, 1979
  ISBN 0-8048-0226-2

  From this book I take my stroke orders. It contains 1850 basic
  Characters and the Kana Syllabaries.

NELSON

  The "Nelson" is the standard Japanese-English Character Dictionary.

  "The Modern Reader's Japanese-English Character Dictionary"
  by Andrew Nathaniel Nelson. Ph. D.
  Rev. Edition
  Charles E. Tuttle, Tokyo
  ISBN 0-8048-0408-7
  2nd edition, 9th printing

  I believe there is a more recent edtion of NELSON, but the above
  is the one that I am using.

  The ordering of the kanji is by radical, somewhat differing
  from the traditional usage.

MIYAMOTO

  Miyamoto provided an etymological and mnemotechnical dictionary
  of modern kanji.

  Yutaka Miyamoto
  "New Kanji Dictionary. A Component Approach to study Kanji"
  Gaikoku no tame no kanjijiten. 1.st ed.
  1988
  Nihongo Institute
  1220 Oakside Lane
  Glendale CA 91208

  The ordering of the kanji is strictly by number of strokes first
  and then by radical in a similar ordering as in NELSON. The index
  is a catastrophe.

KUNZE

  R. Kunze "Praktisches Zeichenlexikon - chinesisch-deutsch-japanisch"
  "6000 Zeichen etymologisch erklaert mit neuem praktischen Schluessel"
  Nagoya, 1938, Selbstverlag des Autors

  Has about 700 pages and shows the kanjis sorted by an easy to use
  key. For each kanji is given (in German) the explanation of a probable
  origin or derivation (etymology), an old Chinese form (rounded lines)
  if this was known to Kunze, a translation of the Chinese use and
  a translation of mostly several different Japanese spellings.
  The Japanese spellings encompass more spellings than are in use
  nowadays and of course the state of the kanjis is from 1938, i.e.
  if there are newer forms you first will have to look in a modern
  kanji dictionary for the old forms which you than can find in Kunze's
  dictionary.

  The ordering of the kanji is by the 214 traditional radicals but good
  crossreferences are given so that the location of a character can
  swiftly be found even when it is listed under a different radical than
  you think in the first place.

  Kunze zites the following literature as his sources:

    Chalfant "Early Chinese Writing" Memoirs of the Carnegie Museum IV, 1906
    Chalmers "The Structure of Chinese Characters" London, 1882
    Wieger "Chinese Characters, Etymological lessons" Hokienfu, 1905
    Karlgren "Analytic Dictionary of Chinese & Sino-Japanese" Paris, 1923


The following Japanese language textbooks have been used by me:


   Alphonso: Japanese Language Patterns
   published by
   Department of Japanese, The Australian National University
   Canberra Australia and
   L.L. Center of Applied Linguistics, Sophia University/Jochi Daigaku
   Toukyou, Japan

   This textbook series includes two volumes of exercises
   one volume of Kanji-descriptions (to cut apart and create
   a deck of training cards
   Three volumes that introduce you to  the writing systems.
   I believe there are also tape recordings available for the
   Exercises in Vol 1 and 2.

   Well, this set of textbooks in not quite cheap, but for anyone really
   interested to get a fluent reading and writing ability they are *optimal*.
   The grammatical descriptions are very fine grained (detailed) and
   with many exercises (also suitable for assisted audio lerning).

   This definitely is the best Japanese textbook you may get.


Further useful literature:

  Kenneth G. Henshall
  "A guide to Remembering Japanese Characters"
  Charles E. Tuttle Co.
  ISBN 0-8048-1532-1   $ 29.00


  Kanji Kanji  1972
  The East Publ. Inc.
  10-5 Roppongi 3
  Minato-Ku, Tokyo


  Juergen Stalph
  Kanji-Theorie und Kanji-Studien in Japan seit 1945
  Bochum, 1985
  Studienverlag Dr. N. Brockmeyer
  ISBN 3-88339-429-7