Talk:Tōyō kanji

First header
Hello all -- pardon my French, literally, I'm just using autotranlation from the French wikipedia article on this and then cleaning up the language. Any help is appreciated. --Arcadian 16:18, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for all your work in translating this page, Arcadian and others afterward. I hope you don't mind that I marked it for cleanup. I would love to learn more about this topic but I think there are still some points in the article that are obscured by language issues. Hopefully someone more expert in the topic than I am can help us out. --63.65.27.18 18:21, 3 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Second
Hi, was just passing through and I thought I'd have a go at article cleanup, and I've rewritten and reorganised most of it. However, I wasn't too sure about the 'Applications and limitations' [capitalise 'limitations' too?] section, especially the sense of the parts of the text in brackets - I wasn't sure if it was meant to be the wording of the Japanese book, or a commentary by the author of the wikipedia text. Another heading also mentions the 1850 toyo kanji - does this make sense if it was introduced in 1946? If anyone can follow the French version (see link in the left margin of the page) and have a look, it'd be good. Cheers then, --Gt 02:23, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on your other issues, but I can help on your last question -- the 1850 refers to the number of kanji, not the year of introduction. --Arcadian 05:15, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Is it possible to make this page like the kyōiku kanji page? I think it would be more helpful if there was a table with the meaning of each symbol with the symbol's pronounciation beside it. I would do this but I don't speak a word of Japanese. 132.203.54.53 15:41, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Third
Is "general use" a commonly accepted translation of 当用? 当, tô seems to mean correct or appropriate, and as such "appropriate use" would seem a more literal translation. JMdict/EDICT (ftp://ftp.monash.edu.au/pub/nihongo/edict_doc.html) lists the translation "daily use" or "daily-use kanji" for 当用漢字, which I think makes more sense in the context. I feel I know too little about the subject matter to go and change it right away though. Any opinions on the matter? 130.89.228.82 23:48, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Fourth
This article needs a complete rewrite. The facts are practically all wrong. Tôyô 当用 originally meant tôza no shiyô 当座の使用, i.e. «temporary use». The Japanese never intended to give up the orthodox characters. The Tôyô-kanji-hyô was announced in 1946 because the Americans forced the Japanese to either abolish or simplify and limit the number of the characters. This was NOT something that the Japanese, at the time, felt the need for. Let’s write this clear: it was an imposition. Read the introduction of Jôyô-jikai 字解 for instance, or the introduction of Jitô 字統 (works written by Shirakawa Shizuka 白川静, maybe the first authority on Chinese characters). The current meaning of tô 当, which is said to stand for tôi 当為, «what has to be», was a later re-interpretation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.19.44.83 (talk) 14:53, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

(Necrocomment, but anyway.) The claims above would need to be carefully cited if they were to be included. Some of it sounds overstated to me - I don't think it's literally true that Tôyô as it exists was forced on Japan, and its specifics certainly were dictated by Japanese concerns. I don't remotely doubt that pressures from General MacArthur and his administration played a role, but I also see plenty of reason to think that reformations of the written language had been discussed for some decades prior to MacArthur's administration&mdash;apparently even, in some radical corners, the idea that the language should be written exclusively in rômaji. I've seen sources ranging everywhere from the claim that MacArthur forced things, to that it was wholly driven by Japanese administrations that wished to take the opportunity now afforded them. Since this is Wikipedia, I'd imagine we'd want to take all credible sources of information and teach the controversy, rather than take one point of view or the other as gospel. Particularly since I think it's doubtful we'll find genuinely authoritative information on the subject. ...these radical interpretations of both 当座の使用 and a "later reinterpretation" of 当為の使用 both sound like fabrications to me. 当用 was already a word (whose meaning is approximately 当時の使用) outside of its use in 当用漢字; assigning fantastic alternative meanings for it is silliness, particularly any idea of "temporary use", which no Japanese reader would expect from viewing the word (even if it had originated with that term). &mdash; Micahcowan (talk) 21:33, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Objection to Romanization led to Toyo Kanji
http://web.archive.org/web/20130109061422/http://home.vicnet.net.au/~ozideas/wjapref.htm

http://www.tofugu.com/2011/09/19/the-kana-they-are-a-changin/

Rajmaan (talk) 08:56, 17 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Neither of those links actually say that. The first one comes closest, saying "After 1940 patriotism put a stop to serious proposals that had been made to use the roman alphabet as the major script, but a new 'official' list of only 2000 Chinese characters included some simplifications" but doesn't actually say that the creation of the standardized list was a reaction to romanization. The second link doesn't talk about kanji at all: it's about modern kana usage. &mdash; Gwalla | Talk 16:46, 17 April 2014 (UTC)

Applications and Limitations needed total rewrite
I've rewritten this section, to bring it in line with what's actually in the 1946 ministry statement. About half of what was stated in this section (claiming to be taken from the document's foreword) was made up. For starters, the preface to the Tôyô statement never at any point dictates katakana versus hiragana for any of the non-kanji recommendations - it simply uses the word "kana" throughout. Which kana system is used was by normal convention and was not specifically indicated by this document. The phrase "places of another country are changed to match the pronunciation of the original language" is wholly fabricated and does not match either actual place names in the language (cf. mekishiko for Mexico, and supên for Spain, as opposed to itaria for Italy and doitsu for Germany), nor anything stated in the Tôyô preface (or elsewhere). The phrase "If a kanji can only be used to cover part of a word, e.g. 小さい (chiisai, 小=chii, さい=sai) then the uncovered part can only be written using hiragana" is likewise found nowhere in the document. The statement about technical terms is a different one from what is actually said: at no point does it say to use other kanji in preference over kana; it says that it is hoped that this Tôyô standard will be used as the basis/template for organizing technical terms (i.e., where Tôyô falls short of meeting the needs of technical language, it is hoped that similar de facto conventions will take hold). Some statements that are in the preface have been left out entirely: that ateji (like 玉子 for tamago) should be avoided, and that where a word whose kanji are not covered by Tôyô is used, it should either be written in kana or else a different word should be preferred. &mdash; Micahcowan (talk) 22:42, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

1900 kanji in official recommendation of 1977
The heart of the book ‘Langenscheidts Lehrbuch und Lexikon der japanischen Schrift’ of 1980 by Wolfgang Hadamitzky is a list of 1900 kanji, which were officially recommended on January 21, 1977 by the Council for Japanese Language. It might make sense to list this recommendation in this article, too. ◅ Sebastian Helm 🗨 07:49, 10 January 2024 (UTC)