Tōyō kanji

The tōyō kanji, also known as the tōyō kanjihyō (当用漢字表, "list of kanji for general use") are the result of a reform of the Kanji characters of Chinese origin in the Japanese written language. They were the kanji declared "official", i.e. characters that could be used in official government documents, by the Japanese Ministry of Education on November 16, 1946. The 1,850-character list was not meant to be exhaustive, as many characters that were in common use at the time, and are today, were not included. It was meant as a baseline for satisfactory functional literacy in Japanese at a secondary education level, as all of the listed characters were to be taught nationwide in compulsory education. They were replaced in 1981 by the jōyō kanji, which initially included 1,945 characters, but was expanded to 2,136 characters in 2010 following several revisions. Thousands of kanji characters were in use in various writing systems, leading to great difficulties for those learning written Japanese. Additionally, several characters had identical meanings but were written differently from each other, further increasing complexity. After World War II, the Ministry of Education decided to minimize the number of kanji by choosing the most commonly used kanji, along with simplified kanji (see Shinjitai) commonly appearing in contemporary literature, to form the tōyō kanji. This was an integral part of the postwar reform of Japanese national writing. This was meant as a preparation for re-introducing their previous unsuccessful reform abolishing Chinese characters. Although the postwar timing meant no public debate was held on the future of the Japanese written language, the defenders of the original kanji system considered and accepted the tōyō kanji as a reasonable compromise. Since this compromise could not then be withdrawn in favour of more radical reform, discussion of kanji abolition ended. Thirty-five years passed before further reforms were brought to the Japanese written form.