If you have heard of Japanese script called Kanji you have to understand that it has its roots in China. The characters from Chinese symbol are throughout obvious in the Japanese script as we see it now in their logographic style of writing. In fact once you translate the Kanji script you will find characters from Chinese Hans symbols.
How come the Kanji script today belongs to Japan if it had its origin in China? The entire thing was the result of the trade followed by the two countries where Japan would import Chinese items with Hans script labeled on them.
You may find number of instances such as the then Han dynasty monarch had presented a gold seal to the Japanese with Hans inscription. What we still don’t know is that how and when the Hans script was adopted and controlled by the Japanese.
It could be quite likely that the Chinese themselves had started using the Chinese Kanji script in Japan when some of them migrated to China. There was no way that Japanese could have had an opportunity to comprehend and then learn the language by themselves.
With the passage of time the ties between the two countries became firmer. There was a constant need of written documentation that was to be transferred between both the countries. therefore a formal body of people known as the fuhito was set up which was trained to handle the documents written in the Chinese script. This paved the way for the acceptance of the Chinese Kanji script in Japan.
When Chinese Kanji script came to Japan there was nothing like formal writing system existing in the country. originally the Japanese started writing with the Chinese script itself but steadily they started developing a script of their own with the help of the Kanji script which would be compatible with Japanese grammar.
What the Japanese did was that they began to write Japanese words with Chinese characters. This was an advancement made in Japanese writing style and was named as Kana syllables. The Japanese additionally developed the script and introduced phonetics to the Chinese symbols they were using whereas in China the symbols did not have any kind of phonetic.
Where the Kanji script is concerned it is used more extensively in China than in Japan. But one fact that should be kept in mind is the style of both the scripts are quite different. On the surface they may look similar but they are structurally quite dissimilar.
The reading method of the Kanji script in both China and Japan are also different. In China this script is treated exclusively as symbols and as such has no phonetic value where as in Japan it is read according to their phonetics as we have already discussed.
Chinese kanji signs are beautiful and used in a variety of different contexts. If you are interested in learning more about ancient Chinese characters please follow the links.
If you are interested in joining our mailing list, please submit your email below. 
