Japan: Swords and Butterflies - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 268

A POSTSCRIPT ON JAPANESE WRITING
There are essentially two writing systems in use today. The alphabet-based writing system
uses symbols (letters) to represent sounds. A group of letters, when sounded aloud or in
the mind, creates words. The great advantage of an alphabet writing system is its simpli-
city and efficiency. Using only twenty-six letters, the English alphabet gives meaning to
the (nearly) half-million words listed and defined in the Oxford English Dictionary. In con-
trast, a picture-based writing system requires thousands of pictographs (symbols) to con-
vey meaning. Chinese is a pictograph system of separate symbols, or characters, for every
word. A complicated text, the Confucian Analects for example, uses about 50,000 symbols.
Two great advantages of the Chinese writing system are that it has no connection with the
spoken word, and the pictographs have not changed for 2,000 years. As a result, a literate
Chinese can read whatever is written down, even though he or she may speak any one of
a dozen or so Chinese languages and dialects. And even though a document may be 2,500
years old, literate persons can still understand it.
Written Japanese is based on Chinese pictographs. But written Japanese is more com-
plicated than Chinese. Japanese is a blend of three different systems, one of which is com-
posed of Chinese-like pictorial characters called kanji and two alphabets ( hiragana and
k atakana ), which are really two versions of the same set of sounds. There are over 40,000
kanji , but about 2,000 represent 95 percent of characters typically used in written text. [242]
Katakana is often used to denote foreign words, especially proprietary ones (think
Wheaties or Coca Cola). Hiragana written in small symbols above the main text reveals to
the reader which of the many possible interpretations of the kanji characters is intended.
Japan is a country with an astonishing 99 percent literacy rate. Many claim that the intel-
lectual skills and mental dexterity required to achieve that literacy contribute mightily to
Japan's technological achievements.
The historian knows that the past informs the present and the present influences the fu-
ture. As citizens in a society of transformations, the Japanese understand these ideas. And
the wise traveler can share that understanding by joining the Japanese in any number of
collective experiences: climbing Mount Fuji to watch a sunrise, the solemnity of a visit to
the site of the World War II atomic impact, or perhaps the joy and excitement of a kimono
shop to admire the beauty of the garment—its shimmering silk adorned with flowers, but-
terflies, or birds. And if visitors are tempted to invest in that beauty, they may wish to con-
sider Shakespeare's advice: “Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy.” [243]