Note 8 — Chapter II · EDUCATION.

The Japanese written language is a strange combination of Chinese and Japanese, to read which a knowledge of the Chinese characters is necessary. Chinese literature written in the Chinese ideographs, which of course give no clue to the sound, are read by Japanese with the Japanese rendering of the words, and the Japanese order of words in the sentence. When there have not been exact equivalent Japanese words, a Chinese term has come into use, so that much corrupt Chinese is now well engrafted into the Japanese language, both written and spoken. In the forming of new words and technical terms Chinese words are used, as the Greek and Latin are here. There is probably no similarity in the origin of the two languages, but the Japanese borrowed from the Chinese about the sixth century A. D. their cleverly planned but most complex method of expressing thought in writing. The introduction of the Chinese literature has done much for Japan, and to master this language is one of the essentials in the education of every boy. At least seven or eight thousand characters must be learned for daily use, and there are several different styles of writing each of them. For a scholar, twice as many, or even more, must be mastered in order to read the various works in that rich literature.

The Japanese language contains a syllabary of forty-eight letters, and in books and newspapers for the common people is printed, by the side of the Chinese character, the rendering of it, in the letters of the kana, or Japanese alphabet.[*]

A Japanese woman is not expected to do much in the study of Chinese. She will, of course, learn a few of the most common characters, such as are used in letter-writing, and for the rest she will read by the help of the kana.