Hyōgai kanji

Hyōgai kanji are special Chinese characters used in the Japanese writing system. They are called hyōgai because they are not on the two main lists of kanji taught in schools.

These main lists are the jōyō kanji, which are the most common characters taught from primary to secondary school, and the jinmeiyō kanji, which are extra characters allowed for use in personal names.

Even though hyōgai kanji are not on these main lists, they are still important. They appear in many places, such as literature, science, and some modern technology. Because they are not part of the standard teaching, they can be harder to learn and recognize.

The use of hyōgai kanji shows the richness of the Japanese writing system. It allows writers and speakers to express specific ideas and concepts. Understanding these characters can help people appreciate Japanese texts and history.

Number of hyōgaiji

Hyōgaiji is a big group of kanji that are not on any official list. Because it is so big, we do not know exactly how many there are. The highest level of the Kanji kentei test has about 6,000 characters. Half of these are hyōgaiji, and the other half are from official lists (2,136 jōyō kanji and 863 jinmeiyō kanji). Big dictionaries like the Kangxi Dictionary and the Dai Kan-Wa jiten from the 20th century have around 47,000 and 50,000 characters. Many of these would be hyōgaiji if we used them in Japanese today.

Traditional and simplified forms

Many commonly used Japanese symbols, called jōyō kanji, have simpler versions called shinjitai. However, hyōgaiji—symbols not on the main lists—are usually printed in their older, traditional forms, like 臍, even when simpler versions exist.

Some newspapers, like The Asahi Shimbun, created their own simplified symbols, called Asahi characters, which have special codes for computers. When using computers, many fonts show hyōgaiji in mixed forms—some traditional and some simplified—depending on what the font includes. For example, the word for "bread," 麺麭 (pan), shows one part simplified and the other not. This mixing can look strange. With the release of Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard" in 2007, some fonts began showing hyōgaiji in their proper traditional forms.

Uses

The character 嘘 (uso, "lie, falsehood") is often used as an example of a hyōgaiji. Even though it is better to write this word using hiragana or katakana, many people still use the kanji version.

Hyōgaiji are often seen in the names of wagashi and are used in manga to look fancy, especially in character names and place names. They are usually written with furigana to help readers. Sometimes, new words from Mandarin Chinese are written with their original characters in Japan, which can also be hyōgaiji. This happens a lot in mahjong terms, where the characters are used with special pronunciations.