Japanese writing system

There are three types of characters which are used in written Japanese:

• "Kanji" - Imported from China around 600 A.D., these intricately ornate pictographs represent words or parts of words. There are over 2,000 different "kanji" characters commonly used in Japan.

• "Hiragana" - The complexity of the system led to the development of auxiliary phonetic symbols known as hiragana. Today, hiragana are used for grammatical word endings and for words of purely Japanese origin.

• "Katakana" - These phonetic symbols were developed by Buddhist priests in the ninth century. "Katakana" is primarily utilized for writing foreign loanwords, most of which are English. "Katakana" has become the standard character system used for foreign business cards that are translated or transliterated into Japanese.

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