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that the word kuruma ‘vehicle’ might be written in a ninth century text simply as
rather than more elaborately as (on readings: KU-RU-MA), and in the
same way nusa ‘prayer strip’ could be written efficiently as instead of as
(on readings: NU-SA). This, in fact, was the basic process by which the cursive-type
syllabic signs called hiragana evolved. What later evolved as the other set of Japanese
syllabic signs called katakana also came about for the same reason of writing
efficiency, but by a substantially different process: shape simplification was achieved
largely not by writing rapidly, but by omitting part of a Chinese character used for
its sound value. For example, whereas the hiragana sign for ka, derived from (on
reading: KA), represented the whole of that character (both left and right elements)
in the shape , the katakana sign for the same syllable (ka) evolved from the same
character () by omitting all of the right-hand side, resulting in . The katakana
sign (ri) evolved in much the same way, in this case taking just the right-hand
side of (on reading: RI) (for further information, see kana appendix). Although
at the earliest stage signs of both the hiragana and katakana type were used together,
gradually there developed a tendency to use them in different contexts. Hiragana
script tended to acquire an association of aesthetic refinement, and was often used
for native Japanese prose and poetry, while katakana were employed in a more utilitarian
and auxiliary way to indicate verb endings, grammatical function words and
the like.
Beginnings of Mixed Kanji-Kana Text
Examples of texts written mostly or entirely in kana can be found dating back to
about the ninth century, though it should be noted that for many centuries—unlike
today—there was considerable variation in the actual shapes. However, while kana
script was easy to learn and a practical tool, it lacked the enormous prestige that
was associated with the Chinese script and Chinese culture in most periods of premodern
Japan. Also, there were many Chinese terms borrowed into Japanese, and it
tended to be more straightforward to use the corresponding Chinese characters to
write them. For reasons such as these, especially for documents of an official nature,
the Japanese often wrote not in Japanese using kana (or a combination of characters
and kana), but either in Chinese, which of course meant using only Chinese characters
and in the way they would be used by native Chinese writers, or—probably
more frequently—in an imitation of written Chinese which was influenced to some
extent by the differing structure of the Japanese language. For the Japanese, writing
in Chinese or attempting to do so was surely a daunting exercise, and so it was
no doubt a natural development that at some point texts should appear that had a
Chinese ‘look’ but included a small number of kana-like signs, commonly written
28 The Japanese Writing System: A Brief Sketch