this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
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I wonder when kanji stop being Chinese characters in the same way that souvenir used by someone speaking English isn't using a French word. Like characters with different variations in Japanese technically aren't used (and weren't ever used) in China, like 誤 vs 誤 (prob won't show up right with the font on here but the Japanese component on the bottom right uses 六 without the top dot and Chinese uses 大). The kana were all derived from kanji as well, so could those be "chinese" characters? The etymology is obviously Chinese in the same way souvenir is French, but what does that really mean?
Dunno, maybe it's mostly semantics, especially when trying to talk about it in English
to me, "Chinese characters" means a certain writing system that is used by several languages (and not just Japanese and Mandarin, but also Cantonese, Korean, Vietnamese etc.), but doesn't inherently belong to any one of them. So, in my opinion, Japanese variants or 国字 are totally valid Chinese characters.
whether kana are also Chinese characters is a very interesting question. I think the main thing that makes them distinct is the purpose they serve, as they no longer convey any meaning by themselves but are instead used to write language phonetically. but I wouldn't be so sure when it comes to 万葉がな. although manyogana was used the same way as modern kana it retained the shape of chinese characters. so maybe it's the combination of both the evolved shape + different purpose that makes kana distinct from kanji?