ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors look at how Japanese writing came to be the way it is. The Japanese first learned to read and write in Chinese, then adapted the Chinese writing system to recording their own language, and eventually created additional systems of writing to supplement, facilitate, and in certain cases replace the use of Chinese characters. Compared to kunrei, it is closer to Japanese pronunciation from the perspective of English speakers. The kunrei system was promulgated by the Japanese government in 1937 and revised in 1954, and it is considered the official Romanization system in Japan. The reader would rearrange the characters into the Japanese order, read them in Japanese pronunciation, and add grammatical suffixes where needed. Chinese characters in Japanese may have multiple pronunciations. Mora is an important concept not only for describing the timing of Japanese speech but also for characterizing the nature of the kana scripts.
