Occupation-Era Urgency
While China's simplification is better known, Japan reformed its kanji almost simultaneously, and independently. The 1946 Tōyō Kanji (当用漢字) list, drafted partly under US occupation influence, designated 1,850 characters for everyday use and introduced shinjitai (新字体, 'new character forms') for 131 of them. The implicit pressure was even more radical: some occupation officials wanted to abolish kanji entirely in favour of rōmaji.
Three Rounds of Standardisation
The system evolved in three stages:
- 1946: Tōyō Kanji — a use-limiting list, not legally binding.
- 1981: 常用漢字 (Jōyō Kanji) — 1,945 characters, superseded Tōyō, became the reference standard for schools and media.
- 2010: 改定常用漢字 — expanded to 2,136 characters, restoring several characters needed for place names and given names.
Same Goal, Different Scissors
The intriguing story is in the mismatches. Japan and China often simplified the same character differently:
- 廣 → 広 (Japan) vs 广 (China) — Japan kept more structure.
- 鐵 → 鉄 (Japan) vs 铁 (China) — Japan retained the metal radical 金, China dropped it to 钅.
- 體 → 体: here both converged — same simplified form.
Some forms Japan simplified, China left alone, and vice versa — producing three-way divergences between Traditional, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese.
Kyūjitai and the Cultural Argument
Conservative scholars argued that kyūjitai (旧字体, 'old forms') encode morphological meaning — that 鐵 visually suggests iron-and-metal while 鉄 is phonetically driven shorthand. The debate mirrors the Traditional/Simplified split in Chinese, but with an added layer: Japanese had already absorbed kanji into a mixed script (kanji + kana) that distributes cognitive load differently from purely Chinese text.