Hyōgaiji
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Hyōgaiji (表外字) (also hyōgai kanji (表外漢字) and jōyōgai kanji (常用外漢字)) are Japanese kanji outside the two major lists Jōyō, which are taught in primary and secondary school, and Jinmeiyō, which are additional kanji that officially are allowed for use in personal names.
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[edit] Traditional and simplified forms
While jōyō and jinmeiyō nowadays are printed using simplified forms, hyōgaiji are usually printed with traditional forms, like 臍. However, unofficial simplified forms exist, known as extended shinjitai (拡張新字体 kakuchō shinjitai), like 𦜝 – these come by applying the same simplification processes as in the development of shinjitai.
The newspaper Asahi Shimbun developed its own simplified characters, known as Asahi characters, and they have their own unicode code points. Some of these simplifications are part of the standard JIS X 0208 and later versions.
[edit] Japanese computer fonts
The issue of variant non-Jōyō character forms becomes apparent when using many commonly-available Japanese fonts. While characters not frequently used generally retain their traditional forms, those commonly used in Japanese writing frequently are reproduced in their unofficial simplified form (extended shinjitai), rather than their official printed form. Well-known examples include:
- 麺 (MEN, "noodles"; with simplified radical, instead of official 麵),
- 掴 (KAKU, tsuka(mu), "grip"; with simplified onpu, rather than official 摑), and
- 鴎 (Ō, kamome, "seagull"; with simplified onpu, rather than official 鷗).
Some characters are provided in both their official and simplified forms, as is the case with 攪 (official printed form) and 撹 (simplified variant), but most of these characters are provided in one form only. Thus, unlike the aforementioned "Asahi characters", simplifications are not comprehensive, meaning that hyōgaiji are rendered as a mix of both standard classical forms and unofficial simplifications. This is perhaps most obvious in the archaic kanji spelling of pan ("bread"), 麺麭. The characters, both hyōgaiji, are displayed with a simplified and an unsimplified "barley" radical side-by-side, which can be visually jarring. The lack of an unsimplified variant in many fonts leaves the user with no choice but to reproduce the word as shown above.
The use of hyōgaiji in computer fonts was brought to the fore with the 2007 launch of Mac OS X v10.5 "Leopard". This release included the fonts Hiragino Mincho Pro N and Hiragino Kaku Gothic Pro N, which reproduce hyōgaiji in their official printed forms.
A related weakness (though less relevant to modern language use) is the inability of most commercially-available Japanese fonts to show the traditional forms of many Jōyō kanji, particularly those whose component radicals have been comprehensively altered (such as 食 in 飲, 示 in 神, and 辵 in 運 or 連, rather than their traditional forms as used in 饅, 祀, and 迴). This is mostly an issue in the verbatim reproduction of old texts, and for academic purposes.
[edit] Uses
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Hyōgaiji are often used in the names of wagashi, which draw from ancient literature.
[edit] See also
- (Japanese) List of hyōgai kanji
