Japan was considerably later than other civilizations in acquiring a written language. When it did, it did it basically by adopting Chinese characters to the task of writing its own language. Those characters are still used, and have consistantly defied promoters of schemes to replace them totally with phonetic writing.
Before the early 20th century, the use of kanji logograms (not ideograms, a long-standing misconception I will write about shortly) in Japan was without much government interference or guidance. It was a lawless land of kanji logograms.
Then came the kanjicrats, with numerous well-meaning attempts to regulate or guide use of kanji, most of which did not reflect—and was ineffective in controlling—the way kanji were used in real life. Some of the highlights of the kanji evolution in Japan are as follows.
| 1923 | Joyo Kanji Table May 9 1962 characters, 154 abbreviated characters |
| 1931 | 147 characters removed from and 45 characters added to the Joyo Kanji Table, making it 1858 characters. |
| November 16, 1946 | Toyo Kanji Table established by cabinet order (Cabinet Notification/Order) (1) 1850 characters for use in statutes, public documents, newspapers, and general society) (2) Proper nouns such as personal names and place names are exceptions, considered separately because of legal and other reasons. |
| February 16 1948 | Toyo Kanji onyomi and kunyomi Tables and Toyo Kanji Separate Table established (Cabinet Notification/Order) (1) Generated to indicate the onyomi and kunyomi to be used going forward for each of the characters in the Toyo Kanji table. (2) 881 characters (so-called educational characters) of the Toyo Kanji table listed as necessary in education during compulsory education to enable reading and writing. |
| April 28, 1949 | Toyo Kanji Character Form Table (Cabinet Notification/Order) (1) Created to show the standard form of kanji in the Toyo Kanji table (2) To facilitate and make accurate the reading and writing of characters in the table, organization of simplified characters and unification as much as possible in accordance with printed character forms. |
| May 25, 1961 | Personal Name Character Table (Cabinet Notification/Order) 92 Kanji characters indicated for use in proper nouns. |
| July 30, 1976 | Added Personal Name Character Table (Cabinet Notification/Order) 28 Characters added for use in personal names. |
| October 1, 1981 | Joyo Kanji Table (Cabinet Notification/Order) (1) 95 Characters added to the Toyo Kanji table for use in statutes, public documents, newspapers, magazines, broadcasting, and daily life in writing Japanese, making the character count 1945 (2) Place names and personal names are treated as exceptions. (3) The Joyo Kanji list of characters should be used as a reference in selecting names for children. |
| December 8, 2000 | (Response from the National Language Council) Non-listed character list of characters for printing established (1022 characters) as standard printing character forms. JIS standard JIS X 0213 modified accordingly. |
| Subsequent Addition of Characters for Personal Names | |
| 1981 | 54 characters added. |
| February 2004 | Several characters added, making the total number of characters for personal names became 290. |
| September 27, 2004-9-27 | 488 characters added + 205 characters added (*) Of the 205 characters, 195 are old forms of Joyo Kanji, 10 are the old forms of characters for personal names. This makes the current number of personal name kanji is 290 + 488 + 205, for a total of 983. As of 2010, the list of Joyo Kanji includes 2136 characters. |
All of that said, while the print and broadcast media (particularly NHK) are careful not to use unlisted characters, there are numerous instances of Japanese writers ignoring the above guidelines. Even Japanese patent specifications—arguably public documents—provide numerous examples of characters not included in the current Joyo Kanji list of 2136 characters. And, of course, most literate Japanese, which includes a higher portion of the population than in cultures with “easier” languages, are able to read and use many characters beyond the official lists.
Another aspect of kanji that I have noticed is that, while many anglophones comment that kanji are so difficult that young students are unduly burdened, I have almost never heard such comments from native Japanese speakers, outside of educators. Kanji are just accepted by the general public, like the air around us, with no complaints heard that reform is necessary, except perhaps from lingering kanjicrats in government agencies.