Asahi characters

The so-called Asahi characters (Japanese朝日 文字, Asahi moji ) are special forms of the kanji as they were introduced by the newspaper Asahi Shimbun, and are also used almost exclusively by it.

In the Japanese script reform in 1946, the many forms of Chinese characters were simplified ( Shinjitai ) to facilitate, among other things about learning the Japanese writing system and to make signs more visible when they are printed in small font sizes. One example is the character of Economy, keizai that have been shortened from经济after経 済. However, published by the Japanese Ministry of Education list of the simplifications involved only a selection of 1850 characters, the Toyo Kanji. Characters outside this list, known as Hyōgaiji (表 外 字), were, however, left in the old form ( Kyūjitai ), even if they consisted of elements, which have been simplified in the Toyo Kanji. In the Asahi Shimbun, however, all signs containing such elements have been simplified, basically simplified.

The characters齐,斋,剂and济for example, who found themselves on the Toyo Kanji list have been simplified to斉,斎,剤and済. Characters outside of this list with the same element (齐), for example脐,纃and荠however, have not simplified. The sign脐( heso, " belly button " ) will be printed in the Asahi Shimbun as 𦜝 (月 斉, the Asahi shape is implemented in Unicode, but included in the fewest fonts, see U 2671 D). 龃龉( sogo, " contradiction, discord " ) is printed as 𪗱 𪘚 (歯 且 歯 吾) (for the forms, see Asahi - U and U 2 2 A5F1 A61A ).

In addition to the Unicode implementation in some of these characters were also included in the Japanese font sets from JIS X 0208. Some of the Asahi characters have become the de facto standard, both because they can be represented better at low screen resolutions, partly because they were implemented before the original forms. An example of this is鹸ken in石 鹸( Sekken, " soap " ), whose Kyūjitai form碱was added later in the standard. The character葛( Kuzu ) has caused some controversy because only the simplified characters was included in the JIS standard, the original葛曷used as the lower element. Protests came from both villages, the lead character in the name, such as the Tokyo metropolitan district of Katsushika (葛 饰 区, -ku ), as well as of persons whose name is written with this sign.

There also exist in other newspapers considerations, as in the Asahi Shimbun, the consequent simplification of radicals 162 of辶to辶, and use of 113示to礻to all the characters.

• Kanji