漢字とその訓との対応及び変遷についての一考察

A Historical Study of Chinese Characters and their Japanese Readings

Kobayashi Yoshinori

国語学

Chinese characters, ideographs originally invented to write Chinese, came to assume their Japanese readings when they were introduced into Japanese. What we call 'kun' is the Japanese reading of a Chinese character.

There are two distinct uses of Chinese characters when we Japanese read and write the vernacular. First, we read in Japanese the works written in Chinese characters such as Hoke-kyō (the Sutra of the Lotus) and Rongo (the Analects of Confucius), that is to say we read Chinese writings as rendered into Japanese. Secondly, we write Japanese using Chinese characters. In the former, one and the same Chinese character has more than one different Japanese reading, for it can have different meanings according to context of Chinese writing. Moreover, Japanese readings of a Chinese character change from age to age. In the latter, however, a Chinese character has one or a few fixed Japanese readings. To write what is meant by those Japanese readings, therefore, we may use a relevant Chinese character. A string of these Chinese characters in fact is a feature of Japanese writing. In this case, a correspondence between a Chinese character and its Japanese reading is one to one, so that, it rarely changes from age to age.

The present study is a detailed inquiry into the relationship between Chinese characters and their Japanese readings, the materials being drawn from guiding marks used in the mid-Heian Japanese rendering of Book 12 of Daitō-saiiki-ki (Journey to Xiyu) owned by Kōshō-zenji in Kyōto. The data of this study were brought into comparison with information provided by early dictionaries as well as the Japanese rendering of other Chinese writings.

Japanese [ 810 ]

jpn

国語学会

武蔵野書院

[ISSN] 0491-3337

[NCID] AN00087800