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How are the essential graphical identities of kanji defined? The length of the first stroke in 土, for example, is essential, because if it's longer than the third stroke, you have 士 instead. If you get that wrong, you get the kanji wrong. But the angle of the first dot stroke in 火, for example, is not essential. The KanjiVG diagram for it shows it descending to the right, but in the font that displays for me on this page, it descends to the left. Similarly, the first stroke of 言 can apparently be either a dot or a horizontal. None of the resources I've looked at have explained either of these things or explained what they mean for me if I want to write Japanese by hand. (UPDATE: answers linked in the comments relating to 教科書体 have explained the variations in the appearances of forms of 言 and 火. Thank you!)

This is a really weird and obscure analogy, but it's the best one I can come up with:

In traditional European heraldry, each coat of arms granted by the state must be given a description in a formal language called blazon that fully defines the design. An illustrator who understand this language can read the definition and translate it into an image that legally counts as that coat of arms. Paraphrased into modern vernacular, the Royal Arms of England are defined as a red field with three gold lions walking [to the left] and looking aside, vertically arranged, with blue tongues and claws. Heraldic tradition predates the geometrically based art techniques of the Renaissance, so exact proportions don't matter. As long as your picture fits the description above, it is the Royal Arms of England. Art style and even art quality are irrelevant. Codified in the grammar and semantics of blazon is an abstract set of rules that establish how all the design elements fit together to define the unique identity of a person's coat of arms, so that different designs can be identified even when haphazardly scrawled by the errant hands of the sloppiest Medieval artists.

Do the Ministry of Education's canonical lists of kanji have similarly essentialized descriptions of character forms? Are there other resources where I can find similar information? I want to improve my penmanship, but I'm not entirely clear on what constitutes good penmanship. RTK has been helpful in learning the basic components that make up a kanji and their approximate relative positions, but it tends to leave the deeper questions of "What makes this kanji this kanji as opposed to that kanji?" and "Where is this stroke supposed to go, how long is it supposed to be, and how strict are those specifications?" unanswered. Stroke diagrams alone don't give you this information because they just show one example of how a kanji can look. Where I can read explanations of what kanji are supposed to look like?

Some examples of the general sort of thing I have in mind:

  • 一 is a ㇐.
  • 二 is a ㇐ over another, longer ㇐.
  • 三 is 二 with a shorter ㇐ interjected.
  • 十 is a ㇐ bisected by a longer ㇑ intersecting above the midpoint of the second.
  • 土 is 十 with a wider ㇐ appended.
  • 士 is 十 with a narrower ㇐ appended.
  • 口 is a ㇑ cooriginating with a ㇕ descending as far as the previous, followed by a ㇐ between the endpoints of the first and the second.
  • 言 (in its regular script form) is, from top to bottom, a ㇔, a ㇐, two shorter ㇐'s, and a 口 as wide as the previous.
  • 五 is a ㇐, a ㇑ descending leftward from left of the midpoint of the first; a ㇕ bisecting the second with its horizontal part, narrower than the first and descending to the end of the second; and a ㇐ longer than the first running over the endpoints of the two previous.
  • 吾 is 五 over a 口 as wide as the third stroke of the previous.
  • 語 is 言 beside 吾.
  • 日 is a narrow 口 with an interjected ㇐ between the midpoints of its first and second strokes.
  • 曰 is a 口 with an interjected ㇐ from the midpoint of its first stroke nearly to that of its second.
  • 白 is a 日 with a leftward 丶 prepended.
  • 百 is a 白 with a wider ㇐ prepended.
  • 昌 is 日 over another, wider 日.
  • 唱 is an elevated 口 beside 昌.
  • 寸 is a ㇐ intersecting a ㇚ on the upper right, with a ㇔ between the two on the lower left.
  • 専 is a wider ㇐ over 日 all bisected by a ㇑ from above the first to the midpoint of the last stroke of the second, with a 寸 appended.
  • 博 is a 十 with an elevated second stroke beside a 専 with a 丶 interjected up and to the right of the first stroke of the second.

The formal conventions of and some of the terminology in the above examples are invented for the nonce, and of course, it's all in English. Any similar natural-language descriptions in Japanese would be very different. I also don't imagine that any existing document would be precisely as specific as I have been in these examples; they could be more ambiguous or they could be even more precise.

The Ministry of Education has lists of kanji for general use, for use in names, etc. Do any of these lists or the documents associated with them contain such formalized natural-language descriptions of the kanji those lists are supposed to standardize, or are they all just picture of kanji, picture of kanji, picture of kanji?

Foobie Bletch
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    Related: https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/72562/5010 / https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/64873/5010 / https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/33687/5010 – naruto Feb 25 '21 at 23:33
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    In a *linguistic* manner, *Kanji* shapes only make sense in terms of their components at the time of their first creation, and the majority of *Kanji* that are used today in Chinese and Japanese were created by the time of the [Qin Dynasty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qin_dynasty). Essentially, this means that there is no difference between "what *kanji* are supposed to look like" and "stroke diagrams" - they look like what they appear as now, because some government in some administrative region arbitrarily decided a standard. – dROOOze Feb 26 '21 at 08:35
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    Modern strokes may or may not, to a varying degree, have anything to do with what the *kanji* represents - if you want to learn how *kanji* and their components work, you have to think in terms of meaning components and (Chinese-derived) sound components, which may stretch all the way back to the [Shang Dynasty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shang_dynasty); if you want to just write things as how modern Japanese people read things, then just follow the stroke diagrams. Unfortunately, if the modern strokes don't make sense, that's really nobody's fault but the administration's. – dROOOze Feb 26 '21 at 08:41
  • @dROOOze My concern is that stroke diagrams are exemplary, not definitive. The stroke diagram for 士 doesn't tell you that the first stroke must be longer than the third one; it just says, "The kanji should look something like this." All handwriting is obviously going to differ from the stroke diagram by at least a little bit, yet the diagram alone does not convey the crucial information that this inevitable difference _must not be_ that the first stroke is shorter than the third (because then you'd be writing a complete different kanji). – Foobie Bletch Mar 03 '21 at 18:35
  • This is a somewhat weaker example than the 土・士 one because these kanji have different stroke orders, but in the stroke diagrams at least the only difference between [可](http://kanjivg.tagaini.net/viewer.html?kanji=可) and [叮](http://kanjivg.tagaini.net/viewer.html?kanji=叮) seems to be that whether or not the 口 component is underneath the the top stroke of the 丁 one. Do the standards prescribe, in writing, that the 口 in 可 must be beneath 丁, and that the 口 in 叮 must not? – Foobie Bletch Mar 03 '21 at 18:45
  • The 口 in 可 also seems to be wider than it is tall while the one in 叮 seems to be taller than it is wide, but again, I can't tell from the stroke diagrams alone how important that difference is, or if it's even stricter than that and the height/width ratios of the 口 component should fall within specific ranges (let alone how long the strokes of that component should be relative to the strokes of the 丁 component, etc.). – Foobie Bletch Mar 03 '21 at 18:53
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    But languages using alphabetical scripts don't demonstrate in the negative sense either? Take the letter `α`, nobody will tell you that (1) if you don't close the top rounded part it'll look like a `u`, (2) if you write the right hand vertical part protruding too much to the top, it'll look like a `d`, (3) if you write the right hand vertical part protruding too much to the bottom, it'll look like a `q` or `g`? This is only for a script inventory with 26 lower-case and 26 upper-case letters, and it's already unwieldy. Try doing that for Japanese *kanji* (2,136 common use characters). – dROOOze Mar 03 '21 at 19:25
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    @FoobieBletch, as a matter of terminology, you use the words "define / definition", which suggests you're talking about the **meaning** of the kanji and kanji components. However, your question instead talks about how the kanji components are **specified**. Would you mind editing your question to make it clear that you're not talking about the _meaning_ of the kanji and components? – Eiríkr Útlendi Mar 03 '21 at 22:50
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    Maybe an example would help? See https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/62391/how-to-arrive-to-the-meaning-of-the-kanji-tonari-%e9%9a%a3-through-its-components/62404 - You'll notice that functional character components (somewhat like your *heraldry* example) are different from the modern character form prescribed in education. – dROOOze Mar 06 '21 at 20:36
  • @EiríkrÚtlendi: The word "define" is **defined** more broadly than the lexically semantic sense in which I just used it. It can also mean to state the essential, identifying characteristics of something that isn't lexical or semiotic. Kanji are lexical and semiotic, but their graphical forms are not, and I clearly ***specify** in my question that I'm asking about the latter. I'm asking about what **defines** _this_ kanji as _this_ kanji (as opposed to _that_ kanji), whether those (graphical, not semantic) **definitions** are prescriptively formalized, and, if so, how and where. – Foobie Bletch Nov 29 '21 at 22:47
  • @EiríkrÚtlendi: I do use the word "specification" in my post, but with a slightly different meaning. A *definition* of the graphical form of the kanji 士 might *specify* that the first horizontal stroke should be longer than the second one, but that wouldn't be specifying the kanji itself or the kanji's form; it would be specifying the fact that the first stroke of the kanji needs to be longer the second. – Foobie Bletch Nov 29 '21 at 22:51
  • @FoobieBletch, this is a site discussing language and words. In many (most?) cases, the threads revolve around the **definitions** of words and kanji, in terms of their **meanings**. This is the main meaning of "definition" on this site: what a term or kanji **means**. In fact, that was the meaning I thought you intended when I first saw your post, and I found the body of your post confusing as a result, since ultimately you aren't talking about meaning at all. – Eiríkr Útlendi Nov 29 '21 at 22:53
  • @FoobieBletch, in professional contexts, **specifications** are concise, clear descriptions of **how something is designed** and how it works. One reads a **specification** to learn how to re-create something. The body of your post talks about the **design** of kanji and heraldry symbols, in terms of the different elements and how big or long they are in relation to each other. This is ultimately a question about **how kanji are designed**, and thus, I think the word "specification" is much more apt here than "definition". Considering that my comment was upvoted, others think so too. – Eiríkr Útlendi Nov 29 '21 at 22:56
  • @FoobieBletch, FWIW, I think "describe / description" is a good alternative term. This avoids the confusion about "meaning" that is inherent in "define / definition". – Eiríkr Útlendi Nov 29 '21 at 23:02
  • @EiríkrÚtlendi: Yes, I know about that sense of the word "specification". It has certain nuances that I didn't feel were appropriate to my question; kanji are not technological devices or digital software. "Design" is also inappropriate because Japanese is a natural language; it and its writing system were not designed; they evolved, even if the modern form of the language has been influenced by deliberate, prescriptive reform. – Foobie Bletch Nov 29 '21 at 23:09
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/131884/discussion-between-foobie-bletch-and-eirikr-utlendi). – Foobie Bletch Nov 29 '21 at 23:10

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