kanji (human language, character) /kahn'jee/ (From the Japanese "kan" - the Chinese Han dynasty, and "ji" - glyph or letter of the alphabet. Not capitalised. Plural "kanji") The Japanese word for a Han character used in Japanese. Kanji constitute a part of the writing system used to represent the Japanese language in written, printed and displayed form. The term is also used for the collection of all kanji letters.
US-ASCII doesn't include kanji characters, but some character encodings, including Unicode, do. The Japanese writing system also uses hiragana, katakana, and sometimes romaji (Roman alphabet letters). These characters are distinct from, though commonly used in combination with, kanji. Furigana are also added sometimes. Last updated: 2000-12-30
