28-410: The Mitsubishi Fuso Aero King ( kana :三菱ふそう・エアロキング) was a series of heavy-duty double-decker coaches built by Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus Corporation . The Aero King first went on sale in 1984, after being introduced at the 1983 Tokyo Motor Show , and was discontinued in 2010, after five generations. It was either built as an integral bus or a bus chassis . The engines that were used in
56-626: A glossing system to add readings or explanations to Buddhist sutras . Both of these systems were simplified to make writing easier. The shapes of many hiragana resembled the Chinese cursive script , as did those of many katakana the Korean gugyeol , suggesting that the Japanese followed the continental pattern of their neighbors. Kana is traditionally said to have been invented by the Buddhist priest Kūkai in
84-504: A CVV syllable with complex nucleus (i.e. multiple or expressively long vowels), or a CCV syllable with complex onset (i.e. including a glide , C y V, C w V). The limited number of phonemes in Japanese, as well as the relatively rigid syllable structure, makes the kana system a very accurate representation of spoken Japanese . 'Kana' is a compound of kari ( 仮 , 'borrowed; assumed; false') and na ( 名 , 'name') , which eventually collapsed into kanna and ultimately 'kana'. Today it
112-407: A limited set of characters, such as Wabun code for Morse code telegrams and single-byte digital character encodings such as JIS X 0201 or EBCDIK , likewise dispense with kanji, instead using only katakana. This is not necessary in systems supporting double-byte or variable-width encodings such as Shift JIS , EUC-JP , UTF-8 or UTF-16 . Old Japanese was written entirely in kanji, and
140-438: A meaning . Apart from the five vowels, it is always CV (consonant onset with vowel nucleus ), such as ka , ki , sa , shi , etc., with the sole exception of the C grapheme for nasal codas usually romanised as n . The structure has led some scholars to label the system moraic , instead of syllabic , because it requires the combination of two syllabograms to represent a CVC syllable with coda (e.g. CV n , CV m , CV ng ),
168-455: A poem which uses each kana once. However, hiragana and katakana did not quickly supplant man'yōgana . It was only in 1900 that the present set of kana was codified. All the other forms of hiragana and katakana developed before the 1900 codification are known as hentaigana ( 変体仮名 , "variant kana") . Rules for their usage as per the spelling reforms of 1946, the gendai kana-zukai ( 現代仮名遣い , "present-day kana usage") , which abolished
196-413: A poetry anthology assembled sometime after 759 and the eponym of man'yōgana , exemplifies this phenomenon, where as many as almost twenty kanji were used for the mora ka . The consistency of the kana used was thus dependent on the style of the writer. Hiragana developed as a distinct script from cursive man'yōgana , whereas katakana developed from abbreviated parts of regular script man'yōgana as
224-453: A set of kanji called man'yōgana were first used to represent the phonetic values of grammatical particles and morphemes. As there was no consistent method of sound representation, a phoneme could be represented by multiple kanji, and even those kana's pronunciations differed in whether they were to be read as kungana ( 訓仮名 , "meaning kana") or ongana ( 音仮名 , "sound kana") , making decipherment problematic. The man'yōshū ,
252-402: A term favored by Motoori Norinaga and his school. Drawing heavily from Shinto and Japan's ancient literature , the school looked back to a golden age of culture and society. They drew upon ancient Japanese poetry , predating the rise of medieval Japan 's feudal orders in the mid-twelfth century, and other cultural achievements to show the emotion of Japan. One famous emotion appealed to by
280-555: A tool for children), there can be no word-by-word collation; all collation is kana-by-kana. The hiragana range in Unicode is U+3040 ... U+309F, and the katakana range is U+30A0 ... U+30FF. The obsolete and rare characters ( wi and we ) also have their proper code points. Characters U+3095 and U+3096 are hiragana small ka and small ke , respectively. U+30F5 and U+30F6 are their katakana equivalents. Characters U+3099 and U+309A are combining dakuten and handakuten , which correspond to
308-528: Is a ligature of koto ( コト ), also found in vertical writing. Additionally, there are halfwidth equivalents to the standard fullwidth katakana. These are encoded within the Halfwidth and Fullwidth Forms block (U+FF00–U+FFEF), starting at U+FF65 and ending at U+FF9F (characters U+FF61–U+FF64 are halfwidth punctuation marks): There is also a small "Katakana Phonetic Extensions" range (U+31F0 ... U+31FF), which includes some additional small kana characters for writing
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#1733093915182336-597: Is also used to represent onomatopoeia and interjections, emphasis, technical and scientific terms, transcriptions of the Sino-Japanese readings of kanji, and some corporate branding. Kana can be written in small form above or next to lesser-known kanji in order to show pronunciation; this is called furigana . Furigana is used most widely in children's or learners' books. Literature for young children who do not yet know kanji may dispense with it altogether and instead use hiragana combined with spaces. Systems supporting only
364-426: Is generally assumed that 'kana' were considered "false" kanji due to their purely phonetic nature, as opposed to mana ( 真名 ) which were "true" kanji used for their meanings. Yet originally, mana and kana were purely calligraphic terms with mana referring to Chinese characters written in the regular script ( kaisho ) and kana referring to those written in the cursive ( sōsho ) style (see hiragana ). It
392-480: Is stylistic. Usually, hiragana is the default syllabary, and katakana is used in certain special cases. Hiragana is used to write native Japanese words with no kanji representation (or whose kanji is thought obscure or difficult), as well as grammatical elements such as particles and inflections ( okurigana ). Today katakana is most commonly used to write words of foreign origin that do not have kanji representations, as well as foreign personal and place names. Katakana
420-713: The Ainu language . Further small kana characters are present in the "Small Kana Extension" block. Unicode also includes "Katakana letter archaic E" (U+1B000), as well as 255 archaic Hiragana , in the Kana Supplement block. It also includes a further 31 archaic Hiragana in the Kana Extended-A block. The Kana Extended-B block was added in September, 2021 with the release of version 14.0: Kokugaku Kokugaku ( Kyūjitai : 國學 , Shinjitai : 国学 ; literally "national study")
448-439: The kokugakusha is ' mono no aware '. The word kokugaku , coined to distinguish this school from kangaku ("Chinese studies"), was popularized by Hirata Atsutane in the 19th century. It has been translated as 'Native Studies' and represented a response to Sinocentric Neo-Confucian theories. Kokugaku scholars criticized the repressive moralizing of Confucian thinkers, and tried to re-establish Japanese culture before
476-851: The Fuso Aero Bus were the 8DC9 (turbocharged V-8, 380 PS or 280 kW, used between 1984 and 1995 for MU515TA/MU525TA), the 8M21-3 (NA V-8, 420 PS or 310 kW/430 PS or 320 kW, used between 1995 and 2005 for MU612) and the 6M70-T4 (turbocharged L-6, 420ps, used between 2008 and 2010 for MU66JS) . Kana Kana ( 仮名 , Japanese pronunciation: [kana] ) are syllabaries used to write Japanese phonological units, morae . In current usage, kana most commonly refers to hiragana and katakana . It can also refer to their ancestor magana ( 真仮名 , lit. 'true kana') , which were Chinese characters used phonetically to transcribe Japanese (e.g. man'yōgana ); and hentaigana , which are historical variants of
504-459: The corresponding unvoiced columns ( k , s , t and h ) and the voicing mark, dakuten . Syllables beginning with [p] are spelled with kana from the h column and the half-voicing mark, handakuten . Syllables beginning with palatalized consonants are spelled with one of the seven consonantal kana from the i row followed by small ya , yu or yo . These digraphs are called yōon . The difference in usage between hiragana and katakana
532-450: The foreign (Chinese) influences were removed. The "Chinese heart" was considered different from the "true heart" or "Japanese Heart". This true Japanese spirit needed to be revealed by removing a thousand years of Chinese learning. It thus took an interest in philologically identifying the ancient, indigenous meanings of ancient Japanese texts; in turn, these ideas were synthesized with early Shinto and astronomy . The term kokugaku
560-499: The influx of foreign modes of thought and behaviour. Eventually, the thinking of kokugaku scholars influenced the sonnō jōi philosophy and movement. It was this philosophy, amongst other things, that led to the eventual collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate in 1868 and the subsequent Meiji Restoration . The kokugaku school held that the Japanese national character was naturally pure, and would reveal its inherent splendor once
588-492: The kana for wi (ゐ・ヰ), we (ゑ・ヱ), and wo (を・ヲ) (except that the last was reserved as the accusative particle). Kana are the basis for collation in Japanese. They are taken in the order given by the gojūon (あ い う え お ... わ を ん), though iroha (い ろ は に ほ へ と ... せ す (ん)) ordering is used for enumeration in some circumstances. Dictionaries differ in the sequence order for long/short vowel distinction, small tsu and diacritics. As Japanese does not use word spaces (except as
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#1733093915182616-476: The ninth century. Kūkai certainly brought the Siddhaṃ script of India home on his return from China in 806; his interest in the sacred aspects of speech and writing led him to the conclusion that Japanese would be better represented by a phonetic alphabet than by the kanji which had been used up to that point. The modern arrangement of kana reflects that of Siddhaṃ, but the traditional iroha arrangement follows
644-631: The now-standard hiragana. Katakana, with a few additions, are also used to write Ainu . A number of systems exist to write the Ryūkyūan languages , in particular Okinawan , in hiragana. Taiwanese kana were used in Taiwanese Hokkien as ruby text for Chinese characters in Taiwan when it was under Japanese rule . Each kana character corresponds to one sound or whole syllable in the Japanese language, unlike kanji regular script , which corresponds to
672-411: The spacing characters U+309B and U+309C. U+309D is the hiragana iteration mark , used to repeat a previous hiragana. U+309E is the voiced hiragana iteration mark, which stands in for the previous hiragana but with the consonant voiced ( k becomes g , h becomes b , etc.). U+30FD and U+30FE are the katakana iteration marks. U+309F is a ligature of yori ( より ) sometimes used in vertical writing. U+30FF
700-454: The term 'kana' is now commonly understood as hiragana and katakana, it actually has broader application as listed below: The following table reads, in gojūon order, as a , i , u , e , o (down first column), then ka , ki , ku , ke , ko (down second column), and so on. n appears on its own at the end. Asterisks mark unused combinations. Syllables beginning with the voiced consonants [g], [z], [d] and [b] are spelled with kana from
728-524: Was an academic movement, a school of Japanese philology and philosophy originating during the Tokugawa period . Kokugaku scholars worked to refocus Japanese scholarship away from the then-dominant study of Chinese , Confucian , and Buddhist texts in favor of research into the early Japanese classics . What later became known as the kokugaku tradition began in the 17th and 18th centuries as kogaku ("ancient studies"), wagaku (" Japanese studies ") or inishie manabi ("antiquity studies"),
756-429: Was not until the 18th century that the early-nationalist kokugaku movement which wanted to move away from Sinocentric academia began to reanalyze the script from a phonological point of view. In the following centuries, contrary to the traditional Sinocentric view, kana began to be considered a national Japanese writing system that was distinct from Chinese characters, which is the dominant view today. Although
784-430: Was used liberally by early modern Japanese to refer to the "national learning" of each of the world's nations. This usage was adopted into Chinese , where it is still in use today (C: guoxue ). The Chinese also adopted the kokugaku term "national essence" (J: kokusui , C: 国粹 guocui ). According to scholar of religion Jason Ānanda Josephson , kokugaku played a role in the consolidation of State Shinto in
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