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classical japanese


Kuzushi-ji Seminar: 4/20/26

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Tokyo Women's College | Takahashi Shuu | "Introduction to Parsing Kuzushi-ji" [Video Notes]

This three part series is taken from a seminar given at the Tokyo Women's College by Takahashi Shuu, an expert on kuzushi-ji ("deformed characters") who worked in the historical records department at the Yamanashi Prefectural Museum. The tag [Video Notes] refers to the reproduction the notes I took on the video for archival purposes. This will also include a list of vocabulary I had to look up while listening to these three videos, many of which are terms unique to this subject matter. [Add] refers to extra information I looked up or personal interpretations or mnemonics. This will not include image reproductions of the examples and patterns described, for that please watch the original videos.

Vocab:

  • 書き写す・かきうつす・to copy down
  • 清書・せいしょ・clean copy
  • 大量製作・だいりょうせいさく・mass produce (cf 大量生産)
  • 寺子屋・てらこや・temple school (for elementary age children, Edo Period)
  • 持論・じろん・pet theory
  • 自説・じせつ・person opinion
  • 紛らわしい・まぎらわしい・easy to confuse between
  • 偽造・ぎぞう・forgery
  • 対照・たいしょう・contrast
  • 石高・こくだか・stipend system (allotment of rice to villages)
  • 原寸大・げんすんだい・actual size
  • 筆跡・ひっせき・handwriting style, penmenship
  • 換算・かんざん・conversion i.e. convert old currency to modern currency
  • 郷土・きょうど・hometown, local
  • 帳面・ちょうめん・notebook, register
  • 影印本・えいいんぼん・fascimile book (copied or traced from another source)
  • 最寄り・もより・nearest
  • 勘所・かんどころ・position on fingerboard (for shamisen, koto)

Notes:

Why Should You Learn How to Read Kuzushi-ji?

軍書類上・ぐんしょるいじゅう

This is a collection of Japanese classics sorted by type, first compiled in 1819, then again in 1911. In both cases, as a ei'inbou, copied from originals or other copies. The classics in this collection are written in kuzushi-ji. In other words, if you can't read kuzushi-ji, you cannot access your own history.

Why Did Folks Write Kuzushi-ji/Sousho (cursive script)?

There is one record where it is stated that in one day, a scribe can either write four pages of kaisho (block script), six pages of gyousho (running script), or eight pages of sousho (cursive script).

Kuzushi-ji is a much faster way of writing, simplifying many complex kanji. In a society that required so much bureaucratic documentation, you needed large numbers of people to be able to write quickly. This means that when children were learning how to read and write in terakoya or temple schools, their learning material also used kuzushi-ji. In other words, what adults cannot do now, children between the ages of 7-12 are perfectly capable of.

形: The Foundation of Kuzushi-ji

The key to reading any kuzushi-ji is pattern recognition, that is, identifying shapes. While it might looking intimidating to us, kuzushi-ji was really a simplification that distilled kanji to their most intrinsic shape.

In this seminar, we will go over 6 patterns that will allow you, in just 40-45 minutes, read kuzushi-ji. These patterns were selected because they are some of the easiest to confuse. The example we will be reading from is a kokudaka record, which recorded the rice stipend for villages.

What Was the Kokudaka System?

The kokudaka system was a system of allocating grain to villages. It used three counters of weight: 石（こく）、斗（と）、升（しょう）. 1 KOKU was equal to the amount of rice an adult could consume in a year, and was usually about 3 tawara (woven bales). 1 TO was equal to one tenth of a koku, and 1 SHOU was equal to one tenth of a TO. In other words, they followed a division of tens, so that 100 SHOU equaled 1 KOKU.

In modern times, these counters are still sometimes used. For instance, TO is used in phrases like ittokan, which refers to a large tankard or small vat still used for holding things like gasoline, or toshu, a keg of sake (or a lot of sake). It' equivalent to roughly 18 liters.

SHOU is equivalent to about 1.8 liters, and is used in the phrase isshoubin, which refers to a 1 SHOU bottle, often a bottle of alcohol. [Add: The kanji for SHOU, 升, is also the kanji for masu, the word for the squares on a shogi/go/chessboard. This usage comes from what masu originally was, a wooden box used as a scoop to divy out rice]

Because 1 KOKU is roughly the stipend for one person, the number of KOKU allotted can be used to estimate the population of villages throughout the Edo Period.

In conslusion, all of the examples will be mostly composed of numbers.

The Six Patterns to Remember

Patterns 1 and 2: The difference between 5 五and 9 九. Both take on a similar shape. However, 5 is more of a Z-shape, with a curved line wrapping around the middle bar. 9 is の shaped, and doesn't have any straight lines.

Patterns 3, 4, 5, 6: Archaic Numbers.To avoid forgery, the archaic numbers for 1 壱, 2 弐, 3 参, and 10 拾 are used, and subsequently turned into kuzushi-ji. Numbers 4, 6, 7, 8 are usually the normal characters. 4 is slightly deformed, not usually having the left stroke of the two strokes inside of it, but 6, 7, and 8 are usually very easy to read.

[Add: The kuzushi-ji for 1 looks like a plus with a lot of horizontal scribbles, 2 looks kind of like bunny ears, 3 actually looks very similar to normal 三 with three horizontal lines but the top is the shortest getting bigger going down, almost looking like え some times). 10 拾 has a strong vertical line on the left which then arches over and squiggles down on the right side.]

Why Would Names Be Easy to Remember?

In the Edo period, names had fairly formal structure and the endings of names in particular was quite repetitive, such as -emon, -rou, etc. Another 5 patterns are introduced here that wil immediately help decode the many names in things like family registers.

Five Patterns for Reading Names

Pattern 1 and 2: The diffrence between 左 left and 右 right. These kanji often preceed -emon, and because they are quite common and simple, in kuzushi-ji they have converged quite a bit. Right will be horizontal, and the kuchi may deform into waves. Left is stretched vertically, and the 工 also deforms into a bit of a wave[add: similar to れ].

Pattern 3: 衛門 Emon.An incredibly common suffix, both these kanji deform into a つ shape.

Pattern 4: 兵衛 Hee, Bee.This one is most idenfitable by the deformation of 兵 (soldier). It becomes a small, tight zig-zag, similar to 三. The second character 衛 is much more defined than with 衛門.

Pattern 5: 郎 Rou. This ending is common even today (Jotarou, Shintarou, Momotarou, Souichirou, etc.). While it can be written out, similar to 衛門, it is so common it has become abstract to the point of comedy, becoming similar to a long, stretched out ら or う。

How Many People Know How to Read Kuzushi-ji Today?

The presenter estimates only about 5,000. He makes a point of contrasting this with the number of people who have passed the Eiken top level, which is over 100,000. He states we don't have the luxury to study English, we should focus on learning about understanding your own country's history and language.

[Add: While I can sympathize with his frustrations, especially since Japanese is almost oppressively monolingual and studying English is basically a hobby for people, this is a maligned argument. To create an American analogy, the argument becomes "we should be holding cursive and penmanship classes rather than teaching Spanish/world languages". Similarly to Japan, cursive penmanship has degenerated in the last two generations, to the point that historical penmanship is not longer legible for many people, a hard boundary to reading historical documents and learning about your country from writing of the period. However, to suggest that penmanship should replace language learning is absurd. Learning another language allows you to explore even larger stores of literary and historical documents. In terms of curriculum, I think it'd be splendid for Japanese school to have a semester devoted to learning how to read kuzushi-ji, and further elective semesters, but foreign language learning is far too valuable to consider abandoning.]

Learning Resources: