Old Japanese - Writing System

Writing System

The earliest texts found in Japan are written in Classical Chinese, although they may have been meant to be read as Japanese by the kanbun method. Some of these Chinese texts show the influences of Japanese grammar, such as the word order (for example, placing the verb after the object). In these "hybrid" texts, Chinese characters are occasionally used phonetically to represent Japanese particles. Over time, the phonetic usage of Chinese characters became more and more prevalent, until Man'yōgana, a system of using the Chinese characters phonetically to record Japanese, was born. This system was already in use in the non-prose part of Kojiki, and was used in a highly sophisticated manner in Man'yōshū.