Torsten Reincke

J
apanese

for
A bacists
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M
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Issa, 1818

Japanese for Abacists

Torsten Reincke, Germany
Chapter 1

In the beginning . . .

Since the most modern and advanced abaci are found in Japan, it is a good idea
for abacists to have some knowledge of the Japanese language and especially
the writing system. Many webpages in Japan deal with the Japanese abacus,
the soroban, but are in Japanese only. Part of the vocabulary we use when
talking about techniques is Japanese.
This little document wants to explain Japanese characters and words in or-
der to help understand abacus-related texts. It is no complete reference to the
Japanese language or writing system and I left out some of the finer details, but
I hope it can be an aid to understand Japanese terminology and writing. If you
find errors or think I should explain some points better than I did here, please
let me know and I will update this document.

1
Chapter 2

The Japanese writing system

Japanese uses three different writing systems: Kanji, hiragana, and katakana.
The systems are normally used mixed in the very same sentence. Here is an
example of a complete Japanese sentence using hiragana and katakana:

ˆFS]]p“ïüëÉx
It means Welcome to Abacus world. It is read (in Japanese): youkoso soroban
warudohe. The fist part ( ˆFS] ) is in hiragana, reads youkoso and means
welcome. The second part ( ]p“ ) is also in hiragana and is read soroban.
ïüëÉx
The last part is in katakana ( ). Have a close look at the reading
warudohe. If you speak it quickly and sloppy you may be able to recognize
the English word world here.ïüëÉx is borrowed from English and the
pronounciation was just adopted to the Japanese katakana syllabary!

Kanji
"
Kanji are Japanese characters that stand for a word like book or sun. They are
used for writing nouns, adjectives, adverbs and verbs. A kanji can often be
regarded as a simplified picture of the object it describes (pictographs), but
it can also be an abstract representation of some idea (symoblic). Literally,
W
kanji means ‘Chinese character’, because they are of Chinese origin. They were
adopted by Japan beginning in the 5th century A.D. (via Korea) including their
original meaning and pronounciation. Here are some examples of kanji char-
acters:—äz .
There are several thousands of kanji and it takes years for Japanese children
to learn them. There is a set of 1945 kanji, the so-called Jouyou kanji, which
have been declared for usage in public documents. These should be sufficient
to read a newspaper. If you want to read more sophisticated texts or especially
old texts, you need to learn more.

2
Composite kanji

( 
Kanji characters can stand alone, like in the words tree ( ) or waterfall ( ), but

ã
á
often a word is composed of more than one kanji. For example, the Japanese
word for Japan (å, å ,
) is composed of the kanji for sun ( ) and source/origin ( ).
Therefore Japan is also called the land of the rising sun (origin/rise of the sun).
Here is another example loosely related to monetary soroban calculation –
the origin of the Yen. Until about 1800 B.C. the Chinese used bivalve shells for
 ↓

money. The kanji for shellfish is . A shellfish (in terms of money) combined
ã
with a mouth ( ), in terms of a human being speaking with an open mouth,
represents a new kanji á with the meaning ‘person, talking about money’ or
employee/member. An employee combined with a coin means Yen. The coin

is drawn as a rectangle around the employee: . This is the traditional kanji
for the Japanese currency. It is printed on cheques, documents, or receipts of
banks, when tradition, accuracy and beauty play an important role. There is
†
another kanji for the Yen used in modern business: . It can also mean circle
or round.
From this example you can see that kanji characters are normally composed
of dirrefent building blocks and can have a lot of different meanings. These
building blocks are called radicals and there is traditionally a set of 214. From


these you can build most kanji.
oK‹
Kanji readings

—
QD U“
A large number of words and concepts (including the abacus) entered Japan
from China without having a native equivalent. Many kanji words entered
Japanese directly, with a pronunciation resembling the original Chinese. This
Chinese-derived reading is called on-yomi ( ó­ ). At the same time, native
Japanese already had words corresponding to many borrowed kanji, they just
did not have the writing system to write them down. Kanji were then used
to represent these words but with the original Japanese pronounciation. This
Japanese-derived reading is known as kun-yomi ( ­ ). A single kanji may
have both multiple on-yomi and kun-yomi.
One example may illustrate this. The kanji  means plot, plan, scheme, or
measure. It is a composition of the kanji for the words say ( ) and the number
A
10 ( ). When the kanji  stands alone, the kun-yomi is used and the word is
read hakaru. When the kanji is used in combination with other kanji, the on-
yomi is used and it is pronounced kei. Some examples are calculation/reckoning
=— (keisan), total = Ï (soukei), sum =  (tsuukei), or wristwatch =
2ú (roshiyutsukei). In books for kanji learners (and in other places) you
can often find kanji with small hiragana syllables written immediately above
or beside them. These are called furigana (sometimes also ruby), and they tell
you the pronounciation of the kanji. Since many kanji have more than one
reading, the furigana is there to help learners find the correct pronounciation.

3
Kana
K
Kana is a collective term for two sets of characters representing sounds, specif-
ically syllables: hiragana and katakana. These were developed in Japan in the
9th century. There are basically 46 characters in each syllabary, each of them
representing a syllable that can be transcribed using latin characters (mostly
j
starting with a consonant, like: so, ka, ni). You can write all Japanese words in
Kana (also words that are written in kanji normally) and this is how schoolchil-
dren begin to learn Japanese, before they learn kanji.
The kana characters are in fact simplified forms of certain kanji characters
and have evolved over time to the present form. Both syllabaries contain the
same syllables so there are two possibilities to write a syllable like so in soroban:
] ½
in hiragana it is and in katakana it is . But how do you know which one to
use? Quite easy. Hiragana is used for grammatical endings of verbs, nouns,
and adjectives, as well as for particles, and several other original Japanese
words not written in kanji. Hiragana is also used for human echoisms like
yawning in comic strips (mangas).
Katakana is mostly used for loan words from foreign languages and for
non-japanese person names and geographical names that can not be written in
kanji. Katakana is also ued in company names. Comic strips use katakana for
echoisms of animals (like barking), things (explosion), and human actions (like
knocking).
Hiragana is also used to show the pronounciation of kanji. To do this, they
are written as small characters above or at the side of the kanji (and then called
furigana).
Please note that kana has fewer syllables than possible with the latin alpha-
bet. For example, there is no l and no q in Japanese. This becomes important

r
when building loan words.

Hiragana
Here is the table with the hiragana characters and the corresponding sylla-

‰
L
bles. They are arranged in the traditional order with the vowels in the order
a-i-u-e-o. The only syllable missing is the character n, which is not a sylla-
ble in its strict sense, but only a consonant. It is written “ (much resembling

j
the latin written n) and only used at the end of words. The following tables
display the syllables giving the pronounciation and then the hiragana in two
different fonts. I have included the tables in two versions with different fonts
because there are sometimes subtle differences in the appearance and depend-
ing on the font a text is written in, it can be difficult to see what hiragana is
printed. For example, the website of the Japanese League for soroban educa-
tion at http://www.soroban.or.jp uses the latter font in the parts where the
text is represented by graphics.

4
 Hiragana syllables in a ‘roman’ font
a B wa  ra ‰ ya „ ma ~ha o na j ta _ sa U ka K
i D ri Š mi  hi r ni kchi a shi W ki M
u F ru ‹ yu † mu € fu u nu ltsu d su Y ku O
e H re Œ me he x ne m tef se [ ke Q
o J o ’ ro  yo ˆ mo ‚ho { no n to h so ] ko S
Hiragana syllables in a ‘typewriter’ font
a B wa  ra ‰ ya „ ma ~ha ona j ta _ sa U ka K
i D ri Š mi hi rni kchi a shi W ki M
u F ru ‹ yu † mu €fu unu ltsu d su Y ku O
e H re Œ me he xne m te f se [ ke Q
o J o ’ ro  yo ˆ mo ‚ho {no n to h so ] ko S
You will note that not all fields in the above tables are filled. These sounds are
no longer used in Japanese. Note also, there are two characters for the sound
o:J ’
and . The latter was pronounced wo originally, but in modern Japanese
it is just o. The difference between and J ’
is the usage. ’
is used as a
grammatical particle only, while J
is used like a normal vowel.
] 
Now try to write the word soroban: You can easily find so , ro , and the
“
n , but there is no ba! This is because we missed some sounds in the above ta-
bles. There are two diacritic symbols used to form some further sounds. They
change the way certain syllables are pronounced. The sign (called dakuten ›
or nigori) is normally used to make sounds voiced and the sign (called han- œ
dakuten or maru) is used to change h to p. Here are your choices (again in two
different fonts):

ga L gi N gu P ge R go T ga L
N gu P ge R go T
gi
za V ji X zu Z ze \ zo ^ za V
X zu Z ze \ zo ^
ji
da ` ji b zu e de g do i da `
b zu e de g do i
ji
ba p bi s bu v be y bo | ba p
s bu v be y bo |
bi
pa q pi t pu w pe z po } pa q
t pu w pe z po }
pi

And there is the ba we needed. So soroban is written as ]p“. There are

some more syllables (kyu, kya, gya, . . . ) but I think the ones above are suffi-
cient for now. Let us examine a final example. A complete Japanese sentence
in hiragana is: SŒo]p“gY . The transliteration is: kore wa soroban
o
desu ( in this context is pronounced wa and not ha). What does it mean?
Kore means this and desu means are/is. The small word wa is a particle hav-
ing grammatical meaning. So the whole sentence can be translated as: This is a
soroban. You can easily turn this sentence into a question. Just append the par-
ticle ka to the end of the sentence: SŒo]p“gYK = Is this a soroban?

5
 «
¿
Katakana
The katakana system contains the same syllables as hiragana, it just uses other

«
characters. Therefore, I will only display the tables with the characters here
without explaining again, how they are used. The consonant n is written . ó

­Ê
Katakana syllables in a ‘roman’ font
a ¢ wa ï ra é ya ä ma Þ ha Ï na Ê ta ¿ sa µ ka «
i ¤ ri ê mi ß hi Ò ni Ë chi Á shi · ki
u ¦ ru ë yu æ mu à fu Õ nu Ì tsu Ä su ¹ ku ¯
e ¨ re ì me á he Ø ne Í te Æ se » ke ±
o ª wo ò ro í yo è mo â ho Û no Î to È so ½ ko ³
Katakana syllables in a ‘typewriter’ font
a ¢ wa ï ra é ya ä ma Þ ha Ï na Ê ta ¿ sa µ ka «
i ¤ ri ê mi ß hi Ò ni Ë chi Á shi · ki ­
u ¦ ru ë yu æ mu à fu Õ nu Ì tsu Ä su ¹ ku ¯
e ¨ re ì me á he Ø ne Í te Æ se » ke ±
o ª wo ò ro í yo è mo â ho Û no Î to È so ½ ko ³
ga ¬ gi ® gu ° ge ² go ´ ga ¬ gi ® gu ° ge ² go ´
za ¶ ji ¸ zu º ze ¼ zo ¾ za ¶ ji ¸ zu º ze ¼ zo ¾
da À ji  du Å de Ç do É da À ji  du Å de Ç do É
ba Ð bi Ó bu Ö be Ù bo Ü ba Ð bi Ó bu Ö be Ù bo Ü
pa Ñ pi Ô pu × pe Ú po Ý pa Ñ pi Ô pu × pe Ú po Ý
We are now able to write the name of Tomoe, the soroban manufacturer, in
katakana: 鉬 . You will find this name on the boxes in which Tomoe ships
their products.
Here is an example using mixed hiragana and katakana. The text is from
the top of Tomoe’s Japanese online shop: ]p“«¿í° . The first word is
in hiragana and you already know it. It’s soroban. The second is in katakana
and reads katarogu. It is a loan word from English and means catalogue. You
can easily recognize the English pronounciation that has been adapted to the
katakana syllabary. Since Japanese has no l, the r is used instead. Now, we can
see what the text means: soroban catalogue.

Transliteration and romaji

The term romaji ( ØÜó) is used to describe Japanese text represented using
latin characters. So soroban is romaji for a Japanese word built from the four
kana characters so, ro, ba, and n. Sometimes you will find words in Japanese
that are transcribed differently. This is because different systems for transcrib-
ing the Japanese sounds have evolved over time. Three main systems exist:

6
 • The Nihon system ( å, ). This is the system being closest to the orig-
inal kana pronounciation. It was developed by the physicist Aikitsu
Tanakadate in 1885.
• The Kunrei (= Monbusho) system ( ä ). It was developed in 1937 and
is based on the older Nihon system, adapted for modern Japanese. The
Kunrei system is approved by the ISO (ISO-3602) and also recommended
by ANSI. It is the official system used in Japanese schools today.

• The Hepburn system ( ØÜó ). It was developed by James Curtis Hep-

burn, an American missionary, in 1896. It is widely used and and is close
to English pronunciation.

Here are some of the differences in these three systems:

Kana Nihon Kunrei Hepburn

W si si shi
X zi zi ji
a ti ti chi
b di zi ji
d tu tu tsu
e du zu zu
u hu hu fu
’ wo o o

In this document, I tried to follow the Kunrei system. I may not always have
succeeded . . .

7
Chapter 3

Japanese mathematics

The Japanese number system

4—
The decimal system known from the Western world is also used in Japan. The
numbers from 1 to 9 are quite simple kanji and the lower numbers resemble
their meaning by symbolizing a bunch of baboo sticks:

0 ö
1
2 Œ
3
4 Û
5 ”
6 m
7 
8 k
9 ]
10 A
100 ~
1,000 C
10,000 
108  = 100,000,000
1012 F = 1,000,000,000,000
1016 ¬
1020 “
1032 
1036 —
1040 c
Using these kanji, you can write all Japanese numbers up to 1044 − 1, which
should be enough for a start. Numbers are written with kanji from the largest

8
element to the smallest element, zeros are implied but not written (as opposed
to Chinese). So 11 becomes A AŒ
(10+1), 12 is (10+2) and so on until 19 (A
] ).
But what about 20? This is composed as 2 times 10, becoming ŒA . From
here it is easy again: 21 = ŒA (2 × 10 + 1), 22 =ŒAŒ (2 × 10 + 2), 23 = Œ
A , 24 = ŒAÛ , and so on. At some point we reach 99 ( ]A] ) and finally
~
100 ( ). This is the basic schema by which numbers are built in Japanese. You
will immediately have noted, that this is very convenient for soroban opera-
tion. You can read the number from left to right and instantly transfer it to the
soroban.
Let’s try with higher numbers. What is 175? That’s 1 × 100 + 7 × 10 + 5, so
the number is spelled ~A” . In the same manner 386 becomes ~kAm .
Numbers in the thousands are still easy because 1000 has its own kanji: 9274 is
]CŒ~AÛ . Another example, now with zeros in between: 2037 is ŒC
A .

We now reach 10,000, written as . From here on, the Japanese number
system takes four magnitudes instead of three like in the Western system in
order to reach the next steps, F
and . Some examples:

• 43,076 = Û CAm
• 9,836,703 = 983,6703 = ]~kA mC~
• 123,456,789 = 1,2345,6789 = ŒC ~ÛA”mC~kA]
• 2,036,521,801 = 20,3652,1801 = ŒA Cm~”AŒCk~
• 500,000,000,020,001 = 500,0000,0002,0001 = ”~FŒ

Now you can see when Japanese numbers become impractical (and we have
not tried pronouncing them yet!).

Decimals and negative numbers

(still to be written)

Date and time

Now that we know the numbers, it is just a small step to understand dates and
times. You just need to know the kanji for the words day, month, and year
å
which are , , and t respectively. (You will have noted that the kanji for
day is the same as for sun.) On countless webpages dates are written like this:

• 2004t = the year 2004

• 2003t813å = ‘2003 year 8 month 13 day’ = 13 August 2003

9
 å
Abacus day in Japan is 8 8 . Sometimes you will also see the name of a
weekday. These are:

Üå Monday (day of the moon)

kÜå Tuesday (day of fire)
4Üå Wednesday (day of water)
(Üå Thursday (day of the tree)
ÑÜå Friday (day of metal)
Üå Saturday (day of the earth)
åÜå Sunday (day of the sun)

They are called after phenomena in nature. 13 August 2003 might be written as
t  å4
2003 8 13 omitting the Üå part which just means ‘weekday’ and
is superfluous here.

The Japanese abacus

The Japanese abacus is called soroban. It is normally written in hiragana: ]
p“ . You can also find the word written in kanji as à— . This is also pro-
nounced soroban, but this is an irregular spelling. The regular pronounciation
W…V“
is (syuzan/shuzan) and this means calculation with abacus. The word
soroban comes from China originally where the abacus today is called suan-
pan.

English romaji Japanese comment

frame waku  
rod keta A
bead dama ‰
unit point teiiten šM¹ built from: determine + rank + spot

(to be continued)

10
Chapter 4

Vocabulary for calculation

There are four basic arithmetic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplica-

tion, and division. Here are the Japanese words:

English romaji Japanese comment

number kazu p
calculation with abacus shuzan à—
addition kazan  —
subtraction hikizan —
addition/subtraction mitorizan ‹Ö—
multiplication jouzan W—
division jozan d—
number dictation yomiagezan ­
— built from: raed + up + number

?? computer densan û—
japanese mathemiatics wazan 4—
mental arithmetic anzan ——
—
As you can see, one of the kanji ( ) is always the same. Standing alone, it
can mean a lot of things: calculate, divining, number, abacus, probability. This
ù
kanji is composed of the radical of bamboo ( ) and ... (to be continued)
—
Anzan is another nice word. The first kanji of anzan is , which means
darkness/disappear/be blinded. You could translate anzan as arithmetics without
sight, meaning without using your eyes to look on a soroban.

11