Japan’s Simplified Kanji

Since World War II, the Japanese have been using a simplified form of traditional Chinese characters, 繁體字 (Kanji 漢字). If you have a medal, medalet or medallion with one of the simplified characters listed below, it likely dates from the post-World War II period. I say “likely” because the Japanese government officially simplified Chinese script only because of the widespread usage of simplified characters already in common usage. The majority of Japanese cannot read pre-World War II Chinese characters.

These are not the same as China’s Simplified Characters 繁体字. The Chinese have simplified roughly 2,000 characters, while the Japanese have only simplified 227 characters.

In the table below, the (Japanese) Simplified Chinese Characters (Shinjitai 新字体 New Character Form) are on the left, and the corresponding Traditional Chinese Characters are next to them, on the right.