Japan: Government council calls for newly designating 196 kanji for common use
TOKYO —
A government advisory panel proposed Monday the inclusion of 196 characters and a deletion of five characters to and from a list of kanji designated for everyday use for the first kanji reform in 29 years to better reflect the information age.
After reviewing the list for five years, the Council for Cultural Affairs made the recommendations to reshuffle the list of 1,945 characters into that of 2,136 characters, expected to be implemented by the end of this year.
This marks Japan’s third reform of kanji—Chinese characters used in Japanese writing—since the end of World War II.
