Kyà «jitai () are the traditional forms of kanji (Chinese written characters used in Japanese writing). Their simplified counterparts are shinjitai (). Some of the simplified characters arose centuries ago and were in everyday use in both China and Japan, but they were considered inelegant, even uncouth. After World War II, simplified character forms were made official separately in Japan and mainland China, with Japan adopting fewer and less drastic changes. For example, () remains unchanged, whereas it was simplified to () on the mainland.
Prior to the promulgation of the tà Âyà  kanji list in 1946, kyà «jitai were known as seiji () or seijitai (). Even after kyà «jitai were officially marked for discontinuation with the promulgation of the tà Âyà  kanji list, they were used in print frequently into the 1950s due to logistical delays in changing over typesetting equipment. Kyà «jitai continue in use to the present day because when the Japanese government adopted the simplified forms, it did not ban the traditional forms. Thus, traditional forms are used when an author wishes to use them and the publisher agrees.
Unlike in the People's Republic of China, where all personal names were simplified as part of the character simplification reform carried out in the 1950s, the Japanese reform applied only to a subset of the characters in use (the tà Âyà  kanji) and excluded characters used in proper names. Therefore, kyà «jitai are still used in personal names in Japan today (see jinmeiyà  kanji). In modern Japanese, kyà «jitai that appear in the official spelling of proper names are sometimes replaced with the modern shinjitai form.
In the 2,136 , there are 364 pairs of simplified and traditional characters (for example, is the simplified form of ). The kanji is used to simplify three different traditional kanji (, , and ).
Within the jà Âyà  kanji, there are 62 characters the old forms of which may not be displayed correctly:
Kyà Âiku kanji (26):
Secondary-school kanji (36):
These characters are Unicode CJK Unified Ideographs for which the old form (kyà «jitai) and the new form (shinjitai) have been unified under the Unicode standard. Although the old and new forms are distinguished under the JIS X 0213 standard, the old forms map to Unicode CJK Compatibility Ideographs which are considered by Unicode to be canonically equivalent to the new forms and may not be distinguished by user agents. Therefore, depending on the user environment, it may not be possible to see the distinction between old and new forms of the characters. In particular, all Unicode normalization methods merge the old characters with the new ones.
In the revised version of jà Âyà  kanji, 5 kanji were removed (but preserved as jinmeiyà  kanji), and 196 more kanji were added into Jà Âyà  Kanjihyà  of originally 1945 kanji; 6 of these new kanji have a traditional and a simplified form. They are <u>underlined</u> in the following list.
The Jinmeiyà  Kanji List contains 212 traditional characters still used in names. The modern form (shinjitai), which appears in the Jà Âyà  Kanji List, is given in parentheses.
The Jinmeiyà  Kanji List also contains 631 additional kanji that are not elements of the Jà Âyà  Kanji List; 18 of them have a variant:
The following 5 kanji were removed from the Jà Âyà  Kanji List in 2010, but were preserved as jinmeiyà  kanji. They have no simplified form.
and are kokuji.
Of the 196 new jà Âyà  kanji, 129 were already on the Jinmeiyà  Kanji List; 10 of them are used in names of Japanese prefectures, and the kanji that appears in the name of South Korea ( Kankoku). Four of these kanji have both a simplified and a traditional form:
Hyà Âgai kanji are kanji that are elements of neither the Jà Âyà  Kanji List nor the Jinmeiyà  Kanji List. In , traditional characters are recognized as printed standard style () while the simplified characters are recognized as simple conventional style (). Here are some examples of hyà Âgai kanji that have a simplified and a traditional form:
In 2010, 67 hyà Âgai kanji were added to the Jà Âyà  Kanji List; 2 of them have a traditional and a simplified form:
Kokuji are characters that were created in Japan and were not taken over from China. Some of them, e.g. , are now also used in Chinese, but most of them are not.
The Jà Âyà  Kanji List currently contains 9 kokuji ( and are kyà Âiku kanji):
was removed from the Jà Âyà  Kanji List in 2010, but is still used as jinmeiyà  kanji.
The Jinmeiyà  Kanji List currently contains 16 kokuji: