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- Below is the original translation by User:Marumarukun
Extended Shinjitai is a set of characters that influenced characters not in the Joyo list and how the Shinjitai, which were adopted in the Joyo list, were simplified.
Table of Contents 1 The Shinjitai Character List 2 The birth of Extended Shinjitai 3 The reduction of Extended Shinjitai 4 Related Topics
The Shinjitai Character List
In 1949, when the Toyo (Everyday use) Kanji List (containing 1850 characters) was announced, many standard characters were replaced with simplified ones. For example, 學,國, and體became学,国, and体, respectively. Later, in 1981, the Joyo List was introduced, adopting further simplifications. These included 罐, 螢, and 龍 becoming 缶, 蛍, and 竜 respectively. Also, 燈, which was the standard form in the Toyo List, was changed into 灯 in the Joyo List. At the time when the Joyo list was adopted, the total number of traditional characters changed by the Shinjitai was 357 (though the characters 辨, 瓣, and 辯 were consolidated into 弁, making the number of characters in the Shinjitai 355).
However, the result of adopting the simplified characters was that characters that shared the same structural elements were simplified for characters among those within the list but not for characters outside the list, leading to a disunity. For example, 賣, 續, and 讀 were in the list and simplified as 売, 続, and 読, but 贖, 犢, and 牘, which were not included in the list, the right side was not simplified in the same manner to 売. Problems inevitably arose via designating whole characters to the Shinjitai. However, because China's Simplified Characters simplfied structural parts that were not whole characters, these kinds of problems do not arise.
Birth of Extended Shinjitai
The Asahi Newspaper adopted a script (Asahi Script) that simplified characters outside the list as well as those within. In this script, the right side of 贖, 犢, and 牘 didn't remain 賣, but instead became 売. The characters from outside the list simplified like this are called Extended Shinjitai.
The philosophy behind the Extended Shinjitai was to adopt the so called JIS characters. The first simplified characters were adopted in 1978's JIS C 6226-1978 (traditional JIS). There were few of these (about 10) including 叛.
JIS X 0208-1983, created in 1983, was the JIS character set Extended Shinjitai that built up widespread interest. At that time, simplifications for a large number of characters not on the Joyo list were adopted. 299 (301 if one includes 曾 and 訛) characters' scripts were altered from their conventional form such as 鷗, 瀆, 潑, 逢, and 飴. Because these were not on the list, the simplifications were not generally used in print up to then. After this, criticisms occured such as not being able to correctly write Mori Ogai's name (森鷗外)with the correct characters..
The Reduction of Extended Shinjitai
Established in 1990, JIS X 0212 (auxillary characters) suplimented the existing Extended Shinjitai characters like 鴎, 涜, and 溌with their traditional forms of 鷗, 瀆, and 潑. However, how the auxillary characters would be represented in Shift JIS was not considered and so most computers could not display them. Thus a solution to the basic problem that JIS X 0212 was made to eliminate was not reached. At the 1992 National Language Council (国語審議会), too, comments remained like, “We experience difficulty because the characters are different on different word processors. We want unity.”
In February 2000's JIS X 0213-2000 (New Extended JIS Encoding), an extention that was able to be used in the Shift JIS encoding was made. Restoring traditional forms showed the way to a solution.
In December of 2000, the National Language Council reported a “List of Kanji External to the List*,” and announced a standard for printed script. On this list, it was made clear that the direction they were going in was one of not using Extended Shinjitai for Kanji from outside the Joyo list. This caused the acceleration of the move to reduce the Extended Shinjitai.
2004's JIS X 0213-2004 (Revised New Extended JIS Encoding) gave minute corrections of whether dots were used or what direction strokes went; the representative character shapes were changed, the non-list one dot shinnyou radical was made to be the two dot shinnyou radical, and so forth. Windows Vista conformed to these characters in its January 2007 release. The result was confusion in cases such as if one used 辻 in names, the single dot shinnyou radical inputted in previous OS's data was displayed with a two dot radical in the new OS's output.
Even the Asahi Newspaper began to use characters conforming to the new list and altered their Asahi characters in January 2007.
At present, it is generally thought that traditional characters, moreso than simplified characters, are the standard, though there is a demand for simplification. Still, when it comes to handwriting, dealing with characters via machines with computers is more common than handwriting. Thus, there is little influence from the characters' simplicity being more efficient.