"Women in medieval Japan were discouraged from studying kanji " characters modelled on written Chinese which represent individual words " and began using kana, which transcribe words phonetically. A [20th-century] standardisation programme … saw 90% of the 550 kana die out. But these forgotten characters are now being kept alive by the artist and master […]
SOURCE: ArtsJournal at 11:24AM on June 27, 2019