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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the Yuhap tradition in Japan and Chosŏn Korea, asking how "correct" kanji/hanja forms were selected in literacy primers outside China. Comparing comparable primers, it shows Japan and Korea developed unique character-form choices rather than replicating a single Chinese standard.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how the forms of Chinese characters were selected and stabilized in the Yuhap tradition of literacy primers in Chosŏn Korea and Japan. Discussions of character standards in East Asia usually start from norms established in China, treating forms used elsewhere either as faithful transmissions or as local deviations. This model, however, cannot fully explain how a form widely preferred in everyday writing could eventually come to be seen as "correct." This paper therefore asks how shared habits of writing and editorial decisions worked together in the formation of Japanese character-form norms.

The discussion begins with the Yuhap, and then traces how the Yuhap tradition was received and reworked in Japan, including Kaibara Ekiken's Senji Ruigō (1692). Against this background, the main analysis focuses on Gyōchi's Ruigō. A small set of characters is compared across Korean and Japanese primers and calligraphic models.

The comparison shows that some forms in Gyōchi's text omit components or share other graphic features with styles modeled on Chinese Six Dynasties calligraphy. In calligraphy, such features were matters of style — different ways of writing the same character. Their repeated appearance in calligraphic models, however, points to a broader tendency in writing rather than the habit of any single writer. By consistently choosing these forms and presenting them to learners, Gyōchi's primer moved them into a new, educational context, where they began to function as stable character forms.

This paper describes this process as a shift "from calligraphic style to character form," followed by a further shift from preferred form to correct form. It argues that Japanese character-form norms were not created solely by the top-down authority of dictionaries. They could also grow out of shared preferences in writing: forms repeatedly favored in practice were selected and fixed in literacy primers, and thereby came to be treated as correct. The Japanese reception of the Yuhap tradition thus shows how textual transmission, calligraphic practice, editorial choice, and elementary education together turned commonly written forms into orthographic norms.