Had I been assigned this book when I began my studies of Japanese in 1969, I would have been saved a lot of puzzlement and I would also have gained a precious understanding of how Japanese kanji came to be used in the ways that they are. Alas, there was no such book in those days, and I had to muddle my way through.

Six years ago, Zev Handel, the author of this book, published an outstanding linguistic analysis of the uses of the Chinese script to write other languages, under the title Sinography: The Borrowing and Adaptation of the Chinese Script (2019). Handel’s new book is explicitly designed to make this topic accessible to readers who know none of the languages in question and have no expertise in linguistics. As such, it will be welcomed not only by those who are curious about the oldest script still in current use but also by beginning students of East Asian languages.

Handel starts out with the story of Matteo Ricci, who acquired a good command of Chinese in the late sixteenth century. Unfortunately, Ricci failed to appreciate that literary Chinese was understood in Japan and Korea precisely because a proportion of the population went through rigorous training in order to be able to read and write it, and consequently he misled generations of Europeans into thinking of the Chinese script as an ideographic writing system. Handel patiently explains why Ricci was wrong and goes on to explain the various techniques by which the Chinese script was adapted to write Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Zhuang, which is one of several languages spoken in south-western China that are related to the Tai languages. These techniques include semantic adaptation and phonetic adaptation, and Handel demonstrates how these work by experimentally using the Chinese script to write an English sentence. His fascinating analysis of this English sentence written in Chinese script shows that he has an instinctive understanding of how readers confront and deal with the difficulties that all scripts throw up. Particularly valuable is his explanation of the disambiguation techniques that various languages have used to reduce ambiguity.

Much of the focus of this book is on the modern forms of the languages of East Asia, which is reasonable given Handel’s target audience. He therefore pays some attention to the continuing potential in the Chinese writing system for the development of new characters. One of these is the character for the synthetic element Tennessine: this is represented in China by the new character 鿬, which heads the Chinese Wikipedia article on Tennessine. But he also draws attention to the well-known artworks of Xu Bing which feature invented characters and to the annual New Kanji contest held in Japan, which rewards the most appealing creation. These examples reinforce his emphasis on the Chinese script as being in a constant state of development with potential for change.

Handel is mainly concerned to show “how the Chinese script came to write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese”, as his subtitle indicates, though the sections on the Zhuang language, which are largely based on the work of David Holm, add a further comparative angle. However, the main title of the book is Chinese Characters across Asia and it would, I think, have been worth mentioning that not all East Asian languages incorporated the Chinese script. The obvious exceptions are Tibetan, Tangut, Mongolian and Manchu: why they developed their own vernacular scripts (in the case of the Tanguts, superficially resembling the Chinese script), while Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Zhuang did not do so until well after the introduction of the Chinese script is an intriguing question and one that highlights the contingency of Chinese script usage in Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Zhuang.

I have a few small quibbles. Firstly, Handel’s claim that “North Koreans today write entirely in the Hangeul alphabet” (180) would have Kim Jong Un choking on his kimchi, for the Korean script is known in North Korea as Joseongeul, using the North Korean name for Korea, Joseon (Chosŏn); the name Hangeul is associated with South Korea. Secondly, although it is quite true that the Chinese script is no longer used in Vietnam, it remains much more visible in contemporary Vietnam than he allows. Vietnamese Buddhist temples and historical monuments such as the Temple of Literature in Hanoi remain festooned with Chinese characters, though few understand their significance. When I visited one temple outside Hanoi the tour-guide was asked by a tourist what was written on the large steles: he replied that they were prayers, whereas in fact they were lists of the names of donors to the temple!

I would strongly recommend this book to anybody setting out on the study of any East Asian language, particularly students of Chinese and Japanese. In busting the myths that continue to surround “Chinese characters”, Handel reveals the much more interesting story of their development and adaptation over many centuries and over a large part of East Asia. As he is at pains to emphasize, it is still very much a living script.