Describing Old Japanese Kanji Usage:

The common terms on and kun as applied to kanji readings in modern Japanese orthography lead to misunderstandings of how kanji were used in the critical earliest period of Japanese writing. We identify a class of early phonographic uses of kanji in which they were not forerunners of later kana, and explain how recognition of this class may be of importance for research on the relationship of Japan and the Korean peninsula in the mid 1st millennium.

1. Identifying kungana

2. Internal reconstruction

3. Textual evidence

4. Further research

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