Braille Kanji (Japanese: 漢点字, Hepburn: Kantenji, lit. Chinese dot characters) is a system of braille for transcribing written Japanese. It was devised in 1969 by Tai'ichi Kawakami (川上 泰一), a teacher at the Osaka School for the Blind, and was still being revised in 1991. It supplements Japanese Braille by providing a means of directly encoding kanji characters without having to first convert them to kana. It uses an 8-dot braille cell, with the lower six dots corresponding to the cells of standard Japanese Braille, and the upper two dots indicating the constituent parts of the kanji.^[1][2] The upper dots are numbered 0 (upper left) and 7 (upper right), the opposite convention of 8-dot braille in Western countries, where the extra dots are added to the bottom of the cell. A kanji will be transcribed by anywhere from one to three braille cells.

Principles

Kantenji braille cell with diacritical upper dots 0 and 7

Only kanji use the upper dots 0 and 7. A cell occupying only dots 1–6 is to be read as kana, or less commonly as the middle element of a three-cell kanji.

Kana readings are used to derive common kanji elements that share that reading. For example, the kana ⢆ き ki is used for elements based on the kanji 木, which has ki as one of its basic pronunciations. The two upper dots are then used to indicate whether this is a whole character, 木, or an element of a compound character. For a whole character, both upper dots are added, for ⢏ 木 ki. For a partial character, one upper dot is used: The left upper dot alone indicates the first (left, top, or outside) constituent part of a kanji, as in ⢇⢮ 村, and the right upper dot alone signals the final (right, bottom, or inside) constituent part of a kanji, as in ⢇⢎ 林.^[1] For those kanji where an element is repeated more than once, a suffix corresponding derived from the braille digit plus a right upper dot indicates the number of times an element occurs, as in ⢇⠚ = 森.^[2]

That is, the kana ⢆ き ki is the basis for the kanji ⢏ 木 ki, as well as the two components of ⢇⢎ 林 hayashi, and combined with the digit ⠒ ３ it forms ⢇⠚ 森 mori.

Kantenji are frequently abbreviated. For example, the kana ⠒ う u is used for the 'roof' radical, 宀, which is conventionally pronounced u. Thus, combined with the kanji ⢝ 子 ko (from the kana ⢔ こ ko), it forms the compound character ⠓⢜ 字 ji (as in 漢字 kanji). However, in print the 'roof' radical is not normally used as an independent kanji, so in kantenji it is used as an abbreviation for the most common kanji with the roof radical, ⠛ 家 ie "house".

A more extreme abbreviation is 恋 koi "love". In print this is (historically) 糸 + 言 + 糸 on the top plus 心 on the bottom, but in kantenji it is abbreviated to 言 + 心, for ⠗⢬ 恋 koi.

Because there are only 63 six-dot patterns that kantenji can be based on, while there are significantly more elements from which kanji are built in print (for instance, the 214 radicals), each of the kantenji patterns corresponds to several components in print. Most are visually or thematically linked. For example, the kana そ so is the arbitrary basis for the kanji ⢽ 馬 uma "horse". From there, three kanji for farm animals are derived by adding a "selector" (a pattern with a single lower dot): ⢵⠊ (馬 + selector 1) 牛 ushi "cattle", ⢵⠌ (馬 + selector 2) 羊 hitsuji "sheep", and ⢵⡈ (馬 + selector 3) 豚 buta "pig". The kanji 曽 sō, on the other hand, is based on the same braille pattern, despite having nothing to do with the horse radical or its meaning, because it is the historical basis of the kana そ so. Thus ⠑⢼ (selector 4 + 馬) is 曽 sō. The selectors are generally only used for individual kanji. When 馬, 牛, 羊, 豚, or 曽 used as components of compound kanji in print, all are most commonly written as ⢵ or ⢼ in braille.^[3]

The order of the cells is sometimes reversed to distinguish kanji that would otherwise be written the same in braille. For example, 料 is written ⡵⡜ (斗 + 私) to distinguish it from ⡕⡼ 科 (私 + 斗). Tricks such as reordering and abbreviation help use the 4,000 two-cell combinations. However, for rarer kanji, three cells are required. The middle cell may be a selector, as in ⡇⠐⡌ 汲 (水 + selector 5 + 系), or a kanji element, as in ⣗⠢⡪ 瑠 (玉 + 月 + 田).^[3]

Text

A sample text:

⢛	⢇⣮	⠀	⠕⢺	⣿	⡇⠤⣨	⣫
草	枕		夏	目	漱	石

Kusamakura – Natsume Sōseki

⡑⣌	⡆	⡃⠮	⢖	⠠⣂	⣥⢈	⠠⢂	⣣⠊	⡲	⢤
智	に	働	け	ば	角	が	立	つ	。

Chi ni hatarakeba kado ga tatsu.

Approach everything rationally, and you become harsh.

⠳⢾	⡆	⢇⣄⡼	⢢	⢶	⠠⣂	⡇⢚	⢢	⠶	⠲	⢤
青	に	棹	さ	せ	ば	流	さ	れ	る	。

Jō ni sao saseba nagasareru.

Paddle along in the stream of emotions, and you will be swept away in the current.

⠃⡊	⡳⡮	⡠	⣃⡺	⢶	⠠⣂	⠥⣮	⡵⣞	⠠⡢	⢤
意	地	を	通	せ	ば	窮	屈	だ	。

Iji o tōseba kyūkutsu-da.

Give free rein to your desires, and you become uncomfortably confined.

References