are erroneous kanji included in the Japanese Industrial Standard, JIS X 0208. Of the 6,355 kanji characters, there are 12 ghost characters.
Overview
In 1978, the Ministry of Trade and Industry established the standard JIS C 6226 (later JIS X 0208). This standard defined 6,349 characters as JIS Level 1 and 2 kanji characters. This set of Kanji characters is called "JIS Basic Kanji". At this time, the following four lists of Kanji characters were used as sources.
Kanji Table for Standard Codes (Draft): IPSJ Kanji Code Committee (1971) National Land Administrative Districts Directory: Geographical Society of Japan (1972) Nippon Seimei's family name table: Nippon Life (1973, no longer extant) Basic Kanji for Administrative Information Processing: Administrative Management Agency (1975)
At the time of the establishment of the standard, the authority for each character was not clearly stated, and it was pointed out that some characters had unknown meanings and usage examples. The term ghost character was coined from ghost word, meaning a word that is included in dictionaries but has no practical use. The most common examples are and . These characters were never mentioned in the Kangxi Dictionary or the Dai Kan-Wa Jiten, a comprehensive collection of ancient Chinese character books.
In 1997, the drafting committee for the revised standard, led by its chairman, Koji Shibano, and Hiroyuki Sasahara of the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, investigated the literature referred to in the drafting of the 1978 standard. It was revealed that many of the characters that had been considered ghost characters were actually kanji used in place names.
According to the survey, prior to the drafting of the 1978 standard, the Administrative Management Agency had compiled eight lists of Kanji characters, including the above 1–3, in 1974, entitled "Frequency of Use and Correspondence Analysis Results of Kanji Characters for Selection of Standard Kanji Characters for Administrative Information Processing." This is accompanied by a list of kanji characters and their original sources. The results of this correspondence analysis, rather than the original sources, were referred to when selecting the JIS basic kanji at that time. Of these, many ghost characters were found to be included in those based on the Comprehensive list of administrative divisions of national land and List of Kanji characters for personal names by Nippon Life Insurance Company. In particular, the List of Kanji characters for personal names had no original source at the time of drafting the first standard, and its contents have been pointed out to be inadequate.
In response to these results, the Standard Revision Committee restored the 1972 edition of the Comprehensive list of administrative divisions of national land from its proofreading history, and checked all the kanji appearing in the book against all the pages to confirm the examples. In addition, as a replacement for the List of Kanji characters for personal names, which no longer exists, they conducted an exhaustive literature search, including a comparative study of the NTT and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation telephone directory databases and a survey of more than 30 ancient and modern character books.
There are twelve kanji characters that remain unidentified, of which three appear to be typos. The other eight characters have been found in ancient Japanese or Chinese dictionaries. For the character (), no concrete source has been found.
Ghost characters have already been adopted into international standards such as Unicode, and changes to these standards are likely to cause compatibility problems, making it difficult to modify or remove ghost characters.
List of ghost characters
Identified sources The results of the aforementioned survey by Hiroyuki Sasahara et al. are summarized in Annex 7, "Detailed Description of Ward Locations", of JIS X 0208:1997. This section excerpts some of them.
JIS X 0208:1997 compiles the details of the sources of 72 characters whose sources have been identified, mainly those not listed in both Morohashi's Dai Kan-Wa Jiten and Kadokawa's Shin Jigen. However, this also includes characters that have been found to be miswritten by the original sources.
The list of delimiters appended as "source authority" in Annex 7 of JIS X 0208:1997 lists 72 characters, but the detailed text does not list (82-60), and although (54-82) is marked as "source authority," it is not listed in the list of 72 characters.
Some of these are listed in the table below, including some that are known to be typos in the original text.
Character Address Notes 51-85 There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory, but no longer exists. becoming (; Soo District) in Kagoshima Prefecture. 52-18 There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. (), (), (), all in Yamanashi Prefecture. 52-21 There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. () in Aichi Prefecture. 52-46 There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory, but no longer exists. becoming () in Oita Prefecture. 54-19 There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. () becoming (), in Kyoto Prefecture. 55-78 Based on Nippon Seimei's family name table. There are also examples in the NTT telephone directory. 59-67 There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. (Mount Mategayama), Kagoshima Prefecture. 60-17 There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. (), Niigata Prefecture. 60-81 Dictionary of Japanese Place Names. (), Shizuoka Prefecture. 61-73 There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. (), Kochi Prefecture. 66-83 Based on Nippon Seimei's family name table. There are also examples in the NTT telephone directory. 67-46 There is an example of usage in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory, but it is a typo in the original source. becoming () in Okinawa Prefecture. 68-68 There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. () in Akita Prefecture. 68-70 There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. (), Yamaguchi Prefecture. 68-72 There is an example in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory, but it is a typo in the original source. () becoming () in Fukushima Prefecture. 68-84 There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. () in Hiroshima Prefecture. 71-19 There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. (), Kumamoto Prefecture. 77-32 There is an example in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory, but no longer exists. () becoming (), Fukushima Prefecture. 78-93 There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. (), Yamagata Prefecture. 82-94 There is an example in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory, but it is a typo in the original source. (, supposed to be ), Fukushima Prefecture.
Unknown sources JIS X 0208:1997 treats the twelve characters in the table below as "Authority unknown", "Unknown", or "Unidentifiable" because it is not certain which of the four aforementioned lists of kanji is the source of the characters.
Since ghost characters are "kanji that do not exist", the readings are given "for convenience".
Character Code Supposed pronunciation Source Other appearances 52-55 Origin unknown. It is in the Jiyun abridgment, but it may be miswritten. 52-63 Origin unknown. Possibly a typo of . Written in the Wagokuhen. is used in chữ Nôm with the reading of used in the compound, (). 54-12 This character is cited in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory, but it is not there. Possibly a typo of . It is in the Jikyōshū abridgment, but it may be miswritten. 55-27 , Origin unknown. Possibly a typo of or something similar. Unidentifiable. 57-43 , The site is cited in the National Land and Administrative Districts Directory, but it is not there. Possibly a variant or typo of , etc. Zhonghua Zihai and others. 58-83 The site is cited in the National Land and Administrative Districts Directory, but it is not there. Possibly a typo of , etc. It is found in the Japanese Hokke Sandaibu Nanjiki, but maybe a variant or a typo of . 59-91 The site is cited in the National Land and Administrative Districts Directory, but it is not there. Possibly a typo of , etc. It is found in the Yiqiejing yinyi. 60-57 , The site is cited in the National Land and Administrative Districts Directory, but it is not there. Possibly a typo of . "Popular calligraphy since the Song and Yuan Dynasties" () published by the Institute of History and Linguistics, Academia Sinica of the Republic of China in 1930. is also used in chữ Nôm with the reading of (). 74-12 , The Basic Kanji for Administrative Information Processing is used as the source (Meiji Mutual Life Insurance Company Kanji Code Table), but there are no examples. It is found in the Shinsen Jikyō. 74-57 , The site is cited in the National Land and Administrative Districts Directory, but it is not there. Possibly a typo of . Shinsen Jikyō, Ruiju Myōgishō and others. 79-64 , The site is cited in the National Land and Administrative Districts Directory, but it is not there. Possibly a miswriting of . It is listed on Guangyun, but it is probably a typo. In Vietnamese Literary Chinese texts, is a variant character of . 81-50 , The source of the information is the Nihon Seimei Jinmei Chart, but the original source is not available. It is found in the Ruiju Myōgishō.
Possible typos Some of the characters of unknown authority are believed to have been miswritten by the standard's creator.
It is possible that was miswritten because , which is similar to , is not included in the JIS Basic Kanji. is also not included in JIS X 0213. It is possible that was miswritten because , which is similar to , is not included in the JIS Basic Kanji. In the National Land Administrative Districts Index, the source for this document, there is a shadow-like print mark on the overlay that appears to have been created by cutting and pasting together parts of different characters when creating the block, and it is assumed that this was mistakenly transcribed as a horizontal stroke. It is possible that was miswritten because , which is similar to , is not included in the JIS Basic Kanji.
Treatment in dictionaries Since the establishment of the standard, the policy for compiling dictionaries has been to publish character books that are based on the assumption that all JIS basic Kanji characters are listed. For ghost characters, it is not possible to refer to past sources. Therefore, their treatment differed depending on the dictionaries and individual characters as follows.
Makeshift readings assigned In equipment that implements JIS basic Kanji characters, they are often assigned a phonetic reading. Some dictionaries also list these makeshift readings. Hiroyuki Sasahara points out that these readings may have been given based on a research report by the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (1982) and published materials by NEC (1982) and IBM Japan (1983). Regarded as variations of similar characters The character may be a typo of the very similar character (the upper radical becomes ), and it is found in the Dai Kan-Wa Jiten and Kangxi Dictionary. This is also introduced in the JIS X 0208:1997 survey with an example of implicit merging with an authoritative source. These two characters are also merged into the same code point in Unicode. Similarly, some dictionaries have assigned as a variant of and as a variant of .
Individual interpretations Since is a variant of , there is an interpretation that is a variant of . Some dictionaries consider to be the character for black kites.
Explained as unknown