Shinjitai

Shinjitai (; meaning "new character form") are the forms of kanji used in Japan since the promulgation of the Tōyō Kanji List in 1946. Some of the new forms found in shinjitai are also found in simplified Chinese, but shinjitai is generally not as extensive in the scope of its modification.

Shinjitai were created by reducing the number of strokes in kyūjitai (旧字体/舊字體, "old character form"), unsimplified kanji equivalent to Traditional Chinese characters, also called 正字 seiji, meaning "proper/correct characters". This simplification was achieved through a process (similar to that of Simplified Chinese) of either replacing the tsukuri (旁, right-hand part of a kanji) indicating the On reading with another character of the same On reading with fewer strokes, or replacing a complex component of a character with a simpler one.

There have been a few stages of simplifications made since the 1950s, but the only changes that became official were the changes in the Jōyō Kanji List in 1981 and 2010.

The following forms were established as a result of the postwar character reforms. However, they were not completely created anew, as many were based on widely used handwritten abbreviations (ryakuji, 略字) from the prewar era. Due to the complexity of kanji, many abbreviations were used in handwriting, whose status rose to become official characters in the postwar reforms. Attention was paid to the aesthetic balance of the characters in their new form.

In almost all cases, characters in the new standard have fewer strokes than old forms, though in a few cases they have the same number, and in a few other cases they have one more stroke. The most radical simplification was 廳→庁, removing 20 strokes. A complete list by stroke count reduction can be found at: [新字体はどこまで画数を減らしたか？](2004/10/16)

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