Shinjitai

Shinjitai (kanji: 新字体, kana:しんじたい) literally means "new character forms" in Japanese. These are kanji (the Japanese word for Chinese characters) that were simplified in Japan after World War II. At that time the Japanese government changed the writing system by replacing many kyūjitai (kanji: 旧字体, kana: きゅうじたい, meaning: old character forms) by making simpler characters. These newer characters had the exact same meaning and pronunciations as the older ones, but they could be written with fewer strokes of a pen. For example, the character 樂 simplified to 楽. Some shinjitai characters are also used as simplified Chinese characters. For example, the character 国 is used in both Japanese and simplified Chinese. However, most shinjitai look more like traditional Chinese characters (called kyūjitai in Japanese) than even simplified Chinese characters do, and there are also far fewer shinjitai than simplified Chinese characters. While most Japanese words these days use the shinjitai form, there are a few words where writing the kyūjitai form is still common. For example, the word "dragon" is usually written using the shinjitai character 竜, but writing the kyūjitai character 龍 for it is also still quite common. For most kanji, however, the shinjitai form is unchanged from the kyūjitai form.