- Kanji characters come from China. "Kan," an old word for China, refers to the Han Dynasty, and "Ji," means "character." Each character represents an idea, such as "road" or "water." In 1981, the Japanese government designated 1,945 kanji characters for general use and 166 for names of people, which Japanese children learn by the end of High School. For reading literature, one must understand an additional several thousand characters.
- The characters of Katakana represent the 48 syllables used in the Japanese language. The syllabary is used for adding emphasis, like emboldening or italicizing a word in English, or non-Chinese foreign words and names.
- Like Katakana, the characters of Hiragana represent the 48 syllables used in the Japanese language, are used for native words and word endings in conjunction with Kanji; since Japanese writing leaves no spaces between words, using Kanji helps readability. Kids' reading material tends to use Hiragana chiefly. The word "Hiragana" literally means "ordinary syllabic script."
- Romaji uses the Latin alphabet for sounding out words; every syllable represented by Katakana or Hiragana is translated into Romaji in specific ways. For example; the word "katakana" consists of "ka," "ta," "ka," and "na" in Romaji, while the other two alphabets use one symbol for each of those syllables. The Japanese commonly use Romaji for numbers and abbreviations, and usually for typing words on computers, which then convert words into Hiragana, Katana and Kanji.