Editing Shorthand (section)

=== Japan ===
{{quote |Our Japanese pen shorthand began in 1882, transplanted from the American Pitman-Graham system.  Geometric theory has great influence in Japan.  But Japanese motions of writing gave some influence to our shorthand.  We are proud to have reached the highest speed in capturing spoken words with a pen.  Major pen shorthand systems are Shuugiin, Sangiin, Nakane and Waseda [a repeated vowel shown here means a vowel spoken in double-length in Japanese, sometimes shown instead as a bar over the vowel].  Including a machine-shorthand system, Sokutaipu, we have 5 major shorthand systems now.  The Japan Shorthand Association now has 1,000 members.|Tsuguo Kaneko<ref>{{citation | publisher = Homestead | url = http://pitmanshorthand.homestead.com/PitmanBooks.html | title = Pitman Shorthand | contribution = Books | url-status = live | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160304032502/http://pitmanshorthand.homestead.com/PitmanBooks.html | archive-date = 2016-03-04 }}.</ref>}}

There are several other pen shorthands in use (Ishimura, Iwamura, Kumassaki, Kotani, and Nissokuken), leading to a total of nine pen shorthands in use. In addition, there is the Yamane pen shorthand (of unknown importance) and three machine shorthands systems (Speed Waapuro, Caver and Hayatokun or sokutaipu). The machine shorthands have gained some ascendancy over the pen shorthands.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Kaneko |first1= Tsuguo |title=Shorthand Education in Japan - 47th Intersteno Congress, Beijing 2009 |url= https://www.intersteno.it/materiale/Beijing2009/Conferences/KanekoEduRepo.ppt |archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20230210112622/https://www.intersteno.it/materiale/Beijing2009/Conferences/KanekoEduRepo.ppt |archive-date= 2023-02-10 |format=PPT | url-status = live |date= 2009-08-16<!--date from congress program at https://www.intersteno.it/uploads/FinalReportBeijing2009.pdf-->}}</ref>

Japanese shorthand systems ('sokki' shorthand or 'sokkidou' stenography) commonly use a syllabic approach, much like the common writing system for Japanese (which has actually two syllabaries in everyday use). There are several semi-cursive systems.<ref>{{citation | url = http://sokki.okoshi-yasu.net/sb-housiki.html | publisher = Okoshi Yasu | title = Housiki | url-status = live | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160303222518/http://sokki.okoshi-yasu.net/sb-housiki.html | archive-date = 2016-03-03 }}.</ref> Most follow a left-to-right, top-to-bottom writing direction.<ref>{{cite web|url= http://sokki.okoshi-yasu.net/sb-bunrei.html|title=速記文字文例|work= Okoshi-yasu |url-status=live|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20160303230155/http://sokki.okoshi-yasu.net/sb-bunrei.html|archive-date=2016-03-03}}</ref> Several systems incorporate a loop into many of the strokes, giving the appearance of Gregg, Graham, or Cross's Eclectic shorthand without actually functioning like them.<ref name= "Sokkidou">{{citation | publisher = OCN | place = JP | url = http://www12.ocn.ne.jp/~sokkidou/t12/ | title = Sokkidou | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130522074907/http://www12.ocn.ne.jp/~sokkidou/t12/ | archive-date = 2013-05-22 }}.</ref> The Kotani (aka Same-Vowel-Same-Direction or SVSD or V-type)<ref name="Sokkidou 60">{{citation | publisher = OCN | url = http://www12.ocn.ne.jp/~sokkidou/t12/60c.html | title = Sokkidou | page = 60 | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20130522081801/http://www12.ocn.ne.jp/~sokkidou/t12/60c.html | archive-date = 2013-05-22 }}</ref> system's strokes frequently cross over each other and in so doing form loops.<ref>{{citation | publisher = Nifty | url = http://homepage3.nifty.com/Steno/001g/2/20.html | title = Steno | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20160304112954/http://homepage3.nifty.com/Steno/001g/2/20.html | archive-date = 2016-03-04 }}.</ref>

Japanese also has its own variously cursive form of writing kanji characters, the most extremely simplified of which is known as [[Cursive script (East Asia)|Sōsho]].

The two Japanese syllabaries are themselves adapted from the Chinese characters: both of the syllabaries, katakana and hiragana, are in everyday use alongside the Chinese characters known as kanji; the kanji, being developed in parallel to the Chinese characters, have their own idiosyncrasies, but Chinese and Japanese ideograms are largely comprehensible, even if their use in the languages are not the same.

Prior to the Meiji era, Japanese did not have its own shorthand (the kanji did have their own abbreviated forms borrowed alongside them from China). Takusari Kooki was the first to give classes in a new Western-style non-ideographic shorthand of his own design, emphasis being on the non-ideographic and new. This was the first shorthand system adapted to writing phonetic Japanese, all other systems prior being based on the idea of whole or partial semantic ideographic writing like that used in the Chinese characters, and the phonetic approach being mostly peripheral to writing in general.  Even today, Japanese writing uses the syllabaries to pronounce or spell out words, or to indicate grammatical words. [[Furigana]] are written alongside kanji, or Chinese characters, to indicate their pronunciation especially in juvenile publications. Furigana are usually written using the hiragana syllabary; foreign words may not have a kanji form and are spelled out using katakana.<ref>{{citation |last1=Miller |first1=J. Scott |year=1994 |title=Japanese Shorthand and Sokkibon |journal=Monumenta Nipponica |volume=49 |issue=4 |pages=471–87 |publisher=Sophia University |jstor=2385259 |doi= 10.2307/2385259}}, p. 473 for the origins of modern Japanese shorthand.</ref>

The new sokki were used to transliterate popular vernacular story-telling theater (yose) of the day. This led to a thriving industry of sokkibon (shorthand books). The ready availability of the stories in book form, and higher rates of literacy (which the very industry of sokkibon may have helped create, due to these being oral classics that were already known to most people) may also have helped kill the yose theater, as people no longer needed to see the stories performed in person to enjoy them. Sokkibon also allowed a whole host of what had previously been mostly oral rhetorical and narrative techniques into writing, such as imitation of dialect in conversations (which can be found back in older gensaku literature; but gensaku literature used conventional written language in between conversations, however).{{Sfn | Miller | 1994 |pp =471–87}}