日本社會開始使用漢字書寫始於5世紀,但是書寫工作主要由"渡來人"承擔。儒學和佛教從中國的傳入,提高了古代日本人學習漢字漢語的動因,拓展了漢字在日本社會的實用空間。古代日本人撰寫純漢文體文章始於6世紀末7世紀初,其使用漢字撰寫帶有日語語法特點的變體漢文文章,並將漢字作為字母表記普通日語詞匯,並由此而發展出日本的民族文字平假名和片假名。

In the 5th century,Japanese started to use Chinese characters in writing and the writing work was mainly done by Chinese mainland immigrants. The introduction of Confucianism and Buddhism into Japan from China enhanced the motivation of ancient Japanese to learn Chinese and expanded the pragmatic space of Chinese characters in Japanese society. Ancient Japanese started to write articles in pure Chinese style in the late 6th and early 7th century. Before the 7th century,they wrote articles by using Chinese variants with characteristics of Japanese grammar,used Chinese characters in alphabetic list of Japanese common words and later on developed Japanese Hiragana and Katakana.