Abstract
The usage rate of Chinese characters in Japanese sentences decreased by the mid-20th century but has become stabilised since then. However, the question remains: why did the usage rate of Chinese characters become stable? This study thus focuses on lexical strata, a factor that was considered in previous research, to conduct a year-by-year analysis of the usage of Chinese characters for each lexical stratum: native Japanese words, Sino-Japanese words and borrowed words in Akutagawa prize-winning works. The results demonstrate that both the proportion of the lexical strata and the usage of Chinese characters for each lexical stratum have not changed substantially in contrast to the change seen prior to the mid-20th century when the usage rate of Chinese characters decreased. Moreover, a secondary analysis of the previous study’s results using the same methodology (a year-by-year analysis) suggests the possibility that the decrease in Sino-Japanese words written in Chinese characters constituted the main reason that the usage rate of Chinese characters also decreased by the mid-20th century. Furthermore, the analysis indicates that relatively fewer native Japanese words were written in Chinese characters because of the overall increase in native Japanese words caused by the growing number of those written in kana.