Chinese words and characters were introduced to Japan through letters, coins, swords, and seals imported from China.
The earliest known Japanese documents were written by Korean officials and bilingual Chinese employed at the Yamato court.
Afterwards[clarification needed], a group of people known as the fuhito were organised under the monarch to read and write Chinese characters.
Japanese kanji could be stencilled onto thin rectangular strips of wood, which aided communication during this time.
The growth experienced in the integration of kanji in writing systems has increased the number of false friends existing between the Chinese and Japanese languages.
In addition, the Chinese characters are integrated into the learning systems of most nations in East Asia and predominate in China and Japan.
There are numerous national standard lists of characters, pronunciations, and forms distinctly defined by Japanese kanji and Chinese writing systems.
[2] False friends in writing systems occur when words in two distinct languages resemble each other in structural appearance or sound but have a different meaning.
False friends present linguistic homographs and synonyms based on the culturally and societally bound languages.
Writers and learners of the languages, both Chinese and Japanese, need to be very conscious of false friends in order to deliver the exact meaning in the written context.
[4] While writing contexts, some characters might seem familiar to the writers, and they tend to assume they have similar meaning across different cultures.
The existence of false friends in languages governs every effort towards generating conversation across dynamic cultures.
While presenting a speech in a bilingual society, speakers need to be aware of false friends to avoid embarrassment.
[2] Therefore, false friends have a cultural impact on writing and learning bilingual languages whose characters have some defining similarities.