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Introduction to kanjistat

2024-05-30

The kanjistat package offers tools for working with Japanese kanji characters, which includes dictionary lookup, linguistic study, statistical analysis, integration in plots and R objects, as well as recreational use. This vignette explains the basic functionality.

Working with kanji in the R console

Many functions in kanjistat take “a kanji” as input. If you have set up a Japanese input method on your system or if you copy/paste characters from somewhere (e.g., an online dictionary), you can pass the kanji directly as a character object.

library(kanjistat)
lookup("猫")  
#> 猫 --> ON: ビョウ | kun: ねこ | nanori: 
#>        meaning: cat

Alternatively, you can use the kanji’s Unicode codepoint and escape it by \u if it has at most four hex digits or by \U in general (up to eight hex digits). The latter is currently only necessary for 303 out of the 13108 kanji in KANJIDIC2.

"\u732b"
#> [1] "猫"
lookup("\u732b")
#> 猫 --> ON: ビョウ | kun: ねこ | nanori: 
#>        meaning: cat
# "\u{26951}" gives usually Error: invalid \u{xxxx} sequence
"\U26951"
#> [1] "𦥑"
"\U00026951"
#> [1] "𦥑"

Whether this or any other (of the rarer) kanji are displayed correctly still depends on whether the console font supports the corresponding character. You can also use the kanjistat functions codepointToKanji or kanjiToCodepoint to switch between codepoint and character.

codepointToKanji("26951")
#> [1] "𦥑"
kanjiToCodepoint("猫")  
#> [1] "732b"

Kanji data included

Kanjistat comes with a certain amount of data on kanji. The tibbles kbase, kmorph and the list kreadmean provide basic information for the kanji, which is mostly from KANJIDIC2 (see README.md for all sources). For one or several given kanji the information is most easily retrieved via the lookup function.

lookup("猫")
#> 猫 --> ON: ビョウ | kun: ねこ | nanori: 
#>        meaning: cat
lookup(c("猫","犬"), "basic")
#>      kanji unicode strokes   class grade kanken jlpt wanikani frank frank_news read_on
#> 1305    猫    732b      11  jouyou     8  pre-2    2       15  1212       1702  ビョウ
#> 77      犬    72ac       4 kyouiku     1     10    4        2   899       1326    ケン
#>      read_kun mean
#> 1305     ねこ  cat
#> 77       いぬ  dog
lookup(c("猫","犬"), "morphologic")
#>      kanji strokes radical radvar nelson_c idc  components  skip mean
#> 1305    猫      11      犬     犭     <NA> 品l 苗,田,犭,艹 1-3-8  cat
#> 77      犬       4      犬   <NA>     <NA>  囗          大 4-4-4  dog

Search and selection of kanji is by the usual syntax for data.frames or tibbles. E.g.,

kbase[kbase$strokes > 30,]
#>       kanji unicode strokes   class grade kanken jlpt wanikani frank frank_news read_on
#> 9756     籲    7c72      32 hyougai    11   <NA>   NA       NA    NA         NA      ユ
#> 12052    鱻    9c7b      33 hyougai    11   <NA>   NA       NA    NA         NA    セン
#> 12161    麤    9ea4      33 hyougai    11   <NA>   NA       NA    NA         NA      ソ
#> 12243    龖    9f96      32 hyougai    11   <NA>   NA       NA    NA         NA    トウ
#> 12244    龗    9f97      33 hyougai    11   <NA>   NA       NA    NA         NA    レイ
#> 12706    䯂    4bc2      34 hyougai    11   <NA>   NA       NA    NA         NA    <NA>
#> 12906    灩    7069      32 hyougai    11   <NA>   NA       NA    NA         NA    エン
#>         read_kun               mean
#> 9756       よ.ぶ             appeal
#> 12052 あたらしい              fresh
#> 12161  はな.れる              rough
#> 12243  おそ.れる flight of a dragon
#> 12244       かみ               <NA>
#> 12706       <NA>           numerous
#> 12906       なみ        overflowing

if (require(dplyr)) {
  kbase %>% filter(strokes > 30)
}
#> # A tibble: 7 × 13
#>   kanji unicode   strokes class   grade kanken  jlpt wanikani frank frank_news read_on
#>   <chr> <hexmode>   <int> <fct>   <int> <fct>  <int>    <int> <int>      <int> <chr>  
#> 1 籲    7c72           32 hyougai    11 <NA>      NA       NA    NA         NA ユ     
#> 2 鱻    9c7b           33 hyougai    11 <NA>      NA       NA    NA         NA セン   
#> 3 麤    9ea4           33 hyougai    11 <NA>      NA       NA    NA         NA ソ     
#> 4 龖    9f96           32 hyougai    11 <NA>      NA       NA    NA         NA トウ   
#> 5 龗    9f97           33 hyougai    11 <NA>      NA       NA    NA         NA レイ   
#> 6 䯂    4bc2           34 hyougai    11 <NA>      NA       NA    NA         NA <NA>   
#> 7 灩    7069           32 hyougai    11 <NA>      NA       NA    NA         NA エン   
#> # ℹ 2 more variables: read_kun <chr>, mean <chr>

Getting more kanji data

On the to-do-list for this package are convenience functions for reading from common free kanji databases and transforming the data into a suitable R format. Except for KanjiVG (see next section), this has not been implemented yet.

Kanji data types

kanjistat introduces the S3 classes kanjimat and kanjivec to store kanji as bitmaps and nested lists of stroke paths, respectively. The former are produced by the user via the function kanjimat, specifing a font-family and possibly further parameters. The latter may be produced by the user via the function kanjivec based on data of the fantastic KanjiVG project. For the Jōyō kanji, there is also a precompiled list available from the kanjistat.data repository, which may be the more convenient choice.

Working with Japanese fonts

For using Japanese script in plots, either for annotation, to depict decomposition information or when producing bitmaps of kanji, you need to tell kanjistat about Japanese fonts installed on your computer.

There are many free Japanese fonts available for download, including those at https://www.freekanjifonts.com/, https://www.freejapanesefont.com/, and https://github.com/fontworks-fonts. Common terms for font styles are Gothic (ゴシック, sans serif), Minchō (明朝, serif), Kyōkasho (教科書, school textbook). Sho (書) generally indicates a handwriting style, with the three main calligraphy styles being Kaisho (楷書, regular script), Gyōsho (行書, semi-cursiv script), Sōsho (草書, cursiv script). Sometimes the kanji 体 (-tai, for typeface) or something else expressing style or type is added.

Follow the instructions for your operation system to install your favorite fonts. You then need to make R aware of it, which is done via the font management package sysfonts. The function sysfonts::font_files() gives a list of fonts installed in standard places on your operating system, but the list may be a little overwhelming and it sometimes misses fonts that you have installed in more special places. A useful tool for finding the path to a font you know by name is systemfonts::match_font (not sysfonts!). You may then add the font to the sysfonts database.

Since installed font families and their locations depend on the user’s operating system and setup, the remainder of this introduction displays console output and plots from the author’s system.

# Pregenerated output, run on the author's system. Your mileage may vary.

# Locate the free kaisho font by Nagayama Norio (previously installed)
nagayama <- systemfonts::match_font("nagayama_kai")
nagayama
#> $path
#> [1] "/Users/dschuhm/Library/Fonts/nagayama_kai08.otf"
#>
#> $index
#> [1] 0
#>
#> $features
#> NULL
hsans <- systemfonts::match_font("Hiragino Sans")
hmincho <- systemfonts::match_font("Hiragino Mincho ProN")
yukyokasho <- systemfonts::match_font("YuKyokasho")

# Add the font to the sysfonts database under the name given by `family`
sysfonts::font_add(family = "nagayama_kai", regular=nagayama$path)
sysfonts::font_add(family = "hiragino_sans", regular=hsans$path)
sysfonts::font_add(family = "hiragino_mincho", regular=hmincho$path)
sysfonts::font_add(family = "yu_kyokasho", regular=yukyokasho$path)

# Display the fonts families in the sysfonts database
sysfonts::font_families()
#> [1] "sans"            "serif"           "mono"            "nagayama_kai"    "hiragino_sans"
#> [6] "hiragino_mincho" "yu_kyokasho"

⚠️ Adding fonts to the sysfont database is only effective until the end of the session. It is therefore advisable to add the font_add commands to your kanjistat profile file; see the last section of this document.

Once the fonts are in the sysfonts database, we can use them in plots in many ways we like thanks to the package showtext. A first obvious example is for plot annotation. 

# Pregenerated output, run on the author's system. Your mileage may vary.

showtext::showtext_auto()  # give control for displaying text in plots to package `showtext`
oldpar <- par(mai=c(0.8, 0.4, 0.8, 0.4))

# data
petpercent <- c(11.1, 9.6, 3.5, 2.2, 1.6, 1.5, 1.4, 0.7, 0.6, 0.5, 0.4, 0.4, 0.3, 0.2, 0.1, 0.1, 0.5)
petshort <- c(petpercent[1:7], sum(petpercent[8:17]))
petnames <- c("犬", "猫", "メダカ", "金魚", "カメ", "小鳥", "熱帯魚", "その他")

# plot and annotate
barplot(petshort, las=1, col="darkolivegreen3", # names.arg=petnames does not position nicely
        main="ペット現在飼育状況 (2002年)\n (Pet Ownership 2022 in Japan)", family="hiragino_mincho")
mtext(petnames, side=1, line=0.35, at=-0.5 + 1.2*(1:8), family="hiragino_mincho")
  # bars have width 1 and space 0.2
mtext("%", side=2, line=0.5, at=11, las=1, family="hiragino_mincho")
mtext("Source: ペットフード協会 (https://petfood.or.jp/data/)", side=1, line=2,
      family="hiragino_mincho", cex=0.75)

par(oldpar)
showtext::showtext_auto(enable = FALSE)  # give back control to the usual R code

The function plotkanji provides a simple way of depicting individual kanji in a graphics device.

# Pregenerated output, run on the author's system. Your mileage may vary.
plotkanji(rep("猫",4), family=c("hiragino_sans", "hiragino_mincho", "yu_kyokasho", "nagayama_kai"),
          height=2)

kanjimat objects

The function kanjimat produces a bitmap representation of the kanji in the specified font that is stored in an object of class kanjimat along with other information.

# Pregenerated output, run on the author's system. Your mileage may vary.
fuji <- kanjimat(kanji="藤", family="nagayama_kai", size = 128)
fuji
#> Kanjimat representation of 藤 (Unicode 85e4)
#> 128x128 bitmap in nagayama_kai font with 0 margin, antialiased
str(fuji)
#> List of 8
#>  $ char     : chr "藤"
#>  $ hex      : 'hexmode' int 85e4
#>  $ padhex   : chr "085e4"
#>  $ family   : chr "nagayama_kai"
#>  $ size     : num 128
#>  $ margin   : num 0
#>  $ antialias: logi TRUE
#>  $ matrix   : num [1:128, 1:128] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
#>  - attr(*, "call")= chr "kanjimat(kanji = \"藤\", family = \"nagayama_kai\", size = 128)"
#>  - attr(*, "kanjistat_version")=Classes 'package_version', 'numeric_version'  hidden list of 1
#>   ..$ : int [1:3] 0 8 0
#>  - attr(*, "Rversion")= chr "R version 4.3.0 (2023-04-21)"
#>  - attr(*, "platform")= chr "x86_64-apple-darwin20"
#>  - attr(*, "png_type")= chr "cairo"
#>  - attr(*, "class")= chr "kanjimat"
plot(fuji)

The kanjistat profile file

When kanjistat is loaded, it tries to source the file .Rkanjistat-profile, first from the current R working directory and if none is found from the users home directory. Having such a file is optional but can be helpful in particular for the following three tasks:

sysfonts::font_add(family = "nagayama_kai", regular="/Users/dschuhm/Library/Fonts/nagayama_kai08.otf")

where regular is obtained from systemfonts::match_font.

kanjistat_options(ask_github = TRUE, default_bitmap_size = 64, default_font = "yu_kyokasho")
load("/path/to/the/data/kvec.rda", envir = .GlobalEnv)

These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.