Wakan konkobun (mixed writing of Japanese and Chinese) (和漢混淆文)

Wakan konkobun was a Japanese writing style generated in the late Heian period.

It was a mixture of a writing style modeled after a translation of a classical Chinese text into Japanese and the Japanese sentences written in hiragana (Japanese syllabary characters), which was created by simplifying the Manyo-kana, an archaic form of the Japanese language. Japanese people made use of both Chinese characters and expressive Japanese at the same time in order to write more effectively. This style was the foundation of the Japanese language today.

The earliest representative work of literature written in the mixed writing of Japanese and Chinese is "Konjaku Monogatari" (The Tale of Times Now Past), followed by "Tsurezure gusa" (Essays in Idleness) and "Heike Monogatari" (The Tale of the Heike).

[Original Japanese]