Reversing stroke direction in kanji for left-handed writing


I am left handed.

A stroke from left to right is, depending on the writing utensil, inconvenient
to impractical, since, instead of pulling the tip across the paper, I push,
which doesn't work as well.

This isn't such a big issue with modern ballpoint pens, but especially with
things like fountain pens, left-to-right strokes can result in scratching,
jumping and ultimately, slow and ugly handwriting.

As a result, when writing Latin letters, I tend to write them my own way (as
opposed to what I have learned in elementary school), intuitively minimizing
left-to-right strokes.

With Japanese handwriting, for good reason, there is a much bigger emphasis on
correct stroke order and direction, especially with kanji.

My question is, would it be a problem to reverse all left-to-right strokes in
handwriting? How is this handled in Japanese schools? If anybody here is left-
handed, what is your approach?




The short answer is **" Don't do this"**. I have seen many left-handed people,
but no one reverses the stroke direction like you suggested.

Kanji have long been written with brushes, and the small nuances of each
stroke (like _hane_ , _tome_ , _harai_ ) are still considered important. You
can read about this in [this
article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroke_\(CJK_character\)). For example,
口 (kuchi) must be written with three strokes like
[this](https://jisho.org/search/%E5%8F%A3%20%23kanji), and almost all native
speakers strictly follow this. A clever kindergartener may think it should be
easier to write this character with one stroke, but they will eventually learn
that's out of the question as [they practice writing kanji with a brush at
elementary school](https://web-japan.org/kidsweb/cool/13-08/index.html). They
are taught to write kanji exactly the same way regardless of their handedness.

(By the way, according to my parents, they actually "corrected" my left-
handedness when I was two or three. It was important to my parents. I believe
few people do this in today's Japan, though.)




I am left-handed, and I write everything with the same stroke direction as
right-handers with no issues. In vertical writing, because the columns run
right-to-left, I even find being left-handed slightly advantageous.

I do not live in Japan though, so I cannot answer how it's handled in schools
there.

I do not think fountain pens are widely used in Japan or China. I wonder if
fountain pens are appropriate at all for Kanji or even kana.

Japanese 'brush pens' (筆ペン) seems much better for kanji/kana, and perhaps you
should try them. Since the brush pen point is flexible, no scratching or
jumping will ever happen.

Raise your hand slightly when writing to avoid touching wet ink in the paper,
and try to keep the pen perpendicular to the horizontal plane.

