Is there an objective source of the origins of kanji?


Is there an authoritative source that explains where the different kanji come
from and what the radicals mean? I think it's hard to tell from most of the
textbooks/other sources whether a shown kanji's origin is correct or if it's
made up. Does it even make sense to talk about the origins of some kanji in
terms of its constituent radicals if that kanji is a simplified version of a
traditional kanji?




The short answer is: **No**. There isn't a single authoritative source that
can tell you where each and every Kanji comes from, since the complete
etymology of some Kanji remains in controversy. This is actually not at all
different than the state of the etymology (= study of origin) of English
words.

The longer answer is more hopeful, though: there are some sources that are
more reliable than others. Just like the Unabridged Oxford Dictionary is
considered quite authoritative when it comes to English etymology, there are
Japanese Etymological dictionaries that are considered better and worse.

I know [Daikanwajiten](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikanwajiten) used to be
the most highly regarded Kanji Dictionary, but it's quite old, so it probably
doesn't contain a lot of recent research.

## Edit

After reading your comments, I think I understand better what you're trying to
do, but unless you really want to learn the etymology for its own sake, you
better refrain from wasting your time on it. Why? Consider the following case:

> The mnemonic most often offered for 東 is that the you view the sun behind a
> tree as it rises from the east. It's a very cool and useful mnemonic (though
> the sun could just as well be viewed behind a tree when setting in the west,
> but that's besides the point :)).
>
> Now you want to check whether this mnemonic is reliable so you open your
> etymological kanji dictionary and this is what you get:
>
> ![東の歴史](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LCXfg.png)
>
> (For reference: I got this particular one from a dictionary called Kanjigen)
>
> So now it turns out that the kanji for East has absolutely nothing to do
> with trees and suns. From looking at its form on old tortoise shells
> scholars realized that it's some sort of bag wrapped around a stick (I admit
> I'm not quite sure what it was used for) which probably came to represent
> the meaning "east" because the word for it had a similar sound.

Now, I hope you agree with that's an awful lot harder to remember than the
simple explanation of "Tree + Sun". Plus, knowing that 東 used to look like a
candy, doesn't really help you to know how it's written _today_.

Please note that the example I gave here is not an exceptional case or
anything - in fact, most of the time you'll either encounter an explanation
like that (in which the modern radical components of the characters are an
afterthought) or the character would just be a Sound+Meaning composition where
the main radical (the one which is used for dictionary look-up) represents the
general field of meaning the kanji relates to (body parts, plants, birds,
etc.) and the rest of it is based off another kanji with a similar reading.




The short answer is: **No**. There isn't a single authoritative source that
can tell you where each and every Kanji comes from, since the complete
etymology of some Kanji remains in controversy. This is actually not at all
different than the state of the etymology (= study of origin) of English
words.

The longer answer is more hopeful, though: there are some sources that are
more reliable than others. Just like the Unabridged Oxford Dictionary is
considered quite authoritative when it comes to English etymology, there are
Japanese Etymological dictionaries that are considered better and worse.

I know [Daikanwajiten](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daikanwajiten) used to be
the most highly regarded Kanji Dictionary, but it's quite old, so it probably
doesn't contain a lot of recent research.

## Edit

After reading your comments, I think I understand better what you're trying to
do, but unless you really want to learn the etymology for its own sake, you
better refrain from wasting your time on it. Why? Consider the following case:

> The mnemonic most often offered for 東 is that the you view the sun behind a
> tree as it rises from the east. It's a very cool and useful mnemonic (though
> the sun could just as well be viewed behind a tree when setting in the west,
> but that's besides the point :)).
>
> Now you want to check whether this mnemonic is reliable so you open your
> etymological kanji dictionary and this is what you get:
>
> ![東の歴史](https://i.stack.imgur.com/LCXfg.png)
>
> (For reference: I got this particular one from a dictionary called Kanjigen)
>
> So now it turns out that the kanji for East has absolutely nothing to do
> with trees and suns. From looking at its form on old tortoise shells
> scholars realized that it's some sort of bag wrapped around a stick (I admit
> I'm not quite sure what it was used for) which probably came to represent
> the meaning "east" because the word for it had a similar sound.

Now, I hope you agree with that's an awful lot harder to remember than the
simple explanation of "Tree + Sun". Plus, knowing that 東 used to look like a
candy, doesn't really help you to know how it's written _today_.

Please note that the example I gave here is not an exceptional case or
anything - in fact, most of the time you'll either encounter an explanation
like that (in which the modern radical components of the characters are an
afterthought) or the character would just be a Sound+Meaning composition where
the main radical (the one which is used for dictionary look-up) represents the
general field of meaning the kanji relates to (body parts, plants, birds,
etc.) and the rest of it is based off another kanji with a similar reading.

