Ghost characters

Ghost characters are erroneous kanji included in the Japanese Industrial Standard, JIS X 0208. Of the 6,355 kanji characters, there are 12 ghost characters.

Overview

In 1978, the Ministry of Trade and Industry established the standard JIS C 6226. This standard defined 6,349 characters as JIS Level 1 and 2 kanji characters. This set of Kanji characters is called "JIS Basic Kanji". At this time, the following four lists of Kanji characters were used as sources.

Kanji Table for Standard Codes : IPSJ Kanji Code Committee
National Land Administrative Districts Directory: Geographical Society of Japan
Nippon Seimei's family name table: Nippon Life
Basic Kanji for Administrative Information Processing: Administrative Management Agency

At the time of the establishment of the standard, the authority for each character was not clearly stated, and it was pointed out that some characters had unknown meanings and usage examples. The term ghost character was coined from ghost word, meaning a word that is included in dictionaries but has no practical use. The most common examples are 妛 and 彁. These characters were never mentioned in the Kangxi Dictionary or the Dai Kan-Wa Jiten, a comprehensive collection of ancient Chinese character books.
In 1997, the drafting committee for the revised standard, led by its chairman, Koji Shibano, and Hiroyuki Sasahara of the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, investigated the literature referred to in the drafting of the 1978 standard. It was revealed that many of the characters that had been considered ghost characters were actually kanji used in place names.
According to the survey, prior to the drafting of the 1978 standard, the Administrative Management Agency had compiled eight lists of Kanji characters, including the above 1–3, in 1974, entitled "Frequency of Use and Correspondence Analysis Results of Kanji Characters for Selection of Standard Kanji Characters for Administrative Information Processing." This is accompanied by a list of kanji characters and their original sources. The results of this correspondence analysis, rather than the original sources, were referred to when selecting the JIS basic kanji at that time. Of these, many ghost characters were found to be included in those based on the Comprehensive list of administrative divisions of national land and List of Kanji characters for personal names by Nippon Life Insurance Company. In particular, the List of Kanji characters for personal names had no original source at the time of drafting the first standard, and its contents have been pointed out to be inadequate.
In response to these results, the Standard Revision Committee restored the 1972 edition of the Comprehensive list of administrative divisions of national land from its proofreading history, and checked all the kanji appearing in the book against all the pages to confirm the examples. In addition, as a replacement for the List of Kanji characters for personal names, which no longer exists, they conducted an exhaustive literature search, including a comparative study of the NTT and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation telephone directory databases and a survey of more than 30 ancient and modern character books.
There are twelve kanji characters that remain unidentified, of which three appear to be typos. The other eight characters have been found in ancient Japanese or Chinese dictionaries. For the character 彁, no concrete source has been found.
Ghost characters have already been adopted into international standards such as Unicode, and changes to these standards are likely to cause compatibility problems, making it difficult to modify or remove ghost characters.

List of ghost characters

Identified sources

The results of the aforementioned survey by Hiroyuki Sasahara et al. are summarized in Annex 7, "Detailed Description of Ward Locations", of JIS X 0208:1997. This section excerpts some of them.
JIS X 0208:1997 compiles the details of the sources of 72 characters whose sources have been identified, mainly those not listed in both Morohashi's Dai Kan-Wa Jiten and Kadokawa's Shin Jigen. However, this also includes characters that have been found to be miswritten by the original sources.
The list of delimiters appended as "source authority" in Annex 7 of JIS X 0208:1997 lists 72 characters, but the detailed text does not list 鰛, and although 幤 is marked as "source authority," it is not listed in the list of 72 characters.
Some of these are listed in the table below, including some that are known to be typos in the original text.

Character	Address	Notes
size=xx-large	51-85	There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory, but no longer exists. 囎唹郡 becoming 曽於郡 in Kagoshima Prefecture.
size=xx-large	52-18	There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. 藤垈, 相垈, 大垈, all in Yamanashi Prefecture.
size=xx-large	52-21	There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. 垉六 in Aichi Prefecture.
size=xx-large	52-46	There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory, but no longer exists. 堽内 becoming 堤内 in Oita Prefecture.
size=xx-large	54-19	There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. 広岾町 becoming 広帖町, in Kyoto Prefecture.
size=xx-large	55-78	Based on Nippon Seimei's family name table. There are also examples in the NTT telephone directory.
size=xx-large	59-67	There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. 档ヶ山, Kagoshima Prefecture.
size=xx-large	60-17	There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. 三ツ椡, Niigata Prefecture.
size=xx-large	60-81	Dictionary of Japanese Place Names. 石橸, Shizuoka Prefecture.
size=xx-large	61-73	There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. 汢川, Kochi Prefecture.
size=xx-large	66-83	Based on Nippon Seimei's family name table. There are also examples in the NTT telephone directory.
size=xx-large	67-46	There is an example of usage in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory, but it is a typo in the original source. 穃原 becoming 榕原 in Okinawa Prefecture.
size=xx-large	68-68	There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. 粐蒔沢 in Akita Prefecture.
size=xx-large	68-70	There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. 粭島, Yamaguchi Prefecture.
size=xx-large	68-72	There is an example in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory, but it is a typo in the original source. 粫田 becoming 糯田 in Fukushima Prefecture.
size=xx-large	68-84	There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. 糘尻 in Hiroshima Prefecture.
size=xx-large	71-19	There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. 膤割, Kumamoto Prefecture.
size=xx-large	77-32	There is an example in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory, but no longer exists. 軅飛 becoming 鷹飛, Fukushima Prefecture.
size=xx-large	78-93	There are examples in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory. 小鍄, Yamagata Prefecture.
size=xx-large	82-94	There is an example in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory, but it is a typo in the original source. 鵈沢, Fukushima Prefecture.

Unknown sources

JIS X 0208:1997 treats the twelve characters in the table below as "Authority unknown", "Unknown", or "Unidentifiable" because it is not certain which of the four aforementioned lists of kanji is the source of the characters.
Since ghost characters are "kanji that do not exist", the readings are given "for convenience".

Character	Code	Supposed pronunciation	Source	Other appearances
size=xx-large	52-55		Origin unknown.	It is in the Jiyun abridgment, but it may be miswritten.
size=xx-large	52-63		Origin unknown. Possibly a typo of 㕓.	Written in the Wagokuhen. 壥 is used in chữ Nôm with the reading of giềng used in the compound, láng giềng.
size=xx-large	54-12		This character is cited in the National Land Administrative Districts Directory, but it is not there. Possibly a typo of ?.	It is in the Jikyōshū abridgment, but it may be miswritten.
size=xx-large	55-27	,	Origin unknown. Possibly a typo of 彊 or something similar.	Unidentifiable.
size=xx-large	57-43	,	The site is cited in the National Land and Administrative Districts Directory, but it is not there. Possibly a variant or typo of 栩, etc.	Zhonghua Zihai and others.
size=xx-large	58-83		The site is cited in the National Land and Administrative Districts Directory, but it is not there. Possibly a typo of 杲, etc.	It is found in the Japanese Hokke Sandaibu Nanjiki, but maybe a variant or a typo of 罪.
size=xx-large	59-91		The site is cited in the National Land and Administrative Districts Directory, but it is not there. Possibly a typo of 橳, etc.	It is found in the Yiqiejing yinyi.
size=xx-large	60-57	,	The site is cited in the National Land and Administrative Districts Directory, but it is not there. Possibly a typo of 境.	"Popular calligraphy since the Song and Yuan Dynasties" published by the Institute of History and Linguistics, Academia Sinica of the Republic of China in 1930. 槞 is also used in chữ Nôm with the reading of trồng.
size=xx-large	74-12	,	The Basic Kanji for Administrative Information Processing is used as the source, but there are no examples.	It is found in the Shinsen Jikyō.
size=xx-large	74-57	,	The site is cited in the National Land and Administrative Districts Directory, but it is not there. Possibly a typo of 祢.	Shinsen Jikyō, Ruiju Myōgishō and others.
size=xx-large	79-64	,	The site is cited in the National Land and Administrative Districts Directory, but it is not there. Possibly a miswriting of 閏.	It's listed on Guangyun, but it is probably a typo. In Vietnamese Literary Chinese texts, 閠 is a variant character of 閏.
size=xx-large	81-50	,	The source of the information is the Nihon Seimei Jinmei Chart, but the original source is not available.	It is found in the Ruiju Myōgishō.