I am studying Chinese and Japanese characters and have
become very interested in the various simplified forms
and in other character variants.

Specifically I have read that China officially
introduced the simplified character reform in two
phases in 1956 and 1964. However, I have been unable
to find any more detailed report. There must have been
official documents detailing the change in each
character, the changes in radicals and other recurring
character components, and the conflation of several
traditional characters into one simplified character.

Does anybody know if these documents exist online?
If not I'd still be interested to know the names of
the documents, the dates they were released, and the
characters covered by each.

I'm also interested to learn more about other variant
characters. For instance, the character for "sword"
has 5 variants I can find apart from the traditional,
the Japanese simplified, and the Chinese simplified.
Some vary the "knife" radical, some use "gold" for the
other component instead of the usual "all/together".

I became interested in the "sword" character after
seeing the movie "Hero" where it is mentioned that
there are 19 variations of this character.

Andrew Dunbar.


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