[[File:Calligraphy of Nobuyuki Abe.jpg|thumb|Japanese calligraphy written in the semi-cursive style.]]
Calligraphy culture from China was introduced to Japan in around AD 600 and has been practiced up to the modern day. Although Japan originally used Chinese characters (called ''kanji'' in [[Japanese language|Japanese]]) to represent words of the spoken language, there were still parts of the spoken language that could not be written using Chinese characters.<ref name=":4" /> The phonetic writing systems, [[hiragana]] and [[katakana]], were developed as a result of the semi-cursive and cursive styles.<ref name=":4" /> During the [[Heian period]], a large number of calligraphy works were written in the semi-cursive style because the roundedness of the style allowed for a natural flow between kanji and hiragana.<ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Bernard|first1=Kyoko|last2=Nakata|first2=Yujiro|last3=Woodhill|first3=Alan|last4=Nikovskis|first4=Armis|date=1973|title=The Art of Japanese Calligraphy|journal=Monumenta Nipponica|volume=28|issue=4|pages=514|doi=10.2307/2383576|jstor=2383576|issn=0027-0741}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=Boudonnat|first=Louise|title=Traces of the brush: The art of Japanese calligraphy|date=2003|publisher=Chronicle|others=Harumi Kushizaki|isbn=2-02-059342-4|___location=San Francisco|oclc=51553636}}</ref> In the [[Edo period]], general trends have been noticed where semi-cursive was used with hiragana in mixed script for "native" literature and books translated for commoners, while [[regular script]] kanji was used alongside katakana for Classical Chinese works meant to be read by scholars.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hisada |first=Yukio |title=グローバル日本研究クラスター報告書 |date=2018-03-31 |volume=1 |pages=170–180 |chapter= The Usage of Sentences Mixing Regular-Script Kanji and Hiragana in the Latter Part of the Edo Period |chapter-url=https://ir.library.osaka-u.ac.jp/repo/ouka/all/68062/|publisher=[[Osaka University]]}}</ref>
