Page "Kanji" Paragraph 6

While kanji are essentially Chinese hanzi used to write Japanese, there are now significant differences between kanji used in Japanese and Chinese characters used in Chinese.

Such differences include ( i ) the use of characters created in Japan, ( ii ) characters that have been given different meanings in Japanese, and ( iii ) post-World War II simplifications of the kanji.

Likewise, the process of character simplification in mainland China since the 1950s has the result that Japanese speakers who have not studied Chinese may not recognize some simplified characters.