I was curious if the Japanese had any writing system before the introduction of kanji and I’ve seen mixed answers. Some say the first writing system in Japan was “Classical Chinese” kind of how the Engilsh originally wrote in Latin. Other sources say that there are [petroglyphs](https://www.archaeometry.org/pre-kanji.htm) that prove Japan had a writing system before kanji was introduced.
I was just curious if there was a definitive answer on this?
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a little bit of googling said they could possibly even be Semitic inscriptions
like think, from the ancient near-east
I mean, ancient people got around more than we used to think, so I don’t see why some ancient Sumerians couldn’t go to Japan. Not impossible but it’s so far, so IDK
If I were you I would go and ask on r/askhistorians, but not all the questions there get answered.
Anyway it won’t help you learn Japanese, but could explain some ancient Japanese themes like the first emperor being descendant of a sun-god and such.
I’ve never heard of these pteroglyphs before. I suspect it may be a fringe theory that is not widely accepted by historians. But even if it is true, I think it’s widely accepted that at the very least, writing was not widespread or commonplace prior to introduction of Kanji.
I’d assume those are just [神代文字](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/神代文字) ^[[en]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jindai_moji), which are all thought to be forgeries for various reasons
I don’t really feel like investing the time into figuring out which system it’s supposed to be, but it’s probably listed on [this page](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/神代文字の一覧) somewhere, or maybe this claim is so obscure it doesn’t even show up there