japanese handwriting question

[donald1]

my instructor asked me to ask the internet which handwriting was the one was the older way of writing it(i forgot what all he said but it was something like that)
he described it as becoming popular in the 30s? 40s? 50?s(i forgot, its one of those dates) he was talking about a newer one called kanji (but i forgot that part too so im fairly certain it might be similar to kanji...)
any ideas or guesses might help, thanks

 

[Sukerkin]

I'm not sure I understand your question, Donald, but there are essentially four Japanese writing systems or alphabets (five if you count the special one used only in newspapers to define the meaning of kanji).

There are Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana and Romanji. Kanji is derived from the Chinese character system of writing, Katakana is mostly used for foreign words and Hiragana is what is generally used (along with Kanji) for anything written in Japanese. Romanji, of which there are several types, is used for phonetically(ish) spelling out Japanese using Roman letters (i.e. 'our' alphabet).

 

[Carol]

my instructor asked me to ask the internet which handwriting was the one was the older way of writing it(i forgot what all he said but it was something like that)
he described it as becoming popular in the 30s? 40s? 50?s(i forgot, its one of those dates) he was talking about a newer one called kanji (but i forgot that part too so im fairly certain it might be similar to kanji...)
any ideas or guesses might help, thanks

The prewar script is called kyūjitai. The postwar simplifications are called shintijai.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyūjitai

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[Chris Parker]

There was also a much older form that a number of traditional Japanese arts have their transmissions written in, called kanbun. But I'd go with Carol's answer in this case.