The Japanese Kanji are certain Chinese characters used phonetically to represent the syllables of Japanese, and are named after the eighth century poetry collection Manyoshu. At the time this collection was compiled the Japanese had no writing system of their own. Some of the Japanese poems were rendered in Chinese characters used phonetically, and in others the Chinese characters were used sometimes phonetically and sometimes ideographically. Out of this, by way of drastic simplification, came Hiragana and Katakana. In other words the Calligraphy designs are interchangeable between Chinese and Japanese.